The Shadow King

“Some people are meant to be owners of things. Others, only to set them in their rightful place and clean them. It is a thought she has known but chosen to ignore, hoping that by force she can make herself into something else.”

Hirut believes that stealing Aster’s things proves she is not a servant. When Aster finds the missing necklace and beats Hirut, she is reminded of her place. They are only able to put their personal enmities aside in the shared fight to free Ethiopia and preserve its national identity.

“There is this: her mother told her when it was time, she would know what to do. But there is also this: the cook told her when it was time, there was nothing she could do.”

Mengiste explores the role of morally questionable parental leadership and guidance in perpetuating conflict. Rather than preparing Aster or helping, her mother and the cook betray her by normalizing and coercing her into nonconsensual sex.

“This is Maria Uva’s moment and she is the center of the camera’s gaze, Mussolini’s beam of light casting herself across Africa’s dark borders, ushering men toward greatness.”

Maria Uva becomes the image of Italy’s national identity as a strong colonial power. Who she is personally matters as little as the fact that she is singing, not shouting for war, because the image galvanizes so many Italians to embrace imperialism and nationalism.

“We all know that war destroys mankind, and in spite of their differences in race, creed, and religion, women all across the world despise war because it’s fruit is nothing but destruction.”

While the Empress Menem encourages a restrained role for women in war, Aster prepares for a role as a soldier. When she dresses in the old uniform and salutes, she is challenging this view that gentle discouragement is the only mode of resistance for women in war and history.

“Leo said this: Not many are born when they should be. How I hope this time is meant for you.”

His father’s ambivalent sendoff the day he departs for war plagues Ettore, who finds himself caught between his loyalties, his father’s values, and the morally depraved orders of Fucelli. Faced with morally complex choices, Ettore’s loyalty bends under the influence of the most immediate leader.

“What has she earned more than the rest of us? Who’s doing all the work?”

Mengiste explores the intersectionality of female identities and how it tests their roles in war and conflict. Even in times of war, when gender roles become fluid out of necessity, class divisions persist.

“I have bled when I shouldn’t.”

When Kidane challenges her right to wear a uniform, Aster must prove she is worthy of the role. Though she speaks of his abuse of her and not of war wounds, she asserts that they are equals. However, history does not remember the roles played by women equally.

“What the newspapers and memory have failed to say is that you do not bring hundred thousand men into a country in graceful strides. […] Because one hundred thousand men, have ever ravenous they might be for this beautiful land, can never total the numbers of Ethiopians intent on keeping their country free, regardless of mathematics.”

Mengiste explores the role of history, storytelling, and propaganda in creating national identities or erasing them. Italians holding racist beliefs about their need to colonize and conquer spin stories of easy victories, but if it is only spin, their national identity becomes a lie. By contrast, Ethiopia fights erasure of its national identity and this gives them the edge.

“Ettore has written: Una schiava abissina, an Abyssinian slave, but this is not one of his. He has never been near the cook and Aklilu and Tariku and Seifu at the same time.”

Ettore’s worst crimes are his complicity in using images and stories to erase identities and undermine Ethiopia’s national identity by documenting his photographs’ subjects as “slaves” and “prisoners.” The cook is as important as Aster or Kidane for the role she plays in the war, but with a pencil and a photograph, she is reduced to the role of an enslaved person.

“The cook did not understand that when two are in the wrong, it is sometimes only one who is punished.”

Because she is the servant, the cook must answer for the escape attempt she and Aster made. The Chorus as a device honors her role for the inspiration it gave to Aster and challenges the idea that this role is all the cook will ever be.

“While Hirut jerks and looks up at the sky, Le Ferenj merely grins and shrugs, aware that every threat and each spent bullet is potential for another sale. Neither of them can guess that at that same instant, three siblings—two brothers and their older sister—are marching at gunpoint toward a large boulder they once climbed as children, chased by Italian soldiers through kilometers of familiar terrain only to be caught close to home.”

