regshoe

I'm sorry things are stressful, regshoe! Thank you for hosting the discussion, and I hope life eases up and you get to come play with us soon!

 

Keith came very close to being "cashiered" after his antics with Loudoun. Possibly everyone here already knows this, but on first read I was under the false impression that cashiering was a bloodless and purely administrative action that would separate him from the army; tgarnsl had to introduce me to the whole ritual/ceremonial aspect of cashiering, the purpose of which was to publicly humiliate and degrade the disgraced officer. Keith didn't just risk his job and social environment for Ewen; he risked his honour, his face, his reputation, and his ability to ever again participate in polite society. (Would Lady Stowe or his stepfather receive him after being cashiered? I have my doubts.)

Consequently, I think there's an interesting parallel here with Ewen. Last week regshoe pointed out that Keith and Ewen met while both "having lost nearly everything that defined them" -- now they're both offered a choice between public and private honour. Loudoun offers Ewen a choice between being dishonourably ejected from Clan Cameron while retaining his own private sense of honour, or sacrificing his private honour toward Lochiel while retaining his public honour with the clan and his chief. Meanwhile, Keith is offered essentially the same choice: be cashiered -- humiliated, degraded, and ejected from his society -- while retaining his private sense of honour toward Ewen, or sacrifice his private honour and advance his standing within the Army. Both men of course choose their private honour over their public honour -- they're a well-matched pair in that! But I am nevertheless amused that the parallelism isn't reciprocal: the object of Ewen's private honour is his clan chief, and the object of Keith's is Ewen. (Does that make Ewen, in Keith's ever-evolving loyalties, Keith's symbolic clan chief?)

(Of course this makes me want fic where Keith is cashiered for Ewen's sake. It also makes me want fic where Loudoun spreads his lies and gets Ewen ejected from Clan Cameron. They do not have to be the same fic.)

I also note that immediately after Culloden, Keith was insistent that his "hands were clean of massacre" -- and in fact, the text was full of how revolted Keith was by what the Army was doing, and while he didn't try to overtly intervene, he did try to keep clear of it. But in these chapters... Well, Broster brushes past it fairly quickly, but Keith is apparently no longer trying to dodge what's expected of him, but is instead making a point of being seen unhesitatingly doing all the things that earlier revolted him. It's unclear exactly how dirty Keith's hands are right now from what he's been doing in Inverness? But I suspect that pre-shieling Keith would have been revolted and possibly even horrified by what Keith has been doing since his narrow escape from cashiering. There's an argument to be made that, in rejecting the alleged duty the Army now expects of him, he feels relief that this will get him ejected from the Army -- at least he'll get to stop doing all the things that are currently revolting him and making him miserable.