4 ideas
Denying a person a name and identity keeps them in a state of subjugation, because without a name they cannot claim rights, inheritance, or standing in the world. The protagonist is called only 'Asta's son' until his true name is revealed, and that revelation becomes the very thing powerful men want suppressed to protect their own position.
Liberation comes not from escape alone but from acquiring a transferable skill that lets a person earn a place anywhere. The boy gains real autonomy only when Bear teaches him to juggle, play music, and perform — turning him from a fugitive dependent on others into someone with marketable value.
A boy carries a lead cross from his mother bearing words he cannot read, and that illiteracy keeps him blind to his own true identity etched on the very object he holds. The mechanism: a person can possess the proof of their own worth and remain powerless to use it until they gain the literacy to interpret it.
Medieval rigid hierarchy is exposed as a human invention when a serf discovers he is actually nobly born, revealing that the boundary between 'free' and 'bound' was never about inherent worth. Viewing social rank as an enforced fiction rather than a natural order changes who one believes is capable of rising.