Warning: The following contains spoilers for Welcome to the World: Return to the World.

I’ve commented before how my protagonists tend to be less and less good as people as I’ve progressed in my writing career. There’s a line I haven’t crossed until now, but that line gets crossed in RttW. Let’s be blunt about it. One of the first things the main character does when he returns to the World is rape a young woman. The natural question is, “Why would you do this?” It’s not for any prurient interests, not for myself and not for the audience. It’s not some gimmick to draw people in. If anything, it’s going to be almost impossible for me to garner any sympathy for Pawel. It’s not a gamble you want to take with your protagonist, so why risk it? Well, let’s talk about that.

One of my inspirations was Westworld. I was intrigued by the idea of people’s moral code breaking down in an environment where they can let go of their inhibitions with little or no consequences. Also, consider the sort of cruelty players can engage in when they play video games, or even the random, thoughtless acts of cruelty in real life you see from children (or older folks who never developed a functioning superego). I wanted to explore the psychology behind this in the WttW series. The World in the WttW series summons children between the ages of 10 and 12. Mentally and physically, they are not yet fully formed, putty in the hands of whatever force guides the Game. It is quickly established that Players are a different breed, essentially demigods. It doesn’t take much for power to go to your head and bad things follow when that happens. Mix in a cruel world that gives you little choice but to fight and kill to survive with odds quite heavily stacked against you and it’s a recipe for some very broken people who will perpetuate the cycle of abuse.

At this early point in the story, I’ve only begun to hint at Pawel’s own experience and the nature of the World. I’m not excusing him in the slightest, but he is a thoroughly damaged individual whose tenuous sense of restraint didn’t hold up when presented with a convenient outlet for a variety of pent-up frustrations. If it’s any comfort to the more delicate reader, there will be log-lasting consequences for this lapse. This only scratches the surface of the ugliness of the World, but I’m not here to fetishize that ugliness. I want to dig into how characters face that ugliness, when they’re strong and when they’re weak. Will I succeed in crafting a compelling narrative in the process? We’ll see.

Anyway, I’m not the one who decides whether or not this little experiment works out. That’s for you, the reader. I may well have to have another one of these chats before things are all said and done. Stay tuned.

Sturla gets his origin in the same dream that served at the basis for Chapter 1 of CeleKing2. It gave me his basic settings as a superficial charmer and clever manipulator whose overwhelming confidence was backed by genuine skill. For his appearance, I draw inspiration from Prince Zorzal of the anime GATE, but the resemblance ends there. Now, I can’t remember if it was a sleeping dream or a daydream that gave me Yasuko’s confrontation with Sturla at the end of CeleKing2, but this gave me a midpoint in the overall narrative and so I had to fill in the blanks.

Let’s start with his personal history. He’s the son of Lord Grima Markusson and Princess Yingli, the elder sister of Crown Prince Wupeng. As his mother has a higher status than his father, he uses her name, though she wasn’t much of an influence on his life. While his father was an effective politician, it’s not enough to explain how Sturla turned out the way he did. He had looks, physical prowess, a keen intellect, and the utter ruthlessness to achieve his goals. It was at a young age that he set his sights on the throne and began laying the groundwork right away. He began making contacts both in the public sphere and in the underworld, which served him well when he worked his way into the ranks of the Capital Police. His position in the Capital Police afforded him full access to the apparatus of the surveillance state, which allowed him to not only cover his own tracks but also to build up plenty of blackmail material to wrap the nobility around his little finger. Everything was coming together nicely when a convenient pawn presented herself. Yasuko’s infiltration of the Capital provided him an opportunity to move his timetable forward. Although she proved to be difficult to handle, she did ultimately pave his way to the throne. From there, he was going to smash the Empire’s stasis, subdue the surface and then expand beyond Erdi. Of course, the stasis existed because the founders of the Empire were trying to escape the notice of the New Earth Empire and keep both the Celestials and Infernals occupied, so if the New Earth Empire hadn’t shown up when it did, it would’ve just been a matter of time.

I brought up the themes of sexuality during my coverage of Yasuko and Sturla factored heavily into that. With Sturla I was looking to portray animal magnetism and unrestrained hedonism. He cares only about satisfying his own lusts but he doesn’t let them rule over him. He denies himself no pleasure except when it will interfere with the greater pleasure of fulfilling his ambitions. This mix of indulgence and self-control makes for an intriguing dichotomy. As we primarily see this in his relationship with Yasuko, we’ll talk more about it there.

Let’s look at a few of the major relationships in Sturla’s life and what they show us about his character.

1. We see the most of Sturla through his interactions with Yasuko. From the moment she infiltrated the Capital, she caught his interest. A wild Infernal in the Capital certainly would. He kept a close eye on her, so that when she was invited to entertain the Emperor, he was prepared to respond when she killed him. Likely even if she hadn’t done the job herself, he would’ve stepped in and things would proceed much the same way, though he probably wouldn’t have had as much confidence to turn her into an assassin. Anyway, the more he got to know Yasuko, the more he became fixated on her. Her resistance to his will, her relative prudishness when it came to sex, these drew him to her all the more strongly. He wanted to break her, make her yield to him, though if she actually had given into him, he would have quickly tired of her. His decision to cut her loose after the assassination of Prince Wusheng was an example of him denying smaller pleasures for the sake of his ambition. However, once he found out Yasuko managed to survive, his obsession with her became all the stronger, likely tying into his downfall. My father always warns villains not to play with their food, and this is another example of why he says that.

