69 pages • 2 hours read
Tracy DeonnBloodmarked
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Body Politic
The body politic is a symbol the Regents uses to legitimize their control. When people like Bree, William, Sel, and Lark begin to defy this organizing logic, this symbol is related to Operating Outside of Authority for Moral Good.
People employ the term “body politic” when they imagine an organization or group symbolically as a body. Erebus says, “the Order’s organization framework” imagines its various components “as anatomy, working together” (44). The Merlins are the Order’s shield arm while the Legendborn Pages, Squires, and Scions are their sword arm. The Awakened Arthur is the “head,” but “the Regents are the spine” (44). Understanding the symbolic meanings of these body parts reveals how hierarchy is maintained in the Order. The Legendborn are the Order’s offensive while the Merlins are defensive: Both arms operate to protect the central body, the king and the Regents. These arms can and will be sacrificed to protect the head and spine. Arthur’s Scion is the head only if they are Awakened; in lieu of that, the Regents lead the order as the “spine.” The spine gives structure and support to the rest of the body. Even the head, an Awakened Arthur, can only hold itself up with the support of the spine. Naturalizing their authoritarian rule by imagining the Order as a body politic is the Regents’ attempt to keep the factions from uniting and realizing they do not actually need the Regents to function.
Blood
Blood is a symbol connected to The Power and Pressure of Legacy. Bree learns to prick her finger to create blood, which she spreads on a family heirloom to bloodwalk. Miss Hazel explains why her blood offerings work: “Offerings honor the ancestors with gifts of life” (441). Blood connects Bree with her ancestors because it symbolizes life and is a distilled form of her own life force.
While blood is thus associated with power, it is also associated with unfair pressure. Both parts of Bree’s “bloodline” want to use her for their own purpose. The “blood” that connects them symbolizes how Bree feels trapped in their legacy. At the end of the novel when Bree burns away her ancestral plane, she learns that she is powerful “away from my own body, away from my own blood” (546). She previously associated her physical blood and bloodline with “power,” but now realizes she has power of her own away from this symbolic relationship.
Bree carries a “bloodmark”—a mark the Shadow King put on her bloodline. Though Bree burns away the bloodlines, she still carries her bloodmark. At the end of the novel, the reader is left with a cliffhanger, wondering if she’ll find a way to dissolve the bloodmark, too.
Cariad
“Cariad” is Sel’s Welsh term of affection for Bree. It symbolizes the evolving bond between them. Sel first called Bree “cariad” at the end of Legendborn. Bree says “I didn’t know what it meant then,” and Sel replies, “I…was aware” (476). Sel purposefully used a term that revealed how he felt, but he knew Bree wouldn’t understand. He was not ready for her to understand the extent of his feelings for her.
In the firefly grove, Bree confronts Sel about what he meant when he said it. She’s found out the meaning, but since it carries multiple English translations, she wants to know which one he meant so she can judge what the word symbolized. For each translation Bree lists—darling, beloved, and love—Sel kisses a different part of her face. He says, “I meant all of them […] But you already knew that, didn’t you?” (479). Bree nods “because there’s no point in lying” (479). Even though Bree knew the symbolic meanings his words carried, she needed to hear him say it. The fact that he confirms the meanings represents the evolution in their relationship: Though their future is uncertain, they can at least admit their feelings for one another.
