By Daria Husni
Is it worth betraying your family to protect your humanity? Or vice versa, is protecting and supporting your family the most important thing in life, even if it means tearing away at the social fabric that allows our world to function? As I started to read The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao, a clear premise emerged: what would happen if your closest family member betrayed everyone you cared about? The premise, at least, was clear–the book opens with the coma-induced main character remembering how her sister murdered her entire family. It seemed obvious at the time that the controlling and counter ideas would also revolve around the sister’s betrayal. But the farther I got into the story, I realized it was so much more than a murder mystery. At the heart of The Majesties is the struggle between two sisters–whether to choose the secure but stifling control of the family or the risky but liberated freedom of an independent life. And in the final act of the story, when darker truths begin to surface, the real core of the story emerges, one that throws into question everything the audience thought they knew.
The Majesties is a story of two sisters–Estella, who obeys their family and clings to the security they provide, and Gwendolyn, who pursues her own goals in life and resents the control her family has over her sister and herself. The story revolves around Gwendolyn going through her memories and trying to piece together why her sister would murder all of them. She recalls her sister’s abusive marriage–a relationship encouraged and allowed by both families–and her own struggle at being ripped away from someone she was so close to. She remembers how her family exploited the poorer class to stay on top, and how her sister’s husband began to see the truth of how evil he and his family had become. She remembers how her sister was ordered to murder her husband to prevent him from revealing how twisted their wealthy families truly were. And she remembers the trip she and her sister took, to find their long-lost aunt, and the horrific truths that trip revealed.
This is a difficult book to dissect for this kind of assignment. Nearly the entire story is told through flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, so the reader is forced to slowly gain context for the murder that takes place on the first few pages. Because of that it was easy for me to get lost in the narrative of the sisters–of security vs freedom, of loyalty vs self actualization. The brilliance of The Majesties can be observed in my own reading of it, because even before I started the book I knew the twist at the end. And yet, I let myself be drawn in, let myself ignore what I knew was coming. It was easy to lose myself in the narrative and forget the truth at the core of the story.
This truth is simply that the sisters are the same person. And the true narrative of the book–that of truth vs lies–was ironically hidden to me in the same way that the main character spends so much of the book hiding from the truth. Gwendolyn–or rather, Estella–fabricated a separate version of herself to keep the truth at bay. She created an ideal version of herself–the one who finished college, who pursued her dreams and started a successful company, who was able to escape the control of her family. And she kept that lie going and going, until she couldn’t hide from it any longer.
It was in reexamining the climax of the story that I was able to finally find the story’s controlling and counter ideas. In Story Robert McKee writes that “the Controlling Idea has two components: Value plus Cause. It identifies the positive or negative charge of the story’s critical value at the last act’s climax, and it identifies the chief reason that this value has changed to its final state (McKee, 115).” In the climax of The Majesties, Estella and Gwendolyn find the truth behind why Tante Sandra fled the family. Near the end of her story a horrifying truth is revealed–their Oma, their grandmother, wasn’t the kind and innocent woman they all believed her to be. When Sandra tearfully told her mother about the family threatening and beating an impoverished friend of hers, her mother told her “Don’t cry my darling. I asked your father to take care of it. That boy won’t bother you again (Tsao, 230.)” Oma had ordered a hit on her daughter’s friend. Their beloved grandmother was just as twisted and evil as everyone else, and just as caught up in the web of deceit and treachery. This is the moment when Estella decides to murder their family, and it sets off a chain reaction of uncovered truths that ultimately leads to Estella forcing Gwendolyn to remember that they are the same person.
The controlling idea of The Majesties is that remembering the truth will destroy yourself, therefore you should do everything you can to protect the lies you and your family have built. This is Gwendolyn’s crutch, and the one that wins in the end. Even after she realizes that she is really Estella, she still sees them as separate people, and refuses to give up the sense of self that she’s built. “I’m part of Estella,” Gwendolyn says in the coda. “Yet she’s dead, and I remain–as do certain memories that refuse to be accounted for, that bear stubborn testament to my life as my own (Tsao, 251).” She recounts all of Gwendolyn’s memories, the memories that she’s created, that are too strong for her to let go of. “You understand, then, why I find it so difficult to accept the truth of my circumstances. I’m Gwendolyn. I have to be (253).” The story ends with Gwendolyn slipping happily into sleep, the doctors ready to pull the plug, forgetting all that she’s recounted to us. “It’s Estella . . . She looks so serene, I don’t think she remembers anything of what has passed, what she has done. And in these dreams, I too forget (254).”
