Molly

Molly had every right to be bitter- Fitz's relationship with her was the textbook example of his failure to connect to the people he cared about through suspicion and self-absortion. In nearly every case in the book he at some point ruins his connection to someone close to him through failure to trust- and Molly, and the promise of happiness that she brings, is at the core of this. She is the complete opposite- desperate to find someone to trust, hoping to find in Fitz an escape from her memories of her father- it is no small coincidence that her final decision to abandon him comes with the curse that he resembles her father in many ways. In the final assasin book, he completes this disconnection with the Lady-on-dragon- who also attempted to keep a part of herself to herself.

As for his closeness to the fool, in many ways this felt to me to be something largely contrived- I really didn't sense a connection between them until the third assasin novel, and even then it was a tenuous thing, certainly not the strong, instinctual bond that existed at the beginning of the fool series. Perhaps this is due to the fool's own sense of disconnection- another lonely traveller with a strong degree of secrecy in his nature. I suspect this is why the two of them ended parting- one cannot make a couple out of two individuals.
 
i agree with that actually. the fool wasn't muchj of a character until the third assassin book, and his love for fitz seemed a bit sudden in reguards to the fact they didn't spend that long together.

but molly, god i hated her. she was so dull. ok she was what fitz wanted, a stable life, kids, security, and she was exactly that, she was the symbol OF that, a woman who just wanted to settle down and squeezed out babies as though it were her career, but as a character she was so dull and uninspired it was hard to care about her or have any hope that fitz would get her. lynn flewelling's bone dolls twin made me actually CARE that the heroine got her man in the end, that he was able to overcome his feelings to have that happeiness, and i think robin should have done a better job with molly. i felt as though robin relied on the, i will say she's a godo character and likeable, and then teh reader will like her, technique, that goodkind did with kahlan/richard/everyone in his books. unfortunatly, it doesn't work like that. just telling us that others like her, won't make ME like her unless there is osmething likeable TO her. i just saw her as a boring kid, then a boring adult. granted, it may have been that all she wanted was a family and kids, and it's hard to make that exciting in a book (not that there's anything wrong with just wanting family and kids, but in a book we get to know people more by their actions than anything else, and if they have none, the way a real person would, it's hard to get any understanding of them)

um rambling on now, but yeah. hated molly (and starling) felt they were forced on us to be likeable and they weren't. and though i think fitz was better off with her than the fool (that would never work) i just wish i could have cared more about her for fitz sake. so that i could feel glad that he was happy, instead of jus tbored.
 
I detested Molly. I really did. Classic, textbook, over-the-top fantasy main-character's love interest.

Hobb tried her best to make her likable, but she was just too boring and in some ways, bitter.

Saying that, I detested the Fool until The Golden Fool.
 
Yes - Molly brought Fitz full circle. The others, even Nighteyes by the very fact that he was a wolf, I believe, were travellers on the way.
 
i guess i fell in love with molly from the moment fitz did as well.. she was the center of his life... all the predictions said that the love of his life wound through and through his life at different times. they met when they were 6, got separated after burrich moved to buckeep at 10, met again when they were 13 at the market, got separated at 16 when fitz thought she was getting married to someone else, met again at 18 when fitz came back from the mountains were together till they were 20. Even through 15 years of separation burrich admitted that he knew she never stopped loving him, and how she used to cry when she looked at nettle sometimes. molly and fitz got together again at 36, finally getting married for real at 40. if that is not true love through thick and thin... through injuries, seperation, threats and death. staying together when they knew their love was doomed. then i dont know what love is. their love was real. she was his first friend, center of his life and his sole motivation for most if not all of the choices he made. i really loved molly. loved their relationship. they deserved to be together.
 
rune said:
We didnt know Molly had ran off with Fitz adoptive father at the time that Kettricken conceived.
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yes we did, verity grants him his request, and in that skill'dream' they see molly giving herself willingly to burrich. in her defense, she believed him death, nonetheless, fitz was believed death for less than a year. wich is rather short, even if she was in difficult circumstances.
 
