Belladonna Albrecht: an icon, a legend, the moment
Long time readers will be aware of my slight Belladonna Albrecht obsession. For a character who was referenced merely 10 times in 8 books and never appeared on page, I developed such a delight over her that I became worried that if she eventually did show up I would be disappointed.
Trust Gladstone to blow all my expectations out of the water. In Dead Hand Rule we got the Belladonna Albrecht of my dreams and more.
Let’s end 2025 - the year of Dead Hand Rule - with a far too deep dive into the icon, the myth, and the legend that is Belladonna gottsverdammt Albrecht.
Spoilers etc ahead. Such as, the fact that there TWO Belladonnas Albrecht. Gladstone. Did you write this solely for me? Thank you, if so. For this essay we will be focusing on Belladonna Albrecht Senior, Belladonna First of Her Name, so to speak.
“The black train rolled to a stop at platform thirteen with a final sigh. Doors petaled open and skeletons in nightshade livery issued forth, bearing luggage, followed by hollow-eyed associates laden down with binders. Last, half-masked and gowned in aubergine and sable, came Belladonna Albrecht, her hair up, her boots black leather, her glasses full moons, her hands gloved to the elbow to hide the rainbow stain left by the blood of gods. A hammer swung from the belt of her gown.
She reviewed the platform, and the city beyond, and the Schools above, and her full lips bared razor teeth.”
READER. THE SCREAM I SCREAMED.
Well. I screamed internally, as I was in public. I did, however, gasp and hold my breath while I reread the paragraph.
Belladonna gottsverdammt Albrecht is HERE. ON THE PAGE. On page NINE.
I was already enjoying the book (hey Abelard and Kopil) but this kicked it into overdrive. Did Gladstone do this just for me? I’m claiming it.
So, for the first time we have Belladonna Albrecht on our page. She plays an integral role in various ways, and each delicious word about her on page fed me for years. Crops are watered, skin is clear etc.
Let’s take a quick look at what we knew about Belladonna before this book, and then we can delve into all the delightful and horrifying new details we have learned.
What we (thought we) knew about Belladonna Albrecht before the book
Although you absolutely should read my first essay about the ten references to Belladonna Albrecht across the series, for my flailing if nothing else, here is a quick summary of what we knew, and what we inferred, about her before Dead Hand Rule.
Belladonna Albrecht is one of the named partners in Craft firm Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao. We mostly hear about her through Elayne’s POV or dialogue, and they seem to have a relatively close relationship. Perhaps mentor/mentee?
She is a veteran of the God Wars, described in Three Parts Dead as one of the “great and powerful and angry” Craftsfolk who took to the frontlines. Tara also recollects that it was Belladonna who made the Crack in the World, 20 years after Gerhardt’s first experiments with the Craft.
In later books other characters also reference Belladonna Albrecht. She cuts an imposing figure through the modern imagination. Teo says “you don’t even want to know the outline of half the stories I’ve heard about Belladonna Albrecht” after referencing other Craftsfolk murdering gods and searing skies.
Belladonna Albrecht nearly caught Seril before the King in Red. Seril describes Belladonna as “trapping her in the Badlands”. We also later hear that she was involved somehow in the death of Quechal god Ixzayotl. We don’t know exactly what she did, but Ixzayotl’s corpse “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.”
Interesting how often she’s connected with the King in Red in these descriptions. Is that simply Gladstone using familiar names for the reader, or does it imply they worked as a pair on the battlefield?
We don’t get many details of what Belladonna Albrecht did in combat, but she was clearly fearsome and powerful.
After the Wars, as named partner in Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, her vicious streak remains alongside humour, at least in Elayne’s recollections. Perhaps Elayne is biased. As I said in my last essay “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.”
Belladonna is also named as the person who transferred Elayne to the DL office in the sixties, and Elayne recalls advice from Belladonna when Kopil is particularly annoying:
“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.”
Honestly, a far more reasonable statement from Belladonna than others we’ve heard.
Also from that last essay, we can infer Belladonna is from the Schwarzwald from her surname. I speculated that she may have been an early student of fellow Schwarzwalder Maestre Gerhardt.
