meta: gender, sex, and magic in Prydain

So I have been doing all this reparative/critical work with Prydain. For a while now - and I swear I will finish and post some of it soon. It's interesting turf in terms of sex/gender: on the one hand, so dated in terms of narrative focus, with the male protag getting all the real development and the female protag being just a little Too Perfect - or just being airheaded. But on the other, Lloyd Alexander was always someone who really tried to write inclusively & to have Strong Female Characters, and I know that I found more for myself in Prydain than I did most other places, as a kid.

Prydain does a really good job, imo, separating sex from gender. Gender tends not to matter; sex does. Representation remains as issue - why are there no women in this universe?! but for all that, it does some interesting things with fairly feminist sex/gender politics. Lemme 'splain.

( cut for length, nattering )