Every single time I read this topic I am inclined to read that series again from start to finish! God I loved Nighteyes! Favorite fantasy character of all time for me.
 
I also didn't like Molly much. I couldn't believe it when they ended up together in the Tawny Man - evidently I'm not much of a romantic, 'cause I had her definitely pinned down as his first love and assumed he'd move on. Like you, I think their relationship wasn't really based on substance, more on physicality.
 
That is important too, also she was his sanity. (though this is perhaps a bit too strong a word.) He has always admired her, and he wanted a normal life.

I liked that he got back with Molly, much better then some new woman. Just as i liked the fact that he never got to know his mother, even after meetng her as a little boy on the market afterwards.
 
I am really surpised by how many people actually think that Fitz should have ended up with the Fool. There was not a moment in any of the six books where I felt that Fitz felt anything romantic at all for him. He was his "childhood friend" as he called him and was as close to a brother that Fitz had. He loved him, that is for sure but not in the way readers seem to have wanted. I think that Fitz really loved Molly, even though she did drop out of the picture for most of the books.
 
What really bothers me in the relationship between Molly and Fitz, is that Molly was an ordinary woman. Instead Fitz was since his birthday anything but ordinary. I'm disappointed Fitz didn't end with Kettricken.
 
I think it would have made ALOT more sense if Fitz ended up as he started, lonely. The marriages made me want to scream, he should have stayed with dutiful, Chade etc. or travelled with web and swift, or set out on a journey.
 
I was unsatisfied, ultimately, with the ending. Frankly, I didn't see any basis for molly's attachment to fitz. In every situation, she seemed let-down, disgusted, or angry. It was never fleshed out, in the text, what it was that made molly 'love' fitz in any of the grand, sweeping ways that the ending tried to imply. Sure, Fitz loved her, that was crystal clear. There were even good reasons for it, though many of them were just memories of a time gone. But we never saw why molly loved Fitz.

Many have pointed out that her actions spoke more to her need for stability (something she was apparently to provide for Fitz) in seeking out Fitz, marrying Burrich, and then accepting Fitz again. I agree, but how did Fitz provide that for her? Burrich was there, for 15 years, when she needed/wanted someone special. What is Fitz, to that? This is never elaborated.

Many have sought to appeal to some aether realm of love, an abstract yet unshakable bond, to which they finally return to at the end. This, for Fitz, was developed ad nauseum, but for molly? She grieved, certainly, but shortly fell in love with Burrich. She proceeded to build a life, and a rather substantial family, with him. She clearly loved him. The question begs itself: would she have left Burrich for Fitz had Burrich not perished? Would she leave Fitz for Burrich if HE were to return, as Fitz did? I think the answers are clearly 'no' and 'yes', respectively.

I think it makes more sense for her to find the man she wanted, or in Burrich's words, "the better man for her", in Burrich. She had one child by Fitz, in a fit of youthful coupling, but spent fifteen years bearing and raising seven children for the man who stood by her side, and finally gave his life in a noble, and public way, in service to the realm. Why is this not a more compelling love story? Fitz has done so much more, but Molly either doesn't know, or what she does know of, doesn't approve of.

Many have said that this is a touching tribute to the unwaivering devotion, to still retain such a bond after so many years apart and so much hardship. Truth be told, it strains my credulity. Fitz endured hardship, of a sort and scope that beggers anything Molly could have dreamed possible, and yet he allows himself to be strung out to dry by the woman he loves.

That is love, from him, but it is an empty thing.

Why does she love Fitz?

In my opinion, the real tragedy was the end of Assassin's Quest, when the final thread of hope for Fitz and Molly was snipped by the content of that skill vision. It wasn't written as a marriage of convenience, that would have been bearable, perhaps. But what made it so soul-wrenching was the insight it gave Fitz into their expressed feelings towards one another. All other things aside, she loved Burrich. Since Fitz was still alive, while she may not have been aware of it, what the reader felt was the sting of double betrayal. Not just a fling; full on devotion to another man, and his pseudo-father at that.

