Who is Belladonna Albrecht?
“You don’t even want to know the outline of half the stories I’ve heard about Belladonna Albrecht.”
Friends, I have been having A Week. To distract myself, it wasn’t sufficient to work on any of my current in-progress articles - most of which will be far more useful and or have broader appeal than this one. No. I decided to ‘research’ one of my favourite characters in the Craft Sequence, a favourite who has never actually appeared on-page, and whom (I discovered today) has only been referenced ten times.
Yet, I think about her every day.
I am, of course, talking about the one, the only, Belladonna Albrecht.
But who is she? Why do I love her so much despite the fact that she is arguably not even in the series?
Let’s dive in.
(Except, two notes first. Some of my ebooks have decided to stop having page numbers, so including chapter numbers instead for those. Also, Gladstone’s spelling of Kelethres/Kelethras changes throughout the series. I’ve used whichever was in the quote in my ebook edition.)
Belladonna Albrecht: Craftswoman, war veteran, jokester?
Assuming one is reading in publication order, we first hear about Belladonna Albrecht early in Three Parts Dead.
“So I said, when Belladonna Albrecht challenged my recommendation.”
Elayne Kevarian mentions her when discussing the terms of Tara’s employment with Kelethras, Albrecht, and Ao. It is not stated outright, but it appears clear that Belladonna Albrecht is the named partner in the Craft firm’s name. So, from the beginning we know she is a) a Craftswoman, b) a pretty senior one, and c) not entirely convinced that they ought to hire Tara after her ignominious graduation from the Hidden Schools.
Belladonna is referenced twice more in Three Parts Dead, and we quickly learn that she was a veteran of the God Wars, and caused more than her fair share of Craftwork damage.
“The great and powerful and angry, like Ambrose Kelethras and Belladonna Albrecht struggled on the front lines against the gods, while around the world their less militant and more trusting brethren fell to murder and to the madness of crowds.”
Great, powerful, and angry - and a survivor of a century of vicious bloodshed.
“Gerhardt’s first experiments created half the desert we call the Northern Gleb. Twenty years later, Belladonna Albrecht made the Crack in the World.”
Just a casual break in reality, no big deal.
That’s all we get of Belladonna Albrecht in Three Parts Dead, but she already cuts a tantalising figure. Given that Elayne worked for her Craft firm, one might expect her to show up in a future book, but alas that is not to be. Yet, at least.
We do, however, get continued off-hand references both from Elayne and others that build Belladonna’s mystique.
“Most of our sponsors, they have a history. The King in Red broke the Quechal gods on his altar, and killed the moon in single combat; Ilyana Rakesblight and the Blade Queen seared the sky over Kho Khatang. You don’t even want to know the outline of half the stories I’ve heard about Belladonna Albrecht.”
Breaking a pantheon of gods, killing the moon, and searing the sky apparently pale in comparison to what Teo has heard of Belladonna Albrecht. I can’t imagine this is merely referencing the Crack in the World - surely that’s common knowledge? And, whilst clearly quite major, doesn’t seem orders of magnitude worse than other horrors we’ve heard from Deathless Kings and Queens.
Speaking of the moon, we do get a Belladonna reference from poor Seril recounting Her own death.
“Belladonna Albrecht trapped me in the Badlands, but I escaped her. The King in Red caught me in the sky, and choked me, and drew his burning knives and began to carve.”
The King in Red is Seril’s ultimate murderer (for a certain definition of death), but Belladonna Albrecht clearly played a major role in the final attack.
This reference brings home Belladonna’s violence somewhat. Seril is the goddess we know best as readers, and someone we grow to care for. It’s one thing to know that Craftsfolk killed gods, and quite another to hear a goddess you’ve come to know well recount how Kopil and Belladonna viciously killed Her.
Belladonna Albrecht and the King in Red seem to have fought side by side throughout the God Wars. We read in Wicked Problems that they were both involved in the death of Quechal god Ixzayotl.
“The body endured and remembered. It remembered blades and it remembered the lightning tree of thorns, it remembered the King in Red and it remembered Belladonna Albrecht and it remembered its fall.”
By this point in the series, we don’t even need to know quite what Belladonna Albrecht did to understand that her name being used here implies something very, very bad. It remembered the King in Red and it remembered Belladonna Albrecht - of all the Craftsfolk in all the world, those are the two names mentioned here.
Yet, Belladonna Albrecht also has a lighter side, telling jokes in board meetings.
I mean, she’s definitely joking, right?
“Not that Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao was in the habit of killing people who stopped in without an appointment. Suggestions to that effect had been raised at board meetings, but Elayne was relatively sure Belladonna Albrecht meant them in jest.”
So funny, that Belladonna. Absolute classic jest. Not remotely something one might say in seriousness when one is a necromancer war criminal.
…moving on
Belladonna and Elayne
Belladonna also seems to have played something of a mentorship role to Elayne Kevarian in her younger years, and they appear to still be friends. We see this side of Belladonna in Elayne’s POV chapters in both Last First Snow and Wicked Problems.
Kopil mentions Belladonna transferring Elayne to the DL office of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao in the sixties (see here for timeline and years), but it’s not worth formatting a quote so just take my word for it. More interestingly, Elayne remembers this story when Kopil is being particularly annoying:
“Elayne almost punched the skeleton in his absent nose. She clenched her jaw instead, and recalled advice Belladonna Albrecht had given her decades ago when she had been the fiercest fledgling at Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao. Someday in your career, Elayne, you will represent a man—almost certainly a man—who wants you to help him barter his soul to a demon for three wishes. When that day comes you may refuse his business, you may try to change his mind, but in the end if hell he wants, hell he will achieve.”