Mengiste uses moments of simultaneity within the story to characterize war as the sum of many parts and roles working at once, and to show how quickly each role can change from one moment to the next. To depict only one moment denies the moral complexities of war, leadership, and loyalty.

“These aren’t the days to pretend you’re only a wife or a sister or a mother, We’re more than this.”

Aster challenges the women and inspires them to rise above the roles delegated them by society. She inspires them to believe in their ability to make a difference.

“And you let yourself get pushed into this? Haven’t I taught you to question those who want to hide their brutal deeds behind some invisible God?”

Ettore’s personal identities and his need to prove his Italian nationality collide. To survive and prove he is Italian enough to serve, he must forgo the moral rectitude that has shaped him through his father’s advice and ally with Fucelli.

“They imagine this country full of Aidas and desperate kinds willing to leave their people in enemy hands. And he will show them this is a country full of soldiers and leaders who will charge rather than retreat, who will die on their feet rather than bow to save their lives.”

Haile Selassie understands the mistake the Italians make when considering the Ethiopian national character. They have told themselves nothing but stereotypes and lies about the country and its people and it will be their undoing.

“Something is bending her toward obedience, as if she were born only to serve.”

When Kidane assaults her, Hirut is torn between loyalty to herself and obedience to her superiors. Loyalty and obedience are not the same, but Kidane, who has been raised to take women when he wants them, confuses one for the other.

“As soon as the country builds an empire, it has to decide who is who.”

Fucelli believes that the flaw of nationalism and colonialism lies in the way it fragments a national identity by adding new people while attempting to maintain the identity it went to war with. Rome’s obsession with identifying true and false citizens divides the cause and weakens the national identity it is trying to preserve.

“Every visible body is surrounded by light and shade. We move through this world always pulled between the two.”

Leo Navarra uses photography to express truths about the moral complexities inherent in leadership and loyalty. The metaphor of the person or object caught between light and dark and defined by the interplay in the center haunts Ettore, who fears he has strayed too far into the dark by following Fucelli’s orders.

“We must all suffer our consequences.”

Though Leo Navarra speaks of regret that he has not been able to save his second wife and son, the truth applies to each of the major characters. The moral complexities of their leadership and loyalty lead to consequences that will impact their lives, the lives of others, and the outcome of the war itself.

“He understands now why his father had been so angry when he enlisted in the army: Leo knew the true worth of a uniform, had learned long ago how little it really protected.”

Ettore has believed his father disapproved of the war, but finding himself stuck between his personal identity and the national identity of fascist Italy, he realizes his father was afraid of his son’s loyalty to a country that would inevitably reject him. His father knew he would not be able to protect Ettore from a turn against Jewish soldiers.

“We fight other men, but we’re frightened of women.”

Even as prisoners, female warriors Aster and Hirut represent a threat to a long narrative of male order and dominance. Fucelli believes he must create a story that places them back in their subservient roles to restore order. Mengiste suggests through Ettore’s humiliating photo campaign against them that the erasure of women’s roles in war in history is deliberate, not accidental.

“When Kidane’s army leaves, it will crumble and disappear, and it is like this across the country: entire communities erased, sometimes in a day.”

Kidane must give Ethiopia back a symbol of its national identity and pride, and he plans to use Minim to pose as the Emperor. Though it is a lie, Ethiopians must see an embodiment of their national identity to unify and resist.

“What he knows is this: there is no past, there is no ‘what happened,’ there is only the moment that unfolds into the next, dragging everything with it, constantly renewing. Everything is happening at once.”

Ettore has learned that his loyalties and obedience during the war are not separate from who he is now, years later. Though he wants to clear his conscience and make up for his complicity in conquest, his past actions live with him and contextualize every moment of his life.

“We must save our daughters from those dangers of our own making.”

While Mengiste explores the roles women carve for themselves during times of war and conflict, she suggests through language and the interplay of masculine dominance and feminine resistance that war is the ultimate expression of patriarchy and masculine power structures. Haile Selassie recognizes that he and Amonasro, and the patriarchal norms governing the globe, have put women in danger.