Why do women have to be wives? A look at the female characters in Throne of the Crecent Moon

The women in Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon are wonderful additions to the fantasy family. They’re interesting and well developed, and all have their own wants, dreams, strengths, and weaknesses. They’re also not described tit-first, which is a great improvement on George RR Martin’s writings. Yes, I understand –insert female character here- has tits that exist, you don’t need to tell me more about them. The closest we even get to a “tit description” would be in the fact that Zamia has a “boyish body”.

Speaking of the devil, Zamia Banu Laith Badawi is a tribeswoman who lived in the desert. The city-folk see her as a savage, but she sees the city folk as weak and uncaring. You get more than one perspective on her, one of them being her own. Through her mind you see she isn’t a savage barbarian, she’s a normal person influenced by her upbringing, just like everyone else. She’s gifted the first ever female heard of gifted with the lion-shape, which allows her to transform and fight as a lion. There’s also pretty cool moments where she growls as a human, showing that it isn’t just some passive, “oh hey by the way” detail about her, but something that actively influences her and her actions. She’s motivated by REVENGE, the “best” kind of motivation! 

There’s also Litaz, the older alchemist woman. She is from The Soo Republic, and is constantly thinking about it. Just like Zamia’s lion-shape, her homeland isn’t some “hey by the way” character trait to make her seem more rounded out. She dresses in Soo fashion, buys Soo candies, and dreams of going back some day. Her Soo upbringing is something she thinks about constantly, and isn’t in the background for her. Her story is a bit more interesting than Zamia’s—born into the high class, Litaz gave up her inheritance and her homeland in order to become an alchemist. Unlike many of the alchemists in Dhamsawaat, she doesn’t work for coin. She works for the good of the people, and is poorly compensated for it.

While Ahmed does an amazing job with his female characters, there’s one point where they fall flat—marriage. Every single female character introduced so far is either married (Litaz) or constantly thinking about marriage (Zamia and Miri Almoussa) While there’s nothing wrong with Litaz being married, there is something discomforting about watching her think about what it would have been like to marry a different man. Her whole interaction Yaseer left me slightly uncomfortable, especially learning that Yaseer had proposed to her after she had already accepted Dawoud’s proposal. I probably read too much into it, but it made me wonder for a brief moment if she had been cheating on one of them with the other. Probably, she had long broken up with Yaseer, and word of her being engaged caused him to try one last time to get her back. But for a brief moment there, I wondered if that wasn’t the case. There’s not enough context about their relationship at this point to really know what happened between the two of them. The line that concerned me the most, however, was when Litaz’ narrative said “Yaseer was so ridiculously earnest that some part of her did want him.” This is a woman who’s happily married, yet she’s thinking about other men? It just didn’t sit well in my stomach, especially since before this side quest she wasn’t portrayed as a woman who would entertain leaving her husband.

The most egregious example of this “wife first” mentality of the women is with Zamia. Upon her first meeting with Raseed, she’s thinking of being his wife and mother to his children. This is a fifteen year old girl, whose entire family was brutally slaughtered and had their souls eaten. I don’t know about anyone else, but at her age if I had half the things going on she did, I wouldn’t be interested in another man. Certainly not at first sight, like she had. It would be one thing for her to look at him and think “of he’s cute, but I have too much on my plate right now for him so I’m not even gonna entertain the idea.” Instead, she thinks “man I want to have his kids but I need to achieve my REVENGE first”. Although, having her look him straight in the face and tell him that he needed to ask her directly to marry her was pretty funny.

Overall, I think Ahmed does an amazing job with his female characters. I just wish they’d focus a little more on their personal loyalties and motivations than who they’re going to marry next.

-Wright