Quotes

[kingforboth]

 

 

Deryni Rising

"And you, my lords: The reason for our coronation tomorrow instead of today has apparently slipped your minds, also. As you are well aware, royal writ decrees that no king of Gwynedd shall be crowned in his own right until he has fully reached legal age. Since I was not due to reach that legal age until three this afternoon -- too late for a coronation, you must admit--the ceremony was scheduled for tomorrow. But I rule today!"

Deryni Checkmate

"We're fighting the idiotic notion that a man is responsible for the accident of his birth. That because a few men made grave errors in the name of a race over three hundred years ago, the whole race is damned and must forever suffer the consequences, generation after generation. That is what we're fighting Kelson. Corrigan, Loris, even Wencit of Torenth--they're merely pawns in the larger strugger to prove that a man is worth something for himself alone, for what he does with his life, whether for good or evil, with the talents he was born with, whatever they may be. Does that make sense?"

High Deryni

"It is sometimes the awful duty of a king, that he must kill."
"But he is not obliged to  like it," Kelson whispered. "It is not something of which he should be proud."
"And are you proud?" Duncan replied. "I think not. I have known you too long and too well to believe that of you."
"But I'm glad they're dead," Kelson said stiffly. "How to I reconcile that? And at the time, I wanted them to die. I willed it, and they died. No man should have that power, Father."

The Bishop's Heir

Morgan said nothing, but he was thinking that sometimes Kelson did not know quite as much as he thought he did. The boy was more experienced than many other young men of far more years, and mature for his age, God knew -- he could not have survived the past three years if he were not--but he sometimes tended to take his newly gained maturity for granted and to overestimate what could be done.

The King's Justice

The ring had a tiny Haldane lion etched on a facet pared from along the top of the band, the eyes set with miniscule rubies. He had worn the ring constantly since the day of her burial.

Faced with a marriage of state to a girl who had been bred to hate his very name, Kelson had let himself retreat to the more comforting fantasty that he was falling in love with Sidana, and she with him. By the time they recited their vows before the high altar, he had nearly convinced himself that it was true -- or at least that he eventually could have caused it to be true.  Her violent death, then, before the fantasy could be tested in the reality of a consummated marriage, had left the young king foundering in a sea of unresolved adolescent passions and shattered ideals. 

"Yes, and my dear, superstition-blinded mother will help things enormously!"
"She's only your mother, for God's sake, Kelson. You haven't done anything you need to be ashamed of. If she wants to keep flagellating herself with guilt, that's between her and her God. Don't ask me to hand you a whip to do the same thing."

"I'm going for a walk. When I come back, I want to see four more bodies on that tree.

"I don't very much like what I had to do today."
"Do you think I did?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" Kelson repeated, aghast.

"But you--you can't just cut me down like a dog," Sicard said weakly.
"Indeed?" Kelson said, calmly laying an arrow across the bowstring. "Sicard, I can and shall cut you down precisely like a dog, if I must. For, like a rabid dog, you have ravaged my lands and slain my people. Now, will you and your men surrender, or must I do what I would rather not?"
"You're bluffing," Sicard whispered. "What will the world say, if the great Kelson Haldane cuts down an enemy in cold blood?"
"They will say that a traitor was executed for his treason, without further endangering honest men."

"Did they tell you what I had to do to Sicard?"
"Aye....He was taken in arms against you, Sire, and he refused to surrender."
"So I shot him," Kelson muttered.
"Aye, he shot him," Ewan said sternly....."An' don't ye dare let him wallow in self-pity for that little lapse, Archbishop. He executed one traitor to force the peaceful surrender of many others."

"It's fitting I have real blood on my hands. I've spilled a great deal of it in the nearly four years I've been king."

Quest for Saint Camber

The king, however, would make his appearance the day before, having decided that Easter itself was a most propitious time to return from the grave, as it were. Unfortunately, the irony would probably be lost on Conall. 

Hail, Kelson of Gwynedd. Now shalt thou truly be a king for humans and for Deryni.