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Chapter 7
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Priory of the Orange Tree, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Religion, Faith, and Knowledge
Stories, History, and Truth
Isolationism vs. Global Cooperation
Good vs. Evil
Friendship and Love
Leadership, Power, and Agency
Summary
Analysis
Niclays can’t sleep due to Sulyard’s snoring and the typhoon raging outside. He feels he owes it to Truyde—and to Jannart, her grandfather—to protect Truyde. Back when Jannart was in his early 20s, he asked to paint Niclays’s portrait. They quickly fell in love, though they could never be together. Jannart was an heir to a duchy and Prince Edvart’s friend, while Niclays was a nobody. Niclays aches with grief for Jannart and dozes off. When Niclays wakes up, something is moving in his house—and it’s the Chief Officer. Two soldiers beat Niclays and drag him out of his house in his nightshirt. Panaya stops them, asking for their warrant. But the Chief Officer says that Niclays has been hiding a trespasser. Panaya tells Niclays to say that he didn’t touch Sulyard (and so isn’t infected with the red sickness)—and he’ll be tortured.
Niclays has clearly spent years—even the otherwise happy ones he spent with Jannart—feeling lesser and unimportant. He seems to recognize that the way to move forward from this is to help others, but his ability to help Truyde and Sulyard comes into question when he’s arrested for hiding Sulyard. And as with Sabran, Niclays and Jannart’s backstory also suggests that the powerful people in Niclays’s life, like Jannart and Prince Edvart, were limited in what they could do to pursue their own happiness exactly because they were powerful and had responsibilities to more people than just themselves.
Active
Themes
