Sacrificial Princess & the King of Beasts

Episode 19

For a minute there, I was afraid Anubis would squander all of the goodwill he earned in the previous story arc. Not that it was a lot of goodwill, but still – for the merest moment, I didn't want to pitch him off a bridge at low tide. And he does come close to ruining all of that with his continued insistence that Sariphi publicly standing as Leonhart's queen will destroy everything, and, to hear him say it, quite possibly the world itself. But as it turns out, Anubis really has learned. He still has enough racial prejudice not to want a human queen, but underneath it all, he honestly is trying to do his job: advise the king. He's got the tact of an avalanche, but he is learning, and at least he does want Leonhart to remain comfortably on the throne.

If that is his goal (and it is), he will have to evolve. Anyone can tell you that the world changes, no matter how uncomfortable that may make some people, and although Anubis' first reaction to, for example, abolishing the sacrifice system is to scream in horror, when he stops and thinks, he's able to see that maybe Leonhart and Sari have a point. He's a little older than the king, who isn't much older than Sari, and the implication is that he's young enough to change. Compare his reaction with the two old men who also advise the king: he has an outburst, then calms down, but the other two sound positively panicked by Leonhart's pronouncement. It's up to Lante to point out that it's because they're old that they don't understand – most young people have never met a human, and those who have, have met Sariphi. While the old men were busy trying to live in the past, the world was moving on, which means that they can't effectively speak about the people's will. I'm sure Anubis hates that Lante is the one who pointed that out, but even he can recognize the truth.

That means that the Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts is doing double metaphor duty: first race relations, and now the older (oldest) generation dominating politics. Most fantasy can be seen as a commentary on the real world, at least if you choose to view it that way, but this one is doing the job remarkably well. That makes Set's mad research even more alarming, because you know that when a politician starts looking for ways to disqualify or smear someone else, they're probably up to no good. But even if we drop the idea that the story has something to say about our world all together, Set's behavior is really concerning. Previously, we saw him descending into the palace depths for unknown reasons, and now we find him researching Leonhart's birth records. We know (or at least Leonhart thinks) that the late queen wasn't his birth mother, which means he may be illegitimate – which Set may hope to prove. Why? That's unknown, but we'll have to hope that at least one of his books got mixed in with Sariphi's so that someone gets a hint of what he's up to.

Whoever that is, it probably won't be Sari, because she and Bennu are off on their possibly ill-fated diplomatic mission. Lante or the little round guys may be our best bet, especially since Lante is naturally suspicious, and he already knows that Sari isn't universally beloved in the palace. Building a bridge between human and beast is important, but making sure that Leonhart is on the throne to see it happen is equally so, and at this point, like those books on Lante's head, the balance in Ozmargo is precarious.

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