As an elder Craftswoman, we could also imagine that she had left her mortal form behind and gone full skeleton a la the King in Red. Elayne mentions that “Belladonna kept after her to transition,” with transition meaning the process of becoming a Deathless Monarch rather than a gender transition. To me, this implies that Belladonna has gone full skeleton, which is understandable in the context of Deathless Monarchs but sad for me specifically because I want her to look dramatic and fabulous in a way that (sorry Kopil) a skeleton just doesn’t quite pull off.
And, given that we had only 10 Belladonna references up to this point, is all we knew.
Until Dead Hand Rule.
Belladonna Albrecht in Dead Hand Rule
“Understanding is easy. Forgiveness?” She shrugged, mostly with her hands. “I try to see what’s in front of me.”
“So do I.” She began, with the others, to applaud. “The better to hit it with a hammer.”
Belladonna was not kidding about the hammer. “I hope you can restrain that particular impulse for the next few days.”
With a laugh: “I’ve never been one for restraint.”
...
One did not survive nearly a century as a named partner in a major firm, of course, without developing a certain political sensitivity. Bluntness had its tactical advantages, as did the velvet gowns with which she draped her muscled form. But she had been radiant, in the light of the flames.”
She’s in Alt Coulumb for the conclave, of course, and at times chairs sessions. She collects her daughter (!!!!!) from the Hidden Schools to attend sessions alongside her (more on this later), and hangs out with her BFF Elayne Kevarian. They go to a sauna. It’s iconic.
And, of course, when time comes to fight, Belladonna bloody fights.
We get some excellent descriptions of Belladonna in battle, largely from Elayne Kevarian, who fought beside her in the God Wars and has worked for her Craft firm ever since. A few of my favourites include:
Belladonna “golfed "[a corrupted golem] through a window with her hammer”
Elayne “had reached the miserable waste in the sky just in time to see Belladonna charge into the forest of mirrors, her war hammer grown to mighty size and the magics of ages thronged about her, et cetera.”
“Belladonna, in action, had a tendency to punctuate her speech with swings of her war hammer.”
“It was fascinating to watch Belladonna parent, because her traditional approach to problem-solving, to wit, overwhelming firepower and/or blood sacrifice, was distinctly unsuited to the task.” (not technically Belladonna in battle, but one can imagine).
Between plenary sessions, battles against God Wars weapons and proto-skazzerai, and chasing down her wayward daughter, Belladonna also finds some time to relax. We read about her and Elayne taking time out in a sauna. No word on whether Belladonna keeps her domino mask on while nude.
We also get this delightful exchange between old pals:
“Why haven’t I done this before?”
“Because you hate fun,” said Belladonna Albrecht. “And I’m seldom around to bully you into it.”
...
“I,” said Elayne, “am great fun.”
“I don’t want to fail her. That’s all.”
My girls. If we had fic writers in this fandom, I anticipate many E rated one-shots about what might have happened between these two in the sauna (and also the Wars).
Speaking of the Wars…
Belladonna’s upbringing and God Wars experience
Belladonna Albrecht was always, it seems, entirely herself. She came from an old Schwarzwald noble family (I am choosing to imagine all her dialogue with a soft German accent) who didn’t quite understand her. Her family were woven into others by marriage and blood pact, and after she completed her studies in Applied Theology, she was most certainly expected to get married to a suitable man, procreate, and put aside her more unusual hobbies.
We are told that she experienced “a childhood of governesses and dour icy glares over supper in the family castle” and that:
“My forebears spent a dozen generations tying themselves into progressively more elaborate knots of blood bonds, marital alliances, and debts of honour. If not for the Wars, they might well have succeeded at finding some aristocratic cell to brick me up inside.”
Poor little Bellalein. Bellachen? Debating how to dimutive-ise Belladonna appropriately.
Belladonna was permitted to join Schadelberg University in the Department of Applied Theology. We learned in earlier books that the first Craft practitioners were students of Applied Theology, so it makes sense that this is where Belladonna started too. It seems she didn’t proactively turn to the Craft or join the God Wars. Young Belladonna would have been perfectly happy to be left alone in her laboratory with her nightmare Frankenstein’s monsters. When Elayne recalls Belladonna as a teenager, she says:
“She had not been [restrained] when they first met, certainly, when they were young and in the Wars: blunt, brilliant, gore-streaked, and ever-grinning, a builder of monstrosities. When the gods came for Schadelberg University, Belladonna had been a student in their Department of Applied Theology, a corpse-tinkerer and demon-welder. In the screaming chaos she had been as surprised as anyone to find that her skills, obsessions, and demented hobbies had become suddenly useful. For the first time, after a childhood of governesses and dour icy glares over supper in the family castle, of being told again and again that she was too much, it seemed that too much was just what the occasion demanded. She fought free of the Encirclement of Schadelberg at the head of a legion of golems and nightmare constructs, and by the time Elayne met her she had built most of research and development about herself, forge-muscled, laughing. Elayne, precise, careful, and three years younger, had regarded Belladonna Albrecht with a measure of awe.”
