Basics: the Clarene (Family)

For the next few weeks, we’ll be delving into the 30 Days of Devotion, a devotional writing project that helps us explore the gods we worship. We will do each of these for each of the Four Gods. If you are an Other Person or exploring the Four Gods, feel free to add your own comments – or join in!

If you have another topic you would like to see written on, you can email me (aine@daoineile.com) or message me on Facebook – but my writing will likely go to one of my other blogs, as we’re focusing on the Otherfaith at this blog for the time being.

Family Connections

With the fifth prompt in the 30 Days of Devotion, we’re asked to reflect on the familial connections of our god. Over on WordPress, I posted about our Holy Houses and faery Courts, our ways of understanding how faeries in the Otherfaith are grouped together. As I wrote there:

Courts describe a faery’s relationship to the large landscape of the West and the Otherfaith, while Houses describe a faery’s relationship to other individual faeries.

A god’s family is considered to be both the Household they run, their parents, and their Court, though Courts tend to be to large to list every member within.

We will be using this information to help us explore the Clarene’s family.

Parents

In the ‘Founding of the West‘, we see the Clarene’s mother – an unnamed faery queen. In her masterpost here on Patheos, I mentioned that she claims to be from Germany and/or France, and in her origins post, it’s stated that she’s from ‘old Faery’, a land full of mists and smokeless fires. So far, we don’t have much information beyond her single mother.

But, as I’ve noted before, that she has only a mother – no other parents – is important. She is from a line of women that create life from within, without the aid of anything external. And the Clarene perpetuates that, crafting life from her skin and bones, and also breaks that expectation. She creates from seeds and soil and blood, not just from herself.

Her mother also plays a role in why the Clarene is a God-King, not a God-Queen. Her mother, being a faery queen, curses the Clarene to never become a queen or to carry her name (Claire Clarice Clarene) – and so our god is referred to not by her full name but as the Clarene and called a King.

Her relationship with her mother is very fractured, but she is the only child the faery queen bore in our mythology, which creates even more tension.

Siblings

As I mentioned in the ‘Holy Houses & Faery Courts’ post, families in the Otherfaith are made through adopted rather than birth. So while her mother had no other children, the Clarene does have siblings.

Firstly, we have the Ophelia, who is also the Clarene’s lover. The two bind themselves as tight as can be: sisters, lovers, adversaries at times. This is why they are referred to as sister-lovers. Their holy powers feed each other and raise each god to greater heights and ecstasy, and the West could not be without the two.

Dallas, a centaur-like spirit, is the Clarene’s brother. Created by the god through blood, gunpower, and a horse heart, Dallas is gifted with the Clarene’s strength and charged with protecting the West from malevolent spirits. He leads another group of spirits created by the Clarene, all centaur-like faeries: the Zeroes. (We also use 0s and Zs as names for this group of faeries.) Dallas is adopted as the Clarene’s brother after being born.

The Black Lion, Horned Lion, and Griffin in ‘on the Orchard-Picker and her creatures‘ are also siblings of the Clarene.

Lovers

Apart from the Ophelia, one of the most prominent lovers of the Clarene is Adilene. Red-haired, milk-skinned, and said to be strong-willed and kind-hearted, Adilene is said to be both buried in the orchard the Clarene tends and to reside in a rose-colored house where she tends to the health of the West and Other People. Like the Clarene, she is disabled, often seen sitting or moving about in a wheelchair. She is one of the few spirits that goes head-to-head with the Laetha, at times almost eradicating him or exiling him from the West entirely. She is often seen beside the Clarene, attending to the duties of caring for the People’s otherworld.

Desiree is another lover of the Clarene’s. A faery associated with mathematics, she is tasked with caring for the health of the trees in the orchard. Her relationship with the Clarene is strained, with Desiree often shying away from the playful and boisterous nature the Clarene brings to her relationships.

Two other spirits, Mora and Moira, are lovers of the god, both residing in her household. They are seen mostly as fashion and textile spirits, creating clothing for the People. Their relationship with the Clarene is often contrasted to Desiree’s, as they enjoy and participate in the boisterous energy the Clarene carries.

the Clarene has a wide variety of faeries and humans she dallies with, including some of the other gods’ lovers. Her preference in lover tends very much toward women or non-binary spirits; her flings with men are much fewer and shorter-lived.

Children

The most notable child of the Clarene is the Laetha, as well as a few of his ‘split’ souls after his original self is shattered. This includes the child-twins Ava and Alma, as well as Aletheia, an android housing part of the Laetha inside eir programming. She often remakes the bodies of the various Laethas, as well as crafting tools to bring the souls together again.

All foxes and black hounds in the Otherfaith are said to be her children as well.

Merryweather & Merrymell are adopted into her Household as well, their speciality as caretakers making them very helpful to the fertile House Hale that the Clarene runs. Through his marriage to Aletheia, Othani becomes a child of the Clarene as well, his already leafy appearance adding more connections to the Clarene. She adopts, as well, Othani’s son, Thiam, and gifts the boy with antler horns and letting her grandson keep the cloven feet his father’s gave him.

Baryl – one of the giant spirits of the Otherfaith, and sibling to Beryl – is also a child of the Clarene. E dwells most often in the wilds around her orchards.

Through Adilene, Althea Altair is technically the Clarene’s granddaughter, but the two have limited interactions. Alynah Blake, the daughter of Althea Altair, however, later joins the Clarene’s faery Court, and Alynah bears many symbols connected to the Clarene.

Previous Posts

Basics: the Clarene (Masterpost)
Basics: the Clarene (Origins)
Basics: the Clarene (Symbols)
Basics: the Clarene (Myths)

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Want to participate in the 30 Days of Devotion? Here’s a great link with all the prompts.

We are holding an Otherfaith discussion group every first Sunday of the month. Click here for more details, and send me a message or leave a comment if you would like to join!

New visitor and a little confused where to start? Head over to our About and Otherfaith pages, and then meander over to the beginning of our ‘basics‘ series. Any questions can be directed to my email aine@daoineile.com.

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