2. Compared to her daughter, Masako didn’t nearly manage to capture Sturla’s interest. Theirs was a wholly political arrangement. Sturla, like Masako, was the child of an Imperial princess married to a lord of minority descent and so was in a poor position for his ambitions. Marrying into a comital house wouldn’t normally be the most advantageous pairing, but House Suzuki enjoyed residual prestige carrying over from Lord Kunihiko, and the connection to Princess Feifang was also beneficial. Once Masako delivered a legitimate heir for him, she had served her purpose. He only did a little experimentation with exploring her boundaries but did not find much promise, so he didn’t make her a project like he was doing with Yasuko. As a result, their relationship is distant and impersonal, like so many political marriages. Perhaps if he didn’t have so many alternative outlets, Masako would have had to put up with more from him, so his inattentiveness after Snorri’s birth was surely a blessing.

3. Sturla was always looking to test his boundaries in all fronts, and on the martial front, who better than one of the most celebrated swordsmen of the Imperial Guard? That would be enough, but the fact that Batista is the first husband of his wife, it brings out the sadistic side of him. Sturla knew he could use Batista’s pride and jealousy against him, but to Batista’s credit, his commitment to his duty reined him in. The fact that Sturla was busy at work corrupting Batista’s daughter added to the interest he took in the swordmaster. You might think the honors Sturla heaped on Batista were insincere, but there was genuine respect there, even if Batista was seen as a pawn, just as Sturla saw everyone around him. Still, that sadistic side of Sturla was definitely at work when he pitted Batista against Yasuko, so it was fitting that it got turned against him in the end.

I’ve said on other occasions that I enjoy writing villains and Sturla was definitely fun to write, especially when he was bantering with Yasuko. I almost wish I could’ve seen what might’ve happened if he had a little more time to pursue his grander ambitions. I consider him one of my more stand-out villains and I hope the readers agree. And with that, I don’t know who I’ll cover next, but I may do a different kind of commentary post next time instead of a Character Spotlight. Stay tuned.

Today we’ll be looking at Lady Masako, the third member of our less than happy little family from the CeleKing series. Masako’s origins lie with the original concept that would be fleshed out to form the basis of Erdi society. You have Celestials above and Infernals below, but then a Celestial is cast down. What then? I was starting to develop the idea of the Imperial court and its intrigues, which made for an easy setup. We take a militarily accomplished and politically influential nobleman (married to an Imperial princess, no less) from a hated minority group and the plot practically writes itself. From his limited screentime, we see Masako’s father Lord Kunihiko as a reserved sort of parent who only grants his daughter an indulgence like a portion of his beloved bonsai garden as a reward for having proven herself discerning enough to be a worthy steward of it, not as a free gift. Unfortunately, the story didn’t lend itself to featuring Masako’s mother, Princess Feifang, but you can get some idea of the sort of parent she was based on how Masako herself acts as a mother in Volumes 2 and 3. Masako was raised to be stoic and duty-bound, but due to her age and circumstances in Volume 1, we see more of a different side of her. She is very much a sheltered 17-year-old girl who is ill-equipped for the situation she finds herself in. Her pride is her shield, but that shield isn’t enough to protect her. For much of Volume 1, there is very little she can do but rely on Batista, but we she her start to rise to the challenge as Batista finds himself unable to shoulder all of the load by himself. The experience changes her, of course. She learns a little humility and gains a bit of grit as she spends time among the people she never paid a second thought to in her years at the Capital and Liuyiyuan. Then there’s the matter of the love that blooms between her and Batista, which shapes her fate for good and for ill in the years to follow. Let’s look at a few of the most significant relationships in her life and how they affect her.

1. From the start, Batista had a knock for drawing out conflicting emotions in Masako. She was of course grateful to him for saving her and dependent on him for protecting her afterward, but a rough man like him who pays little heed for rank flew in the face of all her social conditioning. Because she couldn’t play the role of the spoiled, pampered princess around him, she had to toughen up sooner than she would have otherwise. Their initially belligerent relationship giving way to romance is pretty common, but in light of how she would act later in life makes it a bit ironic that she was willing to forsake her duty and responsibilities to be with him. As you know, they eventually came to the compromise of him becoming her knight, allowing for a less disadvantageous marriage, yet one that still would have led to the extinction of the main line of House Suzuki as far as the norms of the court were concerned. The birth of Yasuko brought them closer still, but it was after the assassination attempt that drove Batista to place Yasuko in the care of Tío Jorge that their relationship broke. It could not be help as Batista was reassigned to the Expeditionary Forces and both of their efforts to remain in touch with each other were blocked. Physical separation led to emotional separation and even when Batista was allowed to return to the Capital, they had precious few opportunities to reconnect. Had they been allowed more than a handful of meetings, they might have managed something, but Batista’s jealousy over her marriage to Prince Sturla and longstanding arguments would have made it difficult. In the end, though, he was the man she loved first and best, so his loss hit her the hardest.