Belladonna appears to be something of body builder in more ways than one. ‘Corpse tinkerer’ makes me think of Frankenstein, and she is described as muscular far too many times for it to be unintentional. She builds her own body and others, and I think that’s beautiful.
This passage also tells us that Belladonna is significantly younger than I, at least, had surmised. From previous mentions, I had assumed she was a generation older than Elayne rather than a peer, her mentor rather than her best friend. I love the choice to make her only a tiny bit older thant Elayne - enough that, as teenagers, she would be an awe-inspiring older girl, but close enough in age that as adults they are simply friends. Great choice, Gladstone.
I will say, however, that this puts the cosh on the Crack in the World being 20 years after Gerhardt’s first experiments. Belladonna wouldn’t even have been born yet. But we must allow Gladstone a retcon here and there, it’s been a long series.
Belladonna also saved Elayne’s life the first time they met, and gods I need this fandom to get some fanfiction writers because I want this scene written in a dozen different ways by a dozen different writers please.
Once Belladonna was claimed by the Wars, she was a great fighter. Belladonna reflects that she “fought, like everyone else did back then, for the right to shape my destiny.” She fought against her parents and her upbringing, and against the stifling future they had laid out for her. She’s something of a body builder, both in terms of her constructs and her own body. We read a number of times about her considerable muscles. Some parts of the internet would refer to her as a muscle mommy, but that phrase sticks in my throat. I include it here, because I mentioned it to my friend Lili, who insisted I include it here “because it’s accurate, and also because Gladstone probably included these details because Belladonna is a mom AND a muscle mommy.”
Yet, despite her strength and skill, Belladonna is not simply a mini King in Red, however, pulled into battle and rising up the ranks. Elayne also tells her that Belladonna was never a general and would have made a truly awful one.
“Any army that tried to follow her would find itself left behind. She solved problems: small ones, like “find the flaw in this argument before our enemies exploit it”; medium ones, like “this tactical group is in our way” or “the northern sea-coast of this continent is too fortified for a land invasion”; and large ones, like death.”
I love this characterisation. I feel like we haven’t really seen anyone quite like this in the series. Most characters who we’ve seen in battle have been strategising their way through, even if they weren’t technically leading. Kopil, Temoc, and Elayne in Last First Snow, of course, but even Tara and Caleb and Izza in their various battles. Even when they fight alone, they see the bigger picture and the part their skills can play. . Belladonna, on the other hand, seems the type to forget what everyone else is doing and charge straight in with her war hammer. Our more academically-minded characters aren’t the best in battle, but Belladonna clearly is. She would fit in at a university holed up in her laboratory; in fact, it seems a little odd that she isn’t esconced in the Hidden Schools. Perhaps she holds a grudge on Elayne’s behalf.
Speaking of Elayne (gang, I don’t have a decent segue here, go with it), she appears to have given us unreliably information in the past.
Is Belladonna Albrecht a skeleton?
Surprisingly (but happily if you’re me), no she is not. We get another slight retcon from Gladstone, that actually not many Deathless Kings do the full King in Red treatment. Many are part skeleton, or inhabit constructed bodies (see Dame Alban and her statutes), but aren’t the cranium to phalange skeleton we maybe expected.
Belladonna is definitely not quite human any more, though. When she drinks alcohol, Elayne thinks that it isn’t biochemically possible for Belladonna to get drunk, so she’s done something to her body.
So, how is she described?
She has at least a semi-human visage, but wears a half-mask, which presumably covers something less human. When Gladstone said ‘half-masked’ in her intro, I was thinking Phantom of the Opera esque, covering, say, the left side of her face but not the right. However, her mask is later described as a domino mask, which instead covers the top half of your face over your eyes. If you google domino masks, they are almost universally hideous, so I am choosing to imagine a porcelain or glass Venetian mask instead.
