Ancestors
The main theme of The Sceptre is that when we set out to learn about our roots, we are likely to learn more than we wanted to know, especially about whom we are connected to by bloodlines. Subthemes that readers become aware of include the idea that we not only look like our ancestors, we act like them— we repeat some of their actions and their very words. Our behavior is much like theirs.
History
Other themes in the story have to do with history, with the way we learn, and with women in history. We should never, for example, assume that what historians have supposedly discovered about the past is the ultimate truth; it's merely one layer, a veneer that may contain distortions and even falsehoods. The journey into our past is one we can take only superficially.
History as Cyclical
A recurring idea in The Sceptre is that life may seem to be made up of unrelated episodes, but its various strands eventually come together to form an interrelated whole. Those strands may merge in unexpected ways, which we sometimes consider coincidences. History, The Sceptre shows, is less a series of ups and downs, with a final solution to problems, than it is a cycle that often repeats aspects of itself.
History and Women
Another important subtheme running through The Sceptre demonstrates that women of determination and ability rise above societal restrictions and return to something like the position they held in prehistoric times.
Symbols
Symbols speak to something deep within us. Although as mere conventions they represent something other than themselves, their meaning usually jumps right out at us. We know instantly what the swastika, for example, represents. That is, we know what it represents for us today; in ancient times it bore different meanings.