2. Next up is Yasuko. It might have been interesting to have seen a few episodes of Masako as a mother to Yasuko when she was younger. I see Masako as having been more of a doting mother than her own mother was, not being so cold and distant as you see when mother and daughter are reunited. It was actually a fine bit of acting on Masako’s part, but suppressing the emotions welling up inside of her was hard on her. She had to fall back on the example of her own mother for Yasuko’s protection. Although she did not have a complete grasp on Yasuko’s plot against the Celestials, she knew that it was imperative for her to mask Yasuko’s Infernal side and get her integrated into Celestial society as soon as possible. Things moved too quickly after that for her to ever get close to her daughter, though you do have the one episode in Volume 2 after Yasuko’s fight with Hongxia, which is the one scene of intimacy they were granted. While Masako wanted Yasuko to be happy, she wanted her to be safe first, and if that meant sacrificing a close relationship with her daughter, it was a price she was willing to pay. Now, it was bad enough that Masako thought she lost her daughter once, but the second time nearly did her in, hence her somewhat desperate ploy to impregnate herself with a clone of Yasuko, knowing that it wouldn’t be the same person. It was her clumsy way of trying to do it right the second time. Then you have Yasuko come back from the dead as a traitor to all Erdi with the blood of not only Sturla but also Batista on her hands. While Yasuko dismissed any possibility of mending the relationship with her mother after what she had done, she was selling her mother short. Masako wouldn’t easily overcome the gulf that had opened up between them, but I believe she would have tried. However, since Yasuko went off on her own, Masako made the painful decision to stay away, thinking she was respecting Yasuko’s wishes. Ultimately, it was a case of mother and daughter thinking on similar terms, that one wouldn’t forgive the other and so neither one tried to patch things up. It’s a shame, but Yasuko rejected the possibility of any healthy relationships, considering herself unworthy of them, and Masako couldn’t muster the force of will to drag her back kicking and screaming if she had to to show her otherwise.

3. Prince Sturla came along at a time when Masako was at her most vulnerable since the death of her father. Although she didn’t flaunt her marriage to an Infernal, it was widely known and normally no one of Sturla’s standing would consider such a match, but once he made it clear that his offer of marriage was genuine, she made what she thought was the best move for herself and her family. Her original idea in marrying Sturla was that it would give her the security to call Yasuko back from the surface, but by that time, Tío Jorge had been killed and Yasuko had begun her wanderings. If you look at how Sturla treated Yasuko, you might think Masako went through something similar, but that wasn’t really the case. We’ll be covering his perspective on their marriage later, but after an initial phase of testing the waters a bit, Sturla became a rather distant husband. Theirs was a political marriage, so Masako wasn’t expecting much more than that. As she intimated to Yasuko, she found him charming and physically attractive yet emotionally unfulfilling. However, she was raised to regard marriage as a duty, so it only took her a little time to adjust her mindset away from the aberration that was her marriage to Batista. She knew Sturla was using her for his own ends, so she did so in turn, focusing her attention on raising their son to meet his potential.

4. Speaking of Masako and Sturla’s son, Snorri was doted on even more than Yasuko when she was young. Part of it is the “little emperor syndrome” and part of it was Masako overcompensating for the loss of Batista and Yasuko and the emotional distance between her and Sturla. Fortunately, Snorri was quite unlike his father in terms of personality and wasn’t on track to become a little Joffrey Baratheon, though you could easily see him going down that route. He’s a case of being spoiled sweet instead of spoiled rotten. As you might imagine, he became quite the mama’s boy as a result. Masako rightly feared him being corrupted by his father, but it was a small mercy on Sturla’s part that he allowed Masako the time to spoil their child and Snorri the time to be spoiled until he was to be shaped into Sturla’s proper heir. We may visit this in a later story, but Snorri would grow up devoted to Masako and supporting her amid her bereavement and the challenges of adjusting to the new authority in the Empire. He actually becomes a doctor, and him turning out as such a decent person is almost entirely due to Masako’s influence. Even more so after the fall of their Empire, Masako focuses on not making the same mistakes with Snorri that she made with Yasuko and the two of them enjoy a much healthier relationship for it. Being freed of the expectations of becoming the next Emperor removes a massive load from both their shoulders and gives her the opportunity to be just a mother.

Since I’ve given you a peek into Snorri’s future, I’ll tell you a bit about what happens to Masako as well. Of course she has to renounce her title as Empress and Countess of House Suzuki when the New Earth Empire takes control of Erdi, but she does manage to secure a place in the transitional authority, which secures a role for her in planetary politics. Much as she had done at other points in her life, she takes the option she sees as best for her family, and indeed her cooperation is what keeps herself, Snorri and Eiko (the clone of Yasuko she gives birth to after the events of CeleKing3) from being purged as threats to the new order. It’s ironic that Yasuko allows herself to be reviled by her fellow paisanos for collaborating with the Empire when she rejected the benefits of doing so, while Masako, for all her pride, takes what she can get, but Masako’s pragmatism is one thing her daughter never inherited. Think what you will of her, but Masako always seeks to play the field to her advantage, which is what you had to do to survive in Celestial society. As much of a survivor as Yasuko was, her own pride consistently made her life more difficult for her. Sometimes the apple does fall far from the tree.

Anyway, that will do it for our look at Masako. Next time, we’ll be turning our attention to Prince Sturla. Stay tuned.

Yasuko got her start in a dream, what would become Chapter 1 of CeleKing2. I had this clear image of this young woman’s daring infiltration of an orbital facility via space elevator (which I had mistakenly identified as a skyhook before further research revealed the difference). I knew she was there for revenge, but the why and how had to be developed later. I believe I developed the trigger for her revenge plot before I had considered establishing Tío Jorge’s role in CeleKing1. The dream had identified her as the daughter of a common-born Imperial Guard (Batista) and a noblewoman (Masako), so when came to explaining why she was down on the service, being put in the care of her father’s extended family seemed like a natural choice. From there, abuse by the ruling Celestials leading to the death of one or both adoptive parents made for an easy justification for revenge. In other words, it didn’t take much effort to sort out the pieces provided to me by my subconscious, so with that out of the way, let’s review the character by the numbers.

