Cat entered the palace of Deyaa Solis

John Carter’s intrusion into Dejah Thoris’s apartments in Zodanga converts a private crisis of belief into an open, fatal breach of palace security. Seeking to make Dejah Thoris confirm what he has just heard about her acceptance of Sab Than, he fights past her four guards, only to find that she does not recognize him; the deaths then make escape from the city his immediate necessity.

Causes and Background

After hearing Dejah Thoris apparently give herself to Sab Than, the son of her people’s most hated enemy, John Carter cannot accept that the woman who had recently declared her love for him has forgotten him. Rather than treat what he heard as final, he decides that he must find her apartments and hear the truth from her alone. The urgency is emotional, but his attempt to resolve it requires him to abandon his post and enter an unfamiliar part of the palace.

The route itself compounds the danger. John Carter slips through an opening behind the tapestries into winding corridors that branch in every direction. He hears Dejah Thoris’s voice through a partition but cannot make out her words, and eventually reaches a small antechamber occupied by the four guards who have accompanied her. His desire to reach her has brought him to the threshold of her private rooms, but his presence there has no authorization.

The Confrontation at the Door

When a guard challenges him, John Carter says that he is a member of the Guard and advances toward the door behind which he hears Dejah Thoris speaking. The guard blocks him and explains that anyone coming from Than Kosis must present an order or password. John Carter instead points to the long sword at his side as the authority he intends to rely on. His answer makes the conflict explicit: a demand for official permission meets a personal claim enforced by force.

The guard draws his sword and calls the others to join him. The four men bar John Carter’s way, insisting that he cannot enter the Princess of Helium’s apartments and will be returned under guard to Than Kosis. They order him to surrender, arguing that he cannot overcome four opponents. John Carter answers with a sudden thrust, and the struggle begins.

The guards drive him back against a wall. He works toward a corner, where he can face them only one at a time, and the fight continues for more than twenty minutes. The close quarters shape the action: rather than meet all four at once, he uses the room’s limits to narrow the contest. Dejah Thoris comes to the doorway during the fight, with Sola behind her, but neither woman recognizes him. Her presence brings the scene’s central mismatch into view: John Carter is fighting to reach someone he loves, while the person he seeks sees only an unknown intruder.

The Four Guards and Dejah Thoris’s Response

After the second guard falls, John Carter changes tactics and rushes the remaining two. The third is defeated within seconds, and the last follows moments later. He recognizes the guards as brave and capable fighters and regrets having been forced to kill them. That regret does not alter his resolve: he believes he would sacrifice everything on Barsoom rather than accept that he cannot reach Dejah Thoris.

John Carter sheaths his sword and approaches Dejah Thoris, who remains silent and shows no sign of recognition. She asks who he is and mistakes him for a Zodangan enemy come to trouble her in her misery. The scene therefore ends the immediate fight without achieving the encounter John Carter wanted. He has crossed the guarded threshold, but violence has not restored their recognition or intimacy.

Flight and Consequences

Disheartened, John Carter withdraws from the room. He still refuses to regard Dejah Thoris as lost until the marriage ceremony has taken place, but the four deaths leave him unable to return safely to his post. He is lost again in the palace corridors and concludes that escape from Zodanga is his only hope: the killings will have to be explained, and his aimless wandering will make him suspect once discovered.

He hides behind transparent tapestries in a large guardroom. There he learns that a relief squad has been sent to Dejah Thoris’s apartments; one of its members soon returns to report that the four guards in the antechamber have been found dead. Palace officials investigate the identities of those who entered or left and discuss questioning Dejah Thoris. When darkness falls, John Carter leaves his hiding place, reaches a balcony, climbs over the glass wall, and drops to the avenue beyond the palace grounds. The attempt to reach Dejah Thoris thus ends not in reconciliation but in flight from the consequences of his own intervention.

Significance

The episode turns John Carter’s romantic despair into a practical crisis. His insistence on firsthand confirmation drives him past formal barriers and into lethal action; the immediate result is not access to the truth he seeks, but Dejah Thoris’s failure to recognize him and a new reason for the palace to pursue him. The sequence also binds personal and political conflict together: as he acts for the woman he loves, he is treated as an enemy of the Zodangan court, and the killings leave him with no safe place inside the palace.

Its dramatic force lies in the gap between intention and outcome. John Carter treats the sword as sufficient authority to enter, but the guards’ refusal makes that claim a fight rather than a passage. He wins the physical contest and loses the possibility of remaining undiscovered; he reaches Dejah Thoris and remains a stranger to her. The escape over the palace wall closes the encounter by exchanging the confined corridors for the open avenue, while leaving the misunderstanding and the danger unresolved.