War and Grief in Ruthless Vows: Scars, Mourning, and Healing

The Thematic Claim: Scars That Never Fully Heal

In Ruthless Vows, Rebecca Ross argues that war does not end when the fighting stops. The novel's central claim about war and grief is that loss leaves permanent scars—both visible and invisible—and that healing is not a return to who one was before, but a slow, ongoing process of learning to carry grief forward into new forms of connection. The narrative repeatedly resists the idea of closure, instead showing characters who must learn to live alongside their losses rather than move past them.

Tracing the Theme: Three Movements of Grief

Movement One: The Uncertainty of Loss

The novel opens in the immediate aftermath of the war's most devastating events. Iris Winnow returns to Oath wearing a new trench coat, walking through a city that has been physically and emotionally transformed. Her search for Roman Kitt—sending telegrams to railroad stations, hoping for any word—captures a specific kind of wartime grief: the grief of not knowing. The evidence shows Iris sending a missing person alert describing Roman as a war correspondent with black hair and blue eyes, and receiving no answers. This uncertainty is its own form of mourning, one that the novel treats with particular care.

Marisol's letter to Iris captures this same quality. She writes that her heart felt like it had broken when they drove away without Iris and Roman, and she expresses the wish that they would all find a way to reunite. The letter is a document of hope held against the weight of loss—a reminder that grief in wartime is often experienced as a suspended state, neither fully resolved nor fully abandoned.

Iris's own words in her letter to Roman—that she is becoming a girl made of regrets—reveal how grief twists into self-blame. She catalogues the moments she wishes she could redo: letting go of his hand, failing to recognize her brother in the gas. This is a crucial aspect of the novel's treatment of grief: it is not just sadness but also guilt, the endless replaying of what could have been.

Movement Two: The Bombing of Oath and Communal Loss

The bombing of Oath represents the novel's most concentrated depiction of war's collective devastation. The evidence shows the city's transformation: streets clogged with panicked families, people carrying valises, the southern half of Oath beginning to collapse. Iris watches the exodus and reflects that she hated how familiar this felt, seeing Avalon Bluff every time she closed her eyes. This repetition of trauma—the way war forces survivors to relive earlier losses—is central to the novel's argument about grief's persistence.

The scene of Tobias distributing his childhood wooden cars to the Attwood children during the bombing is a powerful image of how grief and fear are managed in the midst of crisis. He reaches for his old toys—objects of innocence and play—to comfort children who are experiencing war's terror for the first time. His mother's tearful smile suggests that this act of care is itself a form of healing, a way of creating meaning in the face of destruction.

Marisol's realization during the bombing crystallizes the novel's thematic claim. Standing on a hill watching Oath fall, she understands that she had once dreamed of life returning to normal, as if they had never been touched by this storm. But she knows now how naive she was. The evidence states that some scars might fade in time, but others never would. This is the novel's clearest statement of its central argument about war and grief.

The deaths of Forest Winnow and Sarah are the novel's most devastating personal loss. Forest holds Sarah's hand as they run for shelter, and the evidence emphasizes that even then, Forest never let go of her hand. Their bodies are found together, hands entwined, killed by the rubble despite Forest's attempt to shield Sarah. Iris's reaction—that she was broken by what could have been—captures the specific agony of grief for a future that will never exist.

Movement Three: The Long Work of Healing

The novel's final chapters show that healing is possible, but it is neither quick nor complete. Three months after the bombing, Iris returns to the flat to sort belongings before selling it. She finds Forest's leather messenger bag containing a letter—his confession about seeing a doctor for his scars, his pride in his sister. This letter functions as a final gift, a way for Forest to speak to Iris after death. Iris realizes she had been waiting for his words before spreading his ashes.

The scene of Iris spreading Forest's ashes on a hill north of Oath is the novel's most explicit depiction of mourning as an active, deliberate process. She climbs alone with the urn, recognizing the place from a dream Enva showed her. The rain that begins as she returns to the car suggests both tears and cleansing—a natural cycle that continues despite human loss.

One year after the main events, Iris and Roman are together, living a domestic life. Roman drops a note from the upstairs window telling her that new manuscript pages and warm tea await. They are writing together, sharing stories, planning dinner with family and friends. This is not a return to normal—the novel never suggests such a return is possible—but a new kind of life built around and alongside their grief. Iris's note to Roman, which echoes advice from a former rival about continuing to write, suggests that the act of creation is itself a form of healing.