Yasuko’s name (寧子) is in honor of Lord Ninghe, who helped Batista and Masako in CeleKing1. (You see the same characters read as “Neko” for the lead female in Brynhildr in the Darkness, but for those of you who are unaware, there are multiple readings for characters in personal names.) The child of a Celestial and an Infernal, she was in an awkward position from birth, ineligible to succeed her mother as head of House Suzuki barring a special dispensation from the Emperor. Although Batista had been knighted when he was inducted into the Imperial Guard, the fact that he was an Infernal would have haunted Yasuko had she been raised in the Capital. In a way, the assassination attempt that resulted her being put in Tío Jorge and Tía Nayeli’s care was ultimately to her benefit. It didn’t last long, but the time she had with Tío Jorge and Tía Nayeli was probably the best of her life. Even after Tía Nayeli died of tuberculosis, Tío Jorge did a pretty good job of taking care of her until he was killed. Now, the choice between being despised in the Capital and the hard-scrabble life she lived after Tío Jorge’s death is less clear. At very least, the experience toughened her up, both mentally and physically, which would prove essential to her survival, but it also fed her more self-destructive tendencies. For six years she did whatever it took to survive, relying on the kindness of strangers when she could but never setting down roots or making any real attachments. She studied ways to fight, learned what she could in various fields to help her put her plan for revenge into action. However, Yasuko is more of a tactical thinker than a strategic one. She can be rather clever in the pursuit of short-term goals yet blind when it comes to seeing the bigger picture. You see this in her occasional reflective moments when she thinks about how she never clearly sorted out the details of how she intended to exact her revenge and to what extent. This gets exploited by Sturla, who uses her impulsiveness to bring her under his power. Though she isn’t without moral sense, it’s been warped by her experiences and her lust for revenge. I can imagine she garners little sympathy with some readers because of this, but that’s partially by design. She is at least fairly self-aware of her shortcomings, not that the sting of her conscience is enough to stop her in most cases.

One point which may be controversial is how much Yasuko’s sexuality factors into her character. She definitely stands out compared to pretty much any other character of mine in that regard. Her age puts her at a stage of development where she isn’t fully matured mentally or physically, which opens up a lot of confusion that is exacerbated by Sturla and how he uses her. The perversity of Celestial society heightens this further. Because of her single-mindedness, Yasuko never really worked to sort out the issues related to establishing her sexual identity, shunning intimacy in all forms in favor of pursuing her goals. This left her extremely vulnerable to someone like Sturla, who uses sex as one of his many weapons. To this end, there are four particular relationships that highlight Yasuko’s struggles.

1. Prince Sturla is bundle of physical and psychological abuse, but as much as he’s basically everything Yasuko hates about the Celestials, she can’t deny her attraction to him. I wanted to explore the concept of physical attraction in spite of whatever a person might think rationally. Of course Yasuko had to deal with the occasional would-be predator during her years on the streets, but she had never been the focus of such concentrated attention in such an (unwantedly) appealing package. The fact that he can so thoroughly dominate her physically adds to that paradoxical appeal. There is an unconscious part of her that seeks submission, which is sharply at odds with her fiercely independent and rebellious personality. A part of her knows this and it only adds to her anger. Now, if you think this undermines Yasuko’s strength as a character, that’s your call, but we have a number of impulses and unconscious drives and what matters most is how we consciously deal with them. In the end, it isn’t the unconscious impulses but the conscious will that drives her to her final confrontation with Sturla. Even though she needed her father’s help to overcome Sturla physically, I would say that she had already won the psychological battle with him. Do with that what you will.

2. Hongxia is in some ways an extension of Sturla’s abuse, but her rivalry with Yasuko puts her in her own category. Compared to the inexperienced and uncertain Yasuko, Hongxia is fully couched in her sexuality and its use as a weapon. She has the task of instructing Yasuko in the tools of her trade, but there isn’t the slightest trace of an amiable master-apprentice relationship. Yasuko’s unwillingness to do what’s demanded of her, her defiance, and Sturla’s interest in her all fuel Hongxia’s anger and jealousy. Yasuko’s prudishness is seen as a slap in the face to the courtesan’s open sexuality and her refusal to submit is an affront to her supposed position of authority over her. As Hongxia takes special pride in being one of the few partners able to keep pace with Sturla in the bedroom, the last thing she wants to do is train up a potential replacement. With such a twisted knot of a relationship, it’s little wonder how messily it ended. (Certainly there’s plenty that can be read into their fight.)

3. Yoon-hee is a more positive example but still tainted by the corruption around Yasuko. As noted before, Yasuko eschewed all forms of intimacy during her years of wandering, so the closeness afforded by a personal attendant was something quite alien to Yasuko. The one time Yasuko put the moves on her was more about her finding an unhealthy outlet for her frustrations than anything else. I’ll leave it to the audience to debate whether Yoon-hee is evidence of Yasuko being bisexual, bicurious, or simply in a romantic friendship. The waters are deliberately left muddy. Of course, whatever Yasuko’s feelings, the power imbalance casts a bit of a shadow over the relationship. Yoon-hee is thoroughly conditioned for obedience, so even what she would claim to be her own feelings may not accord with her heart of hearts. Of course, we don’t get to explore the possibilities further as Yasuko sends Yoon-hee away for her safety. How might things have developed otherwise? Who knows?

4. Lowen and Yasuko don’t spend all that much time together, but they represent a common pattern of attraction forming amid traumatic circumstances. Lowen was the closest to Yasuko in age among the survivors of his crew and he had the most interaction with her and the closest. The feelings were mutual and we saw how far Yasuko was prepared to go had Sigma no intervened. However, even if they would have had sex with each other, it wouldn’t have changed the final disposition of their relationship. The materials were there for something to be built, but Yasuko’s personality simply won’t let other people get close for long. This was exacerbated by the circumstances at the end of CeleKing3, having been responsible for the death of her father and the betrayal of her mother. Having lost the most fundamental relationships a person has, of course she would reject any others, particularly when she’d already spent a large chunk of her life pushing others away. Now, in another universe, it’s possible that Lowen might have had a stabilizing affect on her and maybe she could have had a more well-adjusted life, but that isn’t the universe we got.