Any attempts to recover this were, as I suspected after closing the final pages of Assassin's quest and confirmed after closing Fool's Fate, ultimately futile, hollow, and un-fulfilling.

I would have vastly preferred a situation such as in Magician Master, or The Wheel of Time, where as the protagonist grows, he realizes that the childhood sweetheart was only that. That he could never be content with being 'content', he would need someone who understood and accepted him completely. Not just what he was in her mind, but what he has endured, sacrificed, and become. Love, as it is often said, is a two-way street. Any other woman in his life had a deeper connection with him than Molly.
 
I agree with Reerr, it was too unlikely that Fitz and Molly would end up together in the end. It reminds me of what Kettle says in Assassin's Quest, "If you look back on it, you will see there were fully as many quarrels as there were good times." She warns him that Molly was only his childhood sweetheart and that they've outgrown each other. This is true on both counts, Molly and Fitz had very few happy times, they were mostly miserable together, and they'd each come too far to ever go back to what they did have.

This is especially true by the end of the Tawny Man trilogy, it's insulting to the characters and how far they've come to throw them back together again. They weren't even right for each other in the beginning! Fitz never seemed to love her, he loved what she represented to him, which isn't the same thing.

Also, I'd like to add. Jinna said when she first read Fitz's hand in Fool's Errand that he'd had a young love, but that it died when he did. She went on to say that aside from that, he had another love, one that winded its way in and out of his life, and that this love would return to him soon. It's not long afterwards that the Fool shows up at his door. I don't think that Fitz and the Fool could have ever had a sexual love, but Fitz certainly loved him more than anyone else in his life, and he was the only one he trusted as well.
 
Totally agree
Burich and MOly had 20 kids together,
I think that about sums it up, MOVE ON Fitz
Well regardless it was all good until he came over to Moly's room and begged her to take him back, god i couldnt believe what I was reading
But that's just like Fitz character so I guess that would suit him
 
Molly and Fitz was the product of youthful passion and infatuation. Her presence in Fitz's thoughts throughout the series is the link between how damaged/weary he had become and that purer time.

You never forget your first love, and frequently view them through tinted spectacles - almost in love with the context as much as the person.

**SPOILER**

The fact they ended up back together was Robin's gift to the character in my opinion. Molly was such a huge part of the tragedy of Fitz that he could only really "rest" with closure on that subject.

It's the main reason I strongly doubt Robin will ever bring him out of retirement (although I desperately hope she finds a way)
 
I am really surpised by how many people actually think that Fitz should have ended up with the Fool. There was not a moment in any of the six books where I felt that Fitz felt anything romantic at all for him. He was his "childhood friend" as he called him and was as close to a brother that Fitz had. He loved him, that is for sure but not in the way readers seem to have wanted. I think that Fitz really loved Molly, even though she did drop out of the picture for most of the books.
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Also, I'd like to add. Jinna said when she first read Fitz's hand in Fool's Errand that he'd had a young love, but that it died when he did. She went on to say that aside from that, he had another love, one that winded its way in and out of his life, and that this love would return to him soon. It's not long afterwards that the Fool shows up at his door. I don't think that Fitz and the Fool could have ever had a sexual love, but Fitz certainly loved him more than anyone else in his life, and he was the only one he trusted as well.
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With the passage of years, i've come to completely agree with this. The fool not Molly was Fitz his one true love. Even if they where never fysically together.
It's the fool that winds his way in and out of his life. It's the fool he shares everything with. Whereas Molly never really left (skilldreams) and he never really shares everyrhing with, constantly holding himself back. (e.g. among 1001 secrets his band with NightEyes). With Molly he feels content in the believe that he got what he always wanted out of life, with the fool he instinctively feels that life is as it should be. That now that the fool is back he's whole again.
 
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