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Does the 'Daughter's survive the destruction of Kelewan?

Science Fiction & Fantasy Asked by Vaughn Ohlman on August 22, 2020

In the ‘Magician’ series by Feist, the planet Kelewan is destroyed. In the ‘Daughter/Mistress/Servant of the Empire’ series we have great hopes for a particular line on Kelewan. Does Feist at any point indicate that the ‘Daughter’ and her line are preserved in the destruction of Kelewan?

One Answer

Short answer: Yes, at least one member of the bloodline of Mara of the Acoma survived the destruction of Kelewan, although Mara herself had almost certainly died of old age long before then.

Now for the longer answer, which will explain how I reached that conclusion . . .

I haven't read the trilogy of "Darkwar" books set within what Wikipedia calls the Riftwar Cycle, but a little Googling told me that Vol. 3 of the Darkwar Saga -- Wrath of a Mad God -- marked the end of the world of Kelewan. Then I started looking for a comprehensive "timeline" or "chronology" of key events of the Riftwar Cycle to see what it could tell me about the fortunes of Mara's descendants, and I found a good one on the Midkemia Wiki: Chronology of the Riftwars, compiled by Trevor G. Tover.

In what he labels as the year 134, events of interest include this item:

The majority of the Tsurani refugees, under the leadership of the Light of Heaven, Sezu, ninety-four times Emperor of Tsuranuanni, begin to rebuild their society on their new world, which they name “New Kelewan”.

And earlier on the same webpage, in an entry for the year 97, it says of Sezu:

On Kelewan, the grandson of Justin, Emperor of Tsuranuanni, and the great-grandson of Mara, Mistress of the Empire, and Kevin of Zun, is born. He is named Sezu after his great-great-grandfather.

So you can see that not only did at least one of Mara's descendants survive the destruction of Kelewan, but he was also the Emperor who would continue ruling over all the other surviving Tsurani as they began settling another planet. All things considered, I'd have to say that the lineage of "the Daughter" is still doing pretty well for itself! (And there may have been other descendants who made it to New Kelewan; the resources I examined don't say if Feist has ever committed himself on that point, one way or the other.)

Now to explain why I figure Mara herself did not live long enough to see the death of her native world. According to that Chronology, the move to New Kelewan occurred in 134, and Mara had been born in the year -15. That's a gap of 149 years. Since she was physically a normal human being, without any magical powers to keep her metabolism going longer than most mortals can hope for, I figure it's a safe bet that she, personally, was long dead before the events of the Darkwar Saga. But I haven't read all of the Riftwar Cycle books, and thus I don't know if her death was ever explicitly mentioned as having occurred at a certain time. Mara's personal page on the Midkemia Wiki basically summarizes the highlights of her career from the Empire Trilogy, but doesn't say much of anything about what happened to her after the timeframe of the third book of the trilogy -- Mistress of the Empire. At the bottom of that page, there's a list of books in which she appeared. If it was accurately researched, then Mara never got to appear onstage in any of the books which Feist wrote later on, without the help of Janny Wurts, but she was name-dropped several times when it suited Feist's purposes.

Note: The Chronology indicates that the memorable scene at the end of Mistress of the Empire, where Mara and her lover Kevin finally meet again after Kevin has been named the first Ambassador from the Kingdom to the Empire, occurred in the year 29. Mara would have been about 44 years old at that time. As I said, her life after that moment seems to be a blank.

Correct answer by Lorendiac on August 22, 2020

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