With all her internal contradictions and conflicts, Yasuko proved to be an interesting character to write. She’s not the first character of mine to be primarily motivated by revenge, but her path was probably the most overrun with brambles and thorns. I know it’s a common moral that revenge does more to harm the avenger than the object of vengeance, but definitely in Yasuko’s case, her pursuit of revenge cost far more than she gained. Things didn’t work out so well for her, but are the paisanos she allegedly fought for better off on account of her efforts? Many of them think otherwise, as seen by the epilogue of CeleKing3, but if I had to wager, I’d say the people of Erdi got a better deal. Maybe not by much depending on who’s in charge at the time, but people have all sorts of opinions about such things.

Now that we’re done with Yasuko for now, I think I’ll go ahead with the idea I floated before to feature Masako and Sturla next. Stay tuned.

I’ve commented elsewhere that the older and more cynical I get, my protagonists become less and less moral paragons. Now, there’s a time and a place for more innocent and upstanding leads, but sometimes you need to get down in the dirt with someone who’s got some grime stuck to him. The general idea for Batista’s look (and the origin of his surname) is Jetstream Sam from Metal Gear Rising. He first appeared in the dream that would become Chapter 1 of CeleKing2. Interestingly enough, I was building a backstory for the character as the dream was ongoing. He was a centurion in the Imperial Guard from a common background who had won his place among the elite through his skill as a warrior. I would later go back and dig up an old idea I had about a society divided between Infernals and Celestials and a fallen Celestial taken in by an Infernal, which would be developed into CeleKing1. I decided that I wanted to introduce Yasuko’s parents and their story before she would take center stage, hence the structure of the CeleKing trilogy being what it is.

We get bits and pieces of Batista’s backstory throughout the trilogy, with an obvious focus in CeleKing1. He was the son of Zacarias Rodrigues, a restaurateur who was a former conscript, one who didn’t fall into banditry after being demobilized like so many others. Zacarias met Batista’s mother Isabella through her brother Jorge Avilar (Tío Jorge), who was in the same unit of conscripts. They settled not too far from where Zacarias was demobilized and Zacarias set up shop in the dusty little town of Ciruela. Taking on the family business was never in the cards for Batista, who was kicked out of the mission school for delinquency and frequently ran away from home. During this time, he’d commit a number of petty crimes and strained the law’s leniency toward minor offenders to its limits in several counties. He had a brief period of stability after Tío Jorge was discharged from the Regulars. He admired his uncle’s military service and started to apprentice in Tío Jorge’s tinker shop. However, there was a bone of contention in the form of Tío Jorge’s pretty young wife Nayeli. What started as an adolescent crush eventually got out of hand and led to a major falling out between Batista and Tío Jorge. Not long thereafter, Batista got his conscription orders. The main reason why he didn’t become a draft dodger was because he was seeking something different for himself far away from both home and his uncle. Though far from a model soldier, he proved to have a high aptitude as a fighter. He wasn’t eligible for enlistment in the Regulars due to his numerous disciplinary infractions, so instead he became a mercenary in the Regimiento de Rionegro. Most of his career as a mercenary was spent fighting in Viet Tay (Xiyue), and his record was a bit of a checkered one. War is never a pretty thing, but some make a dirtier business of it than others. There were few lines he wouldn’t cross and for those that he wouldn’t, he looked the other way while others did on more than one occasion. Although he was mostly aimless, going from one battefield to the next and enjoying what pleasures he could in between, there was a vague sense of planning for his future, even if he didn’t know what that would be. Many soldiers live paycheck to paycheck, but Batista was putting a fair bit back, savings that would be confiscated once he deserted. It was precisely his lack of direction which made it so easy Capitán Trieu to convince him to reup and take the promotion to sargento at the start of CeleKing1. Had Fate not had other plans for him, he would’ve continued on that path until he was either killed in action or too old to keep on fighting.

We’ve established that Batista was hardly hero material when he is introduced and while we later learn that his particular susceptibility to the Mandate of Heaven is a big part of why he rescued Masako from Coronel Obrado, there was also an element of pent-up guilt over all the times he’d turned a blind eye to unpleasant goings-on in the past to make for something of a perfect storm spurring him to action. From there, we have the adventure as you know it, with him struggling to keep both himself and Masako alive and out of enemy hands while trying to ward off the growing attachment to the young princess. Could he have made a clean break from her? It’s unlikely. Despite what his head is telling him, his heart is directed elsewhere, and tied to how the Mandate of Heaven has bound him to Masako, his efforts to maintain his distance most likely would have failed even without the ever increasing extremity of their circumstances. After the events of CeleKing1, he wasn’t able to maintain his professional separation from Masako for long. Due to their difference in station, despite being married, Batista was essentially the male equivalent of a concubine in the eyes of Imperial law. Although Imperial society on Erdi leans toward old-school patriarchy, most women of rank enjoy their gallants just as their male counterparts have their concubines, mistresses and whatnot. Had Masako remained exclusive to Batista, she would have been seen as more of an oddity and their children would have a difficult time inheriting House Suzuki.

