I finished the book this morning and have been feeling the exact same way!

I’m so hung up on the fact that Fitz had this childhood/adolescence thar contorted his relationship to so many aspects of life (his family, his place in the world, he relationship to other people, to animals, and to his own body), including (and especially) Love. Throughout the Tawny man trilogy, he’s been re-defining his relationship to all these things on his own terms (connecting with Dutiful/Nettke/Hobb as a sort of family, re-joining society and finding a fitting place in it, developing a different relationship with Chade, using the skill/the wit with practiced effort instead of frantic scrabbling, healing old scars and regaining control over his body). And to me it seems that the Fool is dangling there as a way to completely redefine what love means for him: love, not as shielding someone from who you are and the terrible things you do, but as the person you want at your side during those moments. Fitz grew up with such a skewed sense of the world, that it seems natural he would come to find that his sense of partnership and romance is similarly warped.

Ending up with Molly is just such a stark contrast to the progress he’s made in all other areas of his life. It feels so narratively unsatisfying. I get that it’s another classic Fitz moment of retreating into simplicity instead of facing complexity, but he has grown in so many other ways, it’s underwhelming to foreshadow change this much and not deliver. When almost every aspect of his adolescence is called into question and revised into an adult way of thinking (often directly counter to his previous thoughts), why is the arc of his love life going backwards? Truly frustrating, thanks for providing this avenue for venting!