Any woman who has worked with a man can relate to this story. This provides an interesting new angle to Belladonna - a Belladonna who, despite most likely being a skeleton, has more of a humanity to her; a Belladonna who is mentoring a young woman, a young woman in whom she perhaps sees herself.
There may be many a powerful woman in the Craft Sequence books and in the history of their world, but it is a world that reflects our own, and that unfortunately means misogyny is very much a thing. Just look at Alexander bloody Denovo.
I like to think Belladonna would be proud of Elayne for taking him down.
Many years later, Elayne and Belladonna are evidently still regularly in touch. Of course, Elayne does work for Belladonna’s company, and this isn’t an industry in which one retires to a life of leisure - almost immortal necromancers, and all that jazz. But from what Elayne says in Wicked Problems, they have an ongoing connection. She mentions Belladonna twice in the same page:
“She had explained the effect to Belladonna Albrecht once.”
“Her tissues were crystallising. There were ice distortions in her eyes. This was another reason Belladonna kept after her to transition.”
Note that Elayne is talking about transitioning to her skeletal Deathless Queen form, not transitioning her gender. Hopefully that was clear from the whole crystallising thing.
I don’t want to spoil what is a quite cool scene, so I won’t go into detail about what effect Elayne is referencing in the first quote, only say that it’s something she’s kept quite close to the chest, a Craft technique she herself has developed. The fact that she has explained it to Belladonna implies a closer relationship than merely former mentor and protegee. From the second quote, it is also clear that they regularly speak if Belladonna “keeps after her” - that’s not a one-off comment.
Elayne doesn’t mention very many friends in her POV chapters, but Belladonna Albrecht comes up several times. They’re clearly besties. Elayne does have a habit of befriending war criminals, after all.
What can we infer about Belladonna Albrecht?
That’s every single named reference to Belladonna Albrecht in the series thus far. So, it’s time for my favourite: rampant speculation!
I am inclined to suggest that Belladonna Albrecht was originally from the Schwarzwald. Her surname clearly has Germanic origins in our world, and the analogue in the Domain is the Schwarzwald. We touch on the Schwarzwald a little in the Grimwald article from a couple of years ago, if you’re interested.
Why does this matter? It doesn’t, especially, but it ties into her being one of the first Craftswomen fighting back on the front lines. Maestre Gerhardt, the originator of the Craft, was Schwarzwalden. It would make sense that many of his acolytes were too. Was Belladonna one of his followers in Alikand, one of the group who sowed dissent and accidentally broke the world? Or was she a follower from afar, back in the Schwarzwald? When we briefly hear about the origins of the Hidden Schools and other flying universities, Elayne specifically mentions “a delaying action in the Schwarzwald, near Grangruft University” (Last First Snow, chapter 60). This is the only pre-Hidden Schools university given a name or location. That could mean nothing, but y’all, I have 10 quotes to work from, I need to pull something out of thin air.
SO. I am speculating that a young Belladonna Albrecht grew up in the Schwarzwald, either followed Gerhardt or learned from his followers after he was chased from the Schwarzwald. I feel like if she was in Alikand that would have come up at some point in the series, so I prefer to think she was a student from afar or one who remained behind when he left for Alikand.
She probably experienced some significant trauma at the hands of her family and neighbours. That seems to be a fairly common feature in the lives of Craftsfolk, particularly those who were around at the start of the God Wars. Elayne and Tara both reflect on barely being one step ahead of the mob, barely escaping flaming pitchforks. As Tara says in Three Parts Dead, pre-God Wars was a dangerous time for those who used their minds.
Whatever she endured, she came out of it angry and vicious, one of the first at the frontlines. We hear that Elayne, too, was particularly fierce when she joined the fight. Perhaps Belladonna saw something of herself in the girl. Maybe that was when she took the first steps towards mentoring a young Elayne.
Will we ever see Belladonna Albrecht?
I’m in two minds. Part of me really wants to see her because she’s clearly a badass (in the King in Red vein - let’s acknowledge the crimes against humanity but also enjoy the Drama), and part of me wants her to remain off-page, with each reference being a taller tale.
In terms of likelihood, I’m similarly in two minds. As much as Gladstone is bringing characters together and bringing tertiary characters back for cameos (hi Zack), I can also seem him enjoying off-page Belladonna more than seeing her in the narrative. However, we’re clearly gearing up for a Massive Fight For The Future of Humanity And Also The Entire World, and it’s hard to imagine some of the fiercest war veterans staying out of it. That feels like quite a cop-out, actually.
On balance, I think there’s a decent chance we will see Belladonna Albrecht, at least briefly. Perhaps Gladstone will bring in the heavy hitters from the last Wars, only to have them fall at the first battle with the skazzerai and really show us the stakes.
But that would be awful. Belladonna Albrecht should not die. She is, to quote the meme, an icon, a legend, and she is the moment.
(Speaking of memes, I wanted to include the whole “I support women’s rights, and also women’s wrongs” thing but I couldn’t make it fit, so have it here instead).
The End
Belladonna Albrecht is one of my favourite characters, and she’s not even really in the books. Gladstone, you outdid yourself here.
Right, I’m going to get going and do something I actually need to do. Hope you enjoyed this digression!
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