Speaking of children, things changed significantly for them after Yasuko was born. An assassination attempt on Masako by remnants of Lord Feng’s faction led to Batista putting Yasuko in Tío Jorge’s care, something Masako was very reluctant to agree to. It drove a bit of a wedge between them, and before it could be resolved, Batista found himself assigned to Prince Wusheng out on the frontier. He could neither lead the hunt for Masako’s enemies, nor go fetch Yasuko once the coast was clear. Part of the reason Batista rose to prominence in the Imperial Guard, rising to centurion and earning the title of “Jiansheng” (“剣聖”, or basically “sword saint”) was because he was trying to earn his ticket back to the Capital. It was quite the stroke of Fate that he would finally return to the Capital at the same time Yasuko launched her infiltration. (You could just blame the contrivance of the author, to which the author might suggest that a certain scheming antagonist may have taken the opportunity to guide the pieces on the board according to his plan.) Naturally, Batista is thrown into confusion by the circumstances of Yasuko’s return and Masako’s new marital situation. However, much as before, he’s given the runaround by his duties to prevent him from taking a more active role in the situation. (Sturla obviously wouldn’t want him too deeply involved while he’s busy grooming Yasuko.) While his relationship with his wife and daughter is left strained and distant, he finds Prince Sturla moving in instead. He resents Sturla for taking his wife but is mindful of not just his political power but also his skill as a swordsman. Sturla being as familiar and flippant as he is only makes things more uncomfortable for Batista. This culminates with Sturla naming him his personal bodyguard after being crowned Emperor. Batista knows he’s being manipulated throughout, but he isn’t really in a position to do anything else but obey… until Yasuko defects to the New Earth Empire, that is.

Naturally, Batista wasn’t acting out of loyalty to Sturla or the Empire when he faced down his daughter. His intention was to stop her before she could attempt a fight she had no chance of winning, and, if possible, get to safety with her mother. He ended up pulling his punches, though, and he underestimated Yasuko’s new enhancements. From there, as you know, he had the choice of letting Sigma stabilize his wounds to give him a chance at survival or make one last effort to save his daughter from her archnemesis. For someone who had often strayed far from the path of a hero in his life, his own flesh and blood being on the line made the decision easy for him. Did he resort to a cheap sneak attack? You bet your buttons he did, because anything else would have almost certainly failed. His training as a knight of the Imperial Guard didn’t change his essential nature as a mercenary who fights to win. He accomplished what he meant to, which isn’t a bad way to go out.

What more is there to say about our boy Batista? He loved and lost, bled and bloodied. Quite a ride for some street punk who didn’t seem like he’d ever amount to anything. Next time, we’ll take a look at his progeny, who inherited a lot of his bad habits. Stay tuned.

Much like Junker Jorg itself, Azuki got her start in a dream. It began with what is now the fight with Dakota and proceeded to Azuki’s rescue of Root. In the process of writing the story, I had to fill in the significant blanks in plot and character. Azuki’s character design was largely inspired by Kagerou from Fire Emblem if, and the shapeshifting was a latter addition as a way to explain how she could cover ground quickly in the harsh arctic environment of the Neveland. Her “Art of the Snow Woman” form was developed as a way to explain how a naked woman (as I rarely let my shapeshifters’ clothes transform with them) could survive in subzero temperatures and provided some striking imagery for the fight scenes. There are elements of both a kunoichi and a matagi in how she operates. Actually, it would have been nice if I had shown of the hunter side of her skillset more.

As far back as that original dream, Azuki’s love for Root had been a central aspect of her character. Besides his usual way with women, as she explained in JJ2, the fact that he was the only person to treat her as a normal human was a big part of the reason why she fell for him. Even in her home village, where skinchangers were rare but not unheard of, the reception she received was complicated. Skinchangers were seen as both blessed and cursed in the folk belief of the villagers, and Azuki struggling with her otherness was a big part of the reason she became a mercenary. Over the course of her travels, she was found useful but never accepted, as a woman, as a foreigner, and of course as a skinchanger. Root was the one exception and that understandably counted for a lot. Add that to them bonding in a high-stress environment, Root defending her during her show trial by the Blackamoors, her “dying” in Root’s arms, etc., and is it any surprise she remained so devoted to his memory? I actually feel bad for her that she spent all her time being used and abused by the Empire holding on to the memory of Root as her sole comfort while Root himself moved on with his life. I’m not blaming Root, mind you, just pointing to the tragedy of her character.

Now, more critical readers are going to point to some values dissonance aspects of her character, namely her racism and patriarchal attitudes, as points against her. While aspects like these may cost her sympathy with some readers, as an author I’m strongly opposed to taking all the warts off a character for the sake of audience appeal, especially an appeal to values that wouldn’t make sense for the character and the setting. I’m reminded of watching an LP of LA Noire and seeing a flashback scene from WWII where Phelps berates his Marines for their bigoted attitudes toward the Japanese. Looks lovely and conciliatory to the modern viewer, but even if you could find many officers with such sentiments on the ground in the Pacific Theater, I can’t imagine them doing their preaching to the grunts if they had any sense of self-preservation. Of course this was done to make Phelps appear more sympathetic to the player, as some of his other displays of sensitivity in the story that are very much at odds with the setting and the sort of attitudes a person would be likely to have in the time period. Just rubs me the wrong way. I don’t want my characters to conform to what I think or what the perceived audience might think. I want the characters to be true to themselves and let the chips fall where they may. In my role as narrator, I try to remain neutral so the audience can form their own opinions without my own biases informing them. If this actually succeeds in making more well-rounded complicated characters, only the reader can say.

I don’t go into any great detail about Azuki’s time in the Empire between JJ1 and JJ2, but throughout the Cross Arc we learn more and more about what it means to be one of their little projects. Bioethics aren’t exactly the Empire’s strong suit. The price of her second lease on life was extensive experimentation to test the limits of her abilities and to expand them, and also to breed those traits into a new strain of operatives. Depending on your perspective, it may or may not be much comfort that her children were artificially gestated so that she could remain on active duty. And then there’s the whole deal with the conditioning she was put through to make her an obedient daughter of the Father of All Humanity. It was a long ten years (Miravellan years, that is; in Earth years it was closer to 15 years).

