The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy

The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy is the first installment in Brigitte Knightley’s Dearly Beloathed duology. Throughout the novel, Knightley creates a magical world that is loosely based on the United Kingdom and Ireland. She dubs her version the Tīendoms, which consist of 10 small kingdoms (Fortriu, Northumbria, Strathclyde, the Danelaw, Dyfed, Wessex, Kent, Dumnonia, and Īrland) that vie for power. The humans of this world have internal systems that allow them to make use of “seith,” or magic. This force lets them accomplish feats such as using waystones to travel across the leylines throughout the country.

Within the Tīendoms are eight specialized Orders whose members walk either the Bright, the Dusken, or the Dim path. The followers of the Bright Path are the Haelans (healers like Aurienne), the Ingenauts (engineers who integrate seith into their machinery), Leyfarers (navigators who use leylines), and Wardens (paladins who specialize in wards and protection). Followers of the Dusken Path include the Agannors (seith users who can possess others), the Dreors (a near-extinct Order of death-knights), and the Fyrens (shadow-walking assassins, of which Osric is one). Only the Hedgewitches walk the Dim path; their Order is highly secretive because they have endured extreme persecution in the past. Each Order is also typically located in one territory; the Haelans, for instance, are located in the Danelaw, while the Ingenauts hold their seat in Īrland. Only the Fyrens constantly change their headquarters into inconspicuous locations for safety and anonymity.

Once a person has fulfilled their training in their chosen Order, they are given a tācn, a mark on a certain hand. (Bright Path walkers use the right hand, Dusken Path walkers use the left, while Hedgewitches can use either one.) The tācn can be used to better channel a person’s abilities with seith. While the novel frequently references a history of wars among the Orders, all of the Orders are subject to the Peace Accords, which prohibit any attacks by members of one Order members on another. However, the novel’s conclusion implies that these Accords are in jeopardy because Tristane, the warchief of the Fyrens, has accepted a highly lucrative offer to attack the Haelans and prevent them from developing a vaccine against the Platt’s Pox outbreak.

Many humans in the Tīendoms also have an animal familiar, called a deofol, who provides companionship and counsel and can act as a messenger. To facilitate the passing of messages, people can link their tācns so that deofols can directly appear to the linked individuals. However, making this arrangement is considered an intimate act. While a deofol’s shape and appearance can vary, these animal familiars typically manifest in a person’s early childhood, and their names are closely guarded.

While seith has a great many purposes, its use can also lead to medical complications, such as seith emboli and seith rot. In such illnesses, trauma causes the seith channels in a person’s body to degenerate and die. Although there is no known cure for seith rot, Osric and Aurienne agree to treat Osric’s condition, experimenting with a healing path from the Old Ways of using seith. Using a 500-year-old stone whose writings may or may not have been created by fairies, they travel the Tīendoms to reverse the damage to Osric’s system and become embroiled in the political plots of competing kingdoms.