(…on the note of Gladstone conjouring Belladonna Albrecht from my dreams, how did he know I have a weird obsession with characters wearing such masks?? Blame City of Masks by Mary Hoffman, an extremely formative book from when I was about 11).
We hear that young Belladonna was “forge-muscled” and built her research and development “around herself”. It took me a few reads to really visualise this. Are we talking Belladonna Albrecht in a sort of Hulk Iron Man suit with metal muscles? Were the muscles rather built through Belladonna toiling over an actual forge hammering together bits of metal?
I think a bit of both, ultimately. She clearly has real muscles as it is mentioned A Lot both in Elayne’s God Wars recollections and in visions of Belladonna today, yet the descriptions of building her golems and nightmare constructs “around herself” makes me think of a Craft-Iron-Man suit situation as well.
Artists of the fandom, please help.
Modern Belladonna also still has hair, as her introduction says her hair was up, and we later read that “jet beads draped from Belladonna’s godbone hairpins.” Truly an icon, to go into a city of gods wearing godbone hairpins.
In terms of her facial features, when looking at Belladonna’s daughter, Elayne sees an echo of the young Belladonna - bright eyes, proud brow, razor-line jaw. But where Donnie is slim and pink-clad, Belladonna was muscled. Donnie herself thinks “it was as if staring into a black mirror” when looking at her mother.
Which brings us on to Belladonna Albrecht as a mother, an unexpected but very welcome development.
Mother is mothering
“Your daughter is a spirited young woman.”
“I treasure her spirit. I do. If only she could direct it toward more suitable pursuits.”
“I don’t remember your ever concerning yourself with pursuits your parents found suitable.”
“It’s not the same thing at all. My forebears spent a dozen generations tying themselves into progressively more elaborate knots of blood bonds, marital alliances, and debts of honour. If not for the Wars, they might well have succeeded at finding some aristocratic cell to brick me up inside.”
“Impossible.”
“I fought, like everyone else did back then, for the right to shape my destiny. Donnie stands on a foundation I built from skulls. She could do anything.”
“A true grant of freedom,” Elayne said, “must acknowledged the grantee’s right to use their freedom in a manner the grantor did not intend, and of which she disapproves.”
…
“Fine,” said Belladonna Albrecht. “Fine. But: I had to scheme and struggle and strive. She could go farther than ever I could dream.”
“And there it is, in your own words. You had to scheme and struggle and strive. She faces no such obligation. You could not dream of being what she is. That is a marker of your success.”
Belladonna Albrecht Junior, typically ‘Donnie’, is actually more important to the story of Dead Hand Rule than her mother, and believe me I will be writing more about her in future. She’s Elle Woods crossed with Galinda, with a dose of classically Craftswoman sensibility towards death and blood and gore. Truly delightful.
She gives Belladonna Senior further depth to her character generally, and as a Deathless Queen. We haven’t, to my knowledge, seen skeletonised Craftsfolk with children thus far, particularly not the God Wars veterans. Belladonna Albrecht is the first we’ve seen to start a dynasty.
She started late, but evidently that isn’t such a problem for a talented Craftswoman. Belladonna is three years older than Elayne, making her in her late eighties or so in Dead Hand Rule. If Donnie is at the Hidden Schools, that would make her somewhere between seventeen and twenty-four-ish, meaning Belladonna was maybe about 70 at Donnie’s birth.
We don’t hear anything about a partner on the scene. Donnie does reference ‘the moms’ at one point, but given Donnie’s way of speaking, I take that as an affectation for her mother, singular. I’ve heard people say that kind of thing before about mothers (but no other relation, now I think about it…) The door is, I suppose, left open for an additional mother, but I find it unlikely.
Easy for a Craftswoman. Particularly one whose skill appears to be building bodies.
Because, I would argue, Donnie is less Belladonna’s daughter than her clone.
She was not named Belladonna Junior because her mother was so self-centred (apologies to anyone who has named their child after themselves, including much of my family, I think it’s stupid), but because she IS Belladonna Albrecht. It would be ridiculous to give her a different name when she is the same person.
I started thinking this quite early in the book, and shared my theory with friends. They agree that it is likely, and decided they agreed entirely with me when reading this conversation between Belladonna and Elayne:
“Do you trust her?”