While there’s a chance of things working out halfway decently for Root, realistically there’s no such prospects for poor Azuki. The best she can hope for is to serve out her time until she’s eligible for retirement. Yes, retirement is actually an option for her, albeit on some sort of preserve for Imperial experiments, effectively a sort of benign prison so long as she doesn’t act up. Not a great way to go out, but I suppose it could be worse.

For our next feature, I’m thinking about hopping series to cover some Celestial Kingdom characters, definitely Batista and Yasuko, maybe Masako and Sturla as well Stay tuned.

I’ve been rereading JJ2 recently and that got me thinking that covering our pal Root would be a fine way to bring back the Character Spotlight feature. Now, I believe I told you all about how Junker Jorg got its start as a dream I had and how Chapter 1 is an almost shot-for-shot recreation of that dream. In other words, the original concept for Root didn’t come from any conscious effort of my own. I had the idea of someone who was a bit of a slacker at first glance but could carry himself as a proper soldier when the situation called for it. His background in the Foreign Legion served as a helpful explanation of why he had a little extra grit to him and also explained why he was as cynical as he was. From there, I developed the personable front he uses to navigate most social situations, due to the influence of his salesman father as he would claim. He was made an ex-sniper to give him the skills he’d need for the action scenes. I’m pretty sure I’d already decided to make Faustman a sniper, so the pieces were coming together for Root’s background to take the shape they needed. As a side note, while Root is pretty good as a sniper, he’s wildly outclassed by Faustman as a matter of sheer skill, but an element of luck definitely factors into combat.

While Root was mischievous as most boys when he was young, he never got into any major trouble. He was a decent student but never showed any signs of excellence. He was rather directionless, which led him to the Foreign Legion. Being a native Byrandian, he was tapped for officer training and was the titular leader of a scout platoon, but this was mostly a formality as the Legion requires native Byrandian officers. Because of his talent as a sniper, he was more often operating separately with his spotter while his platoon sergeant actually ran the platoon. In Byrandia, the Foreign Legion gets deployed for action while the Colonial Troops mostly serve as the garrison for Byrandia’s overseas holdings. As Root noted in a conversation with Trish, the Colos are more deeply resented by the locals than the Legionnaires, but that doesn’t mean things were much better. You get a couple of his horror stories over the course of the books and there’s plenty more than he didn’t mention. Even from that inkling, you can see why he chose to ride out his career in peaceful obscurity out in the hinterlands. Of course, Fate had other plans for him.

I do feel that the duology tells enough of the story, it might be interesting to peek into his life after he was sent to the Capital. In JJ2 we often see in the narration that even years later, palace life was about the last thing he wanted. Having the patronage of the King itself was quite the shield but it also painted a target on him as an object of jealousy and suspicion. Perhaps if Root had been more ambitious as a social climber, he would’ve gotten tangled up more in the webs of court intrigue, but he mostly tried to keep his head down and attempted the same effort at obscurity as before. As a result, he largely fell off the radar of the plotters and schemers until he rose to prominence after the arrival of the Imperials.

Although Root had slowed down considerably by the start of the first book, he was quite the womanizer and clearly has the ability to draw women to him even if he’s not actively trying to pursue them. This of course becomes a problem in the second book. Let’s take a look at his relationships with some of the significant women in his life.

1. Trish isn’t the kind of girl Root would ordinarily go after, but working together in HQ led to them naturally coming closer. While he didn’t take their relationship that seriously during the first book, he wasn’t playing the field once they started dating, and the fact that she cared about him a lot more than he cared about her gave their relationship the momentum that led them into marriage. He did learn to love her more the longer they were together. It wasn’t burning passion but a comfortable sort of affection that goes well with someone looking to slow things down. Too bad things in his life started speeding up, but we’ll get to that in a minute. In case you’re inclined toward an uncharitable reading of Root’s character, his regret over cheating on her isn’t just because of the consequences. His sense of obligation to her as her husband was genuine, which is a large part of the reason why he just passively took his lumps even though, by Byrandian law, Trish would have been at highly disadvantageous position. I haven’t decided if those two will reconcile, but Trish isn’t the sort to let go easily and Root doesn’t have the fire in him to pursue her more aggressively to win her over.

2. In so many ways, Azuki is the opposite of Trish and that has no small impact on different his love for her is. Whereas Trish represents a safe and stable if not especially exciting sort of love, Azuki represents a deeply passionate but also dangerous sort of romance. On Root’s part, you might dismiss how he feels as simple physical attraction with a little suspension bridge effect to make it stick, but while they didn’t really connect on an intellectual level, the bond formed from risking their lives together made their short time together unforgettable for both of them. There’s more emotional meat on Azuki’s side, but there was still a lasting impression she left on Root that stuck with him until they were reunited. I’d actually envisioned the “after action” scene with them before anything else in JJ2 and a lot of the events of the story were in service of making this scene come together. The chemistry was there, of course, but Root was too dedicated of a husband to cheat on his wife unless there were extreme circumstances. Cue the messy rescue of Princess Anne and the others being held by the South Malvinans. Root/Azuki shippers out there are probably disappointed with the results, but unfortunately, their romance was always a doomed one. Now, the question is whether or not Root would’ve tried to stay with Azuki if he’d been given the chance. He would be tempted, surely, especially after Trish walked out on him. Even if the Empire permitted them to be together, its demands on her would ensure that they’d never be able to enjoy a proper relationship, so it may have been a mercy for things to have been broken off the way they were.

