Lapvona was an entertaining read.
Lapvona is a medieval village with rich dynamics. I’d even go so far as to say that the setting is a character in the story. This is illustrated through the actions of a lord and his priest. Yet the main character in the story is a deformed boy named Marek.
Villiam, lord of Lapvona, and Father Barnabas, the priest, rule over the serfs. There isn’t anything that makes Villiam a natural ruler in his appearance. The rule of his family goes back several generations. Villiam is defined by his greed; a body that consumes many times over a normal person. How does Villiam stay in power? He is completely amoral. He employs bandits to steal harvests, kill. This happens a lot in Lapvona. The serfs only see a powerful lord. They listen to Father Barnabas.
Why don’t the serfs rise up against Villiam? Villiam is able to defend himself. To the North is a strong military power. The Northerners are natural guards, tall and strong, yet subservient. Villiam employs them. Villiam is married to Dibra, a Northerner. It is a political marriage. Lapvonians are producers, they cultivate land, animals. Lapvona is a land of good soil. Northerners are muscle. There is trade.
The bandits are not developed quite as much as a people, but they are significant to Villiam’s line. Marek is the bastard of incestuous bandits and through a bizarre set of circumstances he becomes Villiam’s adopted son. I suspect abnormal family lines, secret children, drive other medieval or village narratives. I’ve read and seen other stories with unclear paternity in different village contexts. Sometimes it’s just a phrase or a suggestion of paternity. Other times it is the crux of the whole story. In Lapvona, paternity seems less important to the story. Villiam is more interested in having a line as a kind of possession, blood or not. In his house, he sees people more as playthings: a son is a role in a skit. A kind of seriousness about family lines is completely lacking in Villiam.
Just to clarify, children and animals, like baby lambs, are important to the story. There are patterns of care and neglect, and these are often shocking and barbarous to a modern sensibility. More normal characters are concerned about their kin, continuing a family line, like Jude, a shepherd.
Long ago, Jude loves Agata, but she is already pregnant and she bears a deformed son, Marek. Jude takes Marek as his adoptive son, but he resents him. Later, Marek becomes Villiam’s son.
Again through some rather bizarre circumstances, Jude becomes a father, but he is unable to be a normal father. It is about a decade since Jude and Agata were together and the baby is Agata’s and Jude’s this time around. Yet since Agata was a nun that fled to Villiam’s residence (and on the way is raped by Jude whose hut lies below the manor), Villiam claims that it is a divine birth in order to create religious tourism.
From this event also, like random raids from bandits discussed earlier, we see that secrecy and credulity are glue keeping the narrative of Lapvona together.