“The Checquy is not a family; we are supposed to be a team”

The expression “The Checquy is not a family; we are supposed to be a team” names the Checquy’s ideal of professional loyalty while exposing how far its practices fall short of it. Myfanwy sets the promise of trust against a history in which members are dispatched into danger, their bodies treated as material to be dissected and destroyed, and colleagues can plan one another’s ruin behind the courtesies of a gathering.

The Cost of Service

Myfanwy’s distinction begins with what the Checquy asks of its people. Unlike a family, she argues, it sends its members into dangerous places to face atrocities, knowing they may die in pain and fear. The institution’s service is not sentimental: it accepts mortal risk as part of its work.

Death does not end that institutional claim on the body. Myfanwy describes the remains of older colleagues being dissected, every piece catalogued and destroyed, with no memorial beyond a name in a file. The contrast makes the ideal of teamwork more demanding, not less: the Checquy cannot rely on kinship, but it should still owe its members respect and loyalty.

The Promise of the Estate

The team ideal is presented as a specific promise made to recruits at the Estate. Myfanwy recalls that the organization offers one assurance: within the Checquy, those around a recruit can be trusted. Trust is therefore not merely a personal hope or a feeling of affection; it is part of the institution’s stated compact with the people it trains and deploys.

That assurance also clarifies the difference between belonging and family. The Checquy does not claim the intimacy or protections of kinship. Its proposed bond is practical and collective: members may dislike one another, but they are still expected to respect and remain loyal to one another.

A Promise Broken in Public

At a Court gathering, Myfanwy looks at her comrades while suspecting that one of them is planning to destroy her by taking her memories. The room’s ordinary pleasantries sharpen the betrayal: its members smile and talk about the weather while, as she understands it, a colleague plots against her. The team’s public appearance persists, but its defining promise has become unreliable.

The suspicion is especially immediate because Myfanwy believes the conspirator has the power to take her memories. She considers Farrier a likely candidate because Farrier can enter and alter another person’s mind, but hesitates: Myfanwy has recently helped protect Farrier’s family from enemies by unleashing the Barghests, and believes Farrier owes her. The episode leaves the identity of the plotter unresolved in this moment, while making the gap between professed loyalty and private danger impossible to ignore.

From Institutional Ideal to Accusation

The phrase’s force comes from the difference between the Checquy’s internal ideal and its wider record of violence. In 1677, when Grafter monstrosities invaded the Isle of Wight, the Checquy sent Pawns under the Rooks’ direct command. Three weeks of fighting killed hundreds of civilians; the Checquy’s victories cost dozens of soldiers for each Grafter creation brought down. The organization’s work thus depends on members accepting extraordinary danger in the name of protecting others.

The same history also shows the Checquy acting collectively to end the invasion. After Rook John Perry joined his mind to the invulnerable Grafter general and killed them both, the organization negotiated a treaty under which the Belgian ruler agreed to dissolve the Grafters. Myfanwy’s later appeal to teamwork is not a claim that the Checquy is gentle or harmless. It is a demand that an organization capable of coordinated sacrifice and action honor its own obligation of loyalty among its members.

The Standard Put to the Test

Myfanwy’s formulation is sharpened by the contrast between teamwork as a promise and secrecy as a mandate. When she later confronts Graaf Ernst von Suchtlen, she argues that a war between the Checquy and the Grafters would be difficult to conceal, contrary to the Checquy’s duty to protect in secrecy. Ernst says that the Grafters do not seek invasion; their earlier assault was a feint, and their infiltration was intended to make the Checquy see the advantage of joining the organizations.

Ernst describes his own change in terms that complicate the history of betrayal: after initially wanting to conceal the Grafters’ survival and inflict pain, he says that time led him to forgive the Checquy and recognize its goals as noble, despite its flaws. Yet he also acknowledges continuing the infiltration and establishing collaborators because the Checquy remained wary of the Grafters. Against this history, the team ideal is neither a guarantee that members will never betray one another nor a sentimental claim that the Checquy is a family. It is a standard Myfanwy uses to name what the organization says it owes its people—and to expose the cost when that obligation fails.