The darkness behind Belladonna’s mask shifted. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“She’s not you.”
“Her genetic material says otherwise.”
“She has grown up in a different time. Of course there will be differences.”
Sure, genetic material could mean biological parent, but “she’s not you” “her genetic material says otherwise” sounds like, well, Donnie is Belladonna. They are described as being alarmingly alike to look at, other than Belladonna’s muscles and Donnie favouring the colour pink. Donnie rebels against her mother in the same way Belladonna rebelled against hers; they were shaped by their own circumstance, meaning Donnie has chosen a different path.
Belladonna does parent her clone-daughter, however, in her own unique way.
I believe I quoted this line above, but I like it enough to share again:
“It was fascinating to watch Belladonna parent, because her traditional approach to problem-solving, to wit, overwhelming firepower and/or blood sacrifice, was distinctly unsuited to the task.”
Donnie tries to escape the Hidden Schools before the Conclave, to prevent Belladonna from dragging her along to interminable meetings and speeches. She manages to run away, using a neat bit of magic and the assistance of Sir Gav, Knight of the Plumes, but beforehand is indeed dragged along to said interminable speeches. This is clearly a standard part of her upbringing; at a later formal event, Donnie tells us:
“She had been dragged to so many functions over the years, and at each one her dear Mother had laid out her agenda for the night in bullet points: introduce self to skeleton; do not interrupt monologues about plans evil or otherwise, no matter how questionable their taste; compliment host on catering and decor, ditto.”
I actually think it’s quite sweet. Belladonna is trying to give her daughter what she wishes she herself had been given, and is stretching her deeply lacking interpersonal skills in the attempt. Elayne says she couldn’t lead an army, and you had to be careful which associates you sent to work with her. Her feedback takes the form of bloodsoaked drafts. Yet, Belladonna ignores her instincts, and provides a bullet point list of what she thinks Donnie needs to know before a social occasion. I headcanon that Elayne has done this for her in the past, and Belladonna learned that she does need to play by the rules of the game in social gatherings. She’s offering the same help to her daughter, and doesn’t understand why Donnie can’t just take it.
She does, however, remain classically Belladonna. During a battle, Donnie thinks “no doubt her mother was off having opinions about how her daughter should be taking best advantage of this educational opportunity,” which gives great insight into Belladonna’s mind.
Finally, we know Belladonna is extremely concerned with Donnie’s safety. She’s a controversial figure, so it makes sense that her daughter (slash-younger-version-of-herself) would be a target of malicious schemes. Donnie can look after herself these days, but for Belladonna’s piece of mind, she secured her daughter’s dorm room and person with extra security.
“She could activated the cry-for-help glyph on her left shoulder, which the moms had insisted she receive before heading to the Schools.”
“My dorm room,” she said. “It was close. And secure. Thanks to my mother’s interventionism.”
...
“My mother, bless her heart, made sure my room was fitted out with cutting-edge security. Including stasis wards, in case of high-impact kinetics. Overkill, I thought. But they’ll keep you both safe, for a while, until I get to the bottom of this.”
So sweet. Overkill indeed, but sweet.
(Also, interventionism? Tell me that isn’t deliberately meant to sound like Glinda in Wicked.)
The last we see of Belladonna Albrecht in Dead Hand Rule has her and Elayne battling side by side. They defeat their enemy, right before realising that a skazzerai has descended from the stars. Belladonna presumably took part in the subsequent fight, but we don’t see her. Thus our final reference to her is:
“Thank you, by the way.” Belladonna Albrecht had not led an easy life, before the Wars or since, but her smile always seemed to come from a different world, where they’d met over tea in a garden somewhere, and nothing hurt in a way that wasn’t pretty.
...
“I really was making progress. I wonder what broke—I certainly didn’t hit it hard enough. An overflow of its mirroring process? An exception-handling issue? I would have fixed any glaring loopholes before field deployment.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Elayne said, looking skyward, which in this case meant, in all six directions.
“I appreciate the confidence, and yet—“
“It’s the whole army.”
I adore that description of Belladonna’s smile, and how it contrasts with how we might have previously imagined her. I love even more that she ends the fight by pondering the mechanics of what happened to the construct she was battling (which she had built before it was turned against her). A true scientist, our Belladonna.
I can’t wait to see her again.
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