The counter idea of The Majesties belongs to Estella, and to Leonard, and to their aunt Sandra, and to everyone who tries to bring the truth to light. They believe that lies and deception will ultimately bring destruction on the world and themselves in it, and bringing the truth to light will ultimately bring peace and freedom. Their attempts to reveal the truth are peppered throughout the narrative. It starts with Estella’s discovery of a photograph of her aunt, dated several years after she should have died. Then there are little inconsistencies–Estella is stated to be older than Gwendolyn, and yet they are in the same grade at school, and they go off to college at the same time. She has supposedly never visited Gwendolyn’s company, yet she magically knows the way through their laboratory. Then it is a reformed and unhinged Leonard, declaring he will go to the press and expose their family, and his murder by his wife to keep their family secrets hidden. Then it is their aunt’s revelation on the depths of their family’s cruelty. Finally it is Estella’s reveal that Gwendolyn doesn’t exist.
When Estella finally confronts Gwendolyn with the truth of their shared identity, it is right before they poison their family. “I don’t blame us Doll,” she said. “It’s not our fault we’re rotten–no more than being infected is the fault of these poor silkworms you experiment on. That’s just the way it is. Attribute it to whatever you want: sin, environment, upbringing, culture. But the fact that we hide it from ourselves, that’s what makes it really tragic. Not to mention dangerous. And that’s the real reason we need to be stopped (Tsao, 245).” To Estella, the greatest sin her family commits is the sin of deception–not just to the outside world, not just to each other, but to themselves. It is a sin that she is forcing Gwendolyn to face; she wants Gwendolyn to see that she is lying to herself about her life. That she has been Estella all along.
By destroying the liars Estella believed she was putting an end to their lies, but she also failed her own narrative. When the liars died the truth wasn’t set free, not really. It simply died with them. There is no realization of wrongs nor need to face hard truths in death. It was, in a horrific sort of way, kinder for Estella to have killed her family than expose them. As Gwendolyn stares at the reflection of her sister in the mirror–a reflection of herself, I wonder if she knows this deep down. Her family will never have to face the consequences of their actions, or the scorn from those they have wronged. Like Gwendolyn they can simply drift away, forgetting all of their sins. Dreaming up their own realities, forever.
All You Read is Love 
Daria, I really enjoyed reading this and seeing the controlling and counter idea through your eyes. I especially liked what you said about how by destroying the family, Estella failed at bringing their secrets to light. Part of me wonders if perhaps her drive to protect her family somehow motivated that action as well; maybe Estella couldn’t bear to reveal the truth because in some twisted way the family still held its grip on her. One thing I loved about this story was how, in a way, Estella became just like Leonard. Towards the end of his life he was crazed about the family’s sinful lives and wished to absolve them somehow. Throughout the book Estella takes on similar traits, becoming obsessed with some misguided idea of “redemption.” It almost seemed like she wanted to atone for her role in killing Leonard by carrying out his zealous mission, although as you said she ultimately fails. I guess she believed simply escaping the family, like Tante Sandra, would never be enough and that the only way to redeem them is to create a tragedy that likely would immortalize them in the public eye while also putting a stop to their corruption and dishonesty.
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I wanted to touch on the concept that you bring up in the third paragraph of this blog post. Although it seems clear to me that this story was told in the form of flashbacks, I wanted to note that the story itself feels as though it is happening as it is being told. I think this pulls on what you had said previously about being drawn into the plot so intensely that you forget what is bound to happen by the end of the story. I also wanted to expand on the narratives of the two sisters, Gwendolyn and Estella. In regard to security versus freedom, it is easy for the reader to distinguish which sister represents which of these values. While Estella finds herself restrained to the idea of family, always keeping quiet when it comes to judgement of the family, it is clear that this is not how Gwendolyn sees things. In direct opposition of her sister’s ideals, Gwendolyn sought out freedom from her familial ties. Although she still stays tied to the family in some ways, only because of her sister, Estella, she has completely separated her work life from the family’s tycoon tendencies.
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Over the course of The Majesties, the biases that I carried into it were towards Gwendolyn and Estella. Estella was dependent on her family while Gwendolyn was not, yet I felt for both of them as they struggled through the hardships of a cold family and abusive relationships. But once I ended the story, I no longer felt biased towards anyone. Gwendolyn does not exist, Estella killed Leonard in order to keep up her family’s image, and the family was never redeemed because they were all killed. I entered the narrative with the assumption that Gwendolyn was going to survive the poisoning and bring her family’s secrets to light. It was one of those expectations that follow up with a happy ending. Unfortunately, there was no happy ending because again, Gwendolyn never existed, and the plug was finally pulled on Estella.
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