Character and Symbol Connections

The novel connects its treatment of grief to several key symbols. The magical typewriters represent the power of writing to bridge distance and preserve connection. Iris's longing for the Third Alouette—the typewriter that connected her to Roman—shows how objects can carry emotional weight, becoming repositories of memory and hope. The wardrobe doors function as thresholds between worlds, suggesting that grief itself is a kind of passage between what was and what is. The iron keys, particularly the one Enva wears around her neck, represent access to other realms—including the realm of memory and the possibility of moving forward.

Enva's character provides a divine perspective on grief and time. Her prologue reveals that she sang a lullaby over Dacre for a year, keeping him buried for centuries. Her music is both a weapon and a form of mourning—a way of holding grief at bay through song. In the epilogue, she descends into the under realm, sensing soldiers' graves awaiting her music. This suggests that grief is not something to be escaped but something to be tended, a garden of the dead that requires ongoing care.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel complicates its treatment of grief in several ways. First, it shows that grief can coexist with relief and even joy. After Dacre's death, Iris feels hollow rather than celebratory. The evidence shows her wandering through the wreckage, unable to explain why she doesn't feel like celebrating. This emotional contradiction—the way victory and loss can occupy the same moment—is central to the novel's realism.

Second, the novel questions whether healing means forgetting. Roman's recovery in the hospital involves reading the newspaper, learning of his father's trial and imprisonment, and seeing Sarah and Forest's names among the dead. His grief reaction—overturning his breakfast tray, pulling out his IV—shows that healing is not linear. The doctor's words, that they have all lost someone in this war, acknowledge the universality of grief while also suggesting that this universality does not diminish individual pain.

Third, the novel shows that grief can be both individual and communal. The Inkridden Tribune's practice of printing the names of the dead and missing serves a communal function, helping people find each other or at least have closure for their losses. But Iris's grief for Forest is intensely personal, experienced alone on a hill with an urn. The novel holds these two dimensions of grief in tension, refusing to resolve them into a single experience.

Study Questions

1. How does the novel distinguish between the grief of uncertainty and the grief of confirmed loss?

The novel treats these as distinct experiences. Iris's search for Roman in the early chapters—sending telegrams, receiving no answers—represents the grief of not knowing, which is characterized by hope held against fear. The grief of confirmed loss, as when Iris finds Forest and Sarah's bodies, is characterized by a different kind of finality: she is broken by what could have been. The novel suggests that uncertainty grief is sustained by possibility, while confirmed grief must find a way to live with impossibility.

2. What role does writing play in the healing process, according to the novel?

Writing serves multiple functions. For Iris, writing letters to Roman is a way of maintaining connection and processing guilt. For the Tribune, printing names of the dead serves a communal healing function. For Roman, writing stories—and reading Iris's notes in the margins—becomes a shared creative act that builds a future together. The novel suggests that writing is a way of making meaning from loss, of transforming grief into something that can be shared and carried forward.

3. How does the novel use the bombing of Oath to explore the relationship between individual and collective grief?

The bombing scene shows both dimensions simultaneously. Tobias's act of distributing wooden cars to children is an individual response to collective terror. Marisol's realization about scars is personal but occurs while watching the city fall. The Tribune's practice of listing the dead makes individual losses visible to the community. The novel suggests that grief is always both personal and shared, and that healing requires acknowledging both dimensions.

4. What does the novel suggest about the possibility of returning to normal after war?

The novel explicitly rejects this possibility. Marisol's realization that she had been naive to dream of life returning to normal is the clearest statement. The final chapter shows Iris and Roman living a new life, but it is not the life they might have had without war. They carry their losses—Forest, Sarah, Roman's father, the city itself—into their new life. The novel suggests that healing is not about returning to a pre-war state but about building a new life that can hold grief.

5. How does Enva's perspective on grief differ from the mortal characters' perspectives?

Enva's grief is measured in centuries rather than years. She sang a lullaby over Dacre for a year, keeping him buried, and she has watched cities rise and fall. Her grief is more diffuse, less tied to specific events. Yet the epilogue shows her descending into the under realm to tend soldiers' graves with her music, suggesting that even a god's grief requires ongoing attention. The novel uses Enva to suggest that grief is not bounded by a human lifespan but is a permanent feature of existence.