3. With the Japanese love of age-gap romances, it gets me thinking about the dynamics of such a relationship and that leads us to Princess Anne. While Root frequently invokes the age difference to ward her off, he never really thought of her from a paternal perspective. While Anne was rather young when they first met, they nevertheless formed something of a friendship of equals despite the differences in their age and status. Both of them were unwitting prisoners of the strictures of courtly society, kindred spirits who shared a strong bond of trust. It’s little surprise that as Anne would mature, she’d start to develop romantic feelings for him, especially because few young men of society would be as robust as her father, the first and primary object of her love and respect. They say women are looking for their fathers just as they say men are looking for their mothers in a mate, but of course in this case it’s a little too close to the mark. Now, based on the societal norms of Byrandia at the time, age would be less of a point of objection than the class difference, but Byrandia in general is getting to the point where big age differences aren’t looked upon so favorably, especially among the bourgeoisie, hence Root himself and Lieutenant Juliard being the main people to voice objections. Root does love Anne but not romantically, even though there is some physical desire there. Could something work out between them if we set aside class differences? Possibly, but it would be difficult. Honestly, the trauma of Anne’s escape from captivity put a bit of a wedge between them and pretty well stunted Anne’s romantic aspirations. Probably for the best, but it’s a shame it had to happen that way.

4. Adding Lieutenant Juliard into the mix did honestly feel like a bit of a step too far, but it’s an easy one to make when you’ve got a girl with a serious tsuntsun dynamic going on and I did want to illustrate how women are naturally drawn to Root. To be fair, Root does have a lot of admirable qualities and it’s not too hard to imagine someone starting to feel something after seeing him in action. In his more carefree and unattached days, he would’ve easily started up something with her. I considered having her failed overture be the end of it, but I decided the lure was more than a single rejection could sink. I was channeling a bit of Raiders of the Lost Ark with the way she meets up with him at the end of JJ2. Is there anything there? I can’t see them forming a long-lasting relationship, but a fling is entirely possible. (We can only hope for the sake of everyone involved that Trish never finds out.) It might be interesting to see Root start up a new franchise with her, but it would definitely be settling compared to other options out there. Sorry, Yvette.

5. When Root was sowing his wild oats, Scarlet was just one among many prostitutes he’d frequented, but he did favor her a bit over the others available in Bernecita. That being said, she was more attached to him than him to her. It’s hard to blame her. Hooking up with an officer would be a fine way to get out of the life and would give her son a shot at a decent upbringing. Under other circumstances, maybe something could have happened, but she couldn’t beat out Trish and definitely stood no chance compared to Azuki.

Like so many of my characters, I couldn’t give him a happily ever after. You’d think my own life is far more dysfunctional than it is based on how messy the past, present and future of my characters are. I guess I’m addicted to leaving my readers with a bittersweet taste on the best of days. As of now, I haven’t settled on what happens to Root after the end of JJ2, so feel free to imagine whatever you like for him. Maybe it all works out for him in the end. Who knows?

Since I’ve started with Root, I think I might cover Azuki in the next Character Spotlight. Stay tuned.

To my knowledge, Akasame’s origins date back to Version 2, which should surprise few people familiar with the origins of the story as there’s not a whole lot that survived from Version 1 (thank you, adolescent fit of pique). Physically, I was imagining something along the lines of Toshiro Mifune (as in Throne of Blood), but while my mind goes to Sengoku Jidai samurai, the equivalent time period for the story would actually set the characters back in the Yamato Jidai, which I’m far less familiar with (and you don’t see nearly as often in pop culture depictions as the Sengoku and Edo Jidai). Originally, I imagined Akasame as a daimyo, but that wouldn’t have fit, so I used the less specific “warlord” title. I was inspired in part by Makoto Shishio of Rurouni Kenshin for the whole “the flesh of the weak is the food of the strong (弱肉強食)” philosophy taken to its literal extremes. He is without a doubt the most unambiguously evil of all the lead characters in TTWC3. He has almost no redeeming qualities whatsoever except for an appreciation for subordinates who are both competent and loyal. As a result, there’s not that much depth to his character and his section of the story mostly serves to demonstrate how his hubris continually makes his situation worse.

Much as with Carpos, only as I was writing his end did he manage to pull a surprise turn. I hadn’t originally planned for him to turn into a youkai in his dying moments, but it seemed entirely appropriate. And, in case you were wondering, his head doesn’t die and it’s left sealed away in Castle Notos until it can be revived. (Whether I tell that story or not remains to be seen, but that strikes me as a good twist to pull if I ever tell the tale of what happens when Scipio’s seal on the Darklands fails.) I don’t know why I give some of my worst characters better ends than they deserve, but there you go. I suppose if they were too pitiful going out, you might feel some sympathy for them or, worse, think I’m sympathetic toward them.

And this does it for the 24 lead characters of The Trident War Chronicles. There are plenty of other characters throughout my canon who warrant spotlight features like this, but many of them still have a lot of their story left to tell. I suppose I could always talk about characters up to the point they’ve been featured and make additional posts later. We’ll see. I’d say doing a spotlight a month isn’t a bad idea. Let’s make it happen. Stay tuned.

I don’t believe Mab was part of the original prototype for the story, but when I revised the concept, she was added in to be a counterbalance to Corona on Zephyr’s side. (This makes her a “rook” character in the series’ chess conceit.) My primary influences for the character and scenario were Gargoyles, the 1998 TV mini-series Merlin and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I would imagine Mab’s role as the primary antagonist in Merlin inspired me to use her over Titania. I’m more liable to associate Titania with the role of Oberon’s Queen, but I realized there was no reason not to have both, which served as an excellent source of conflict. While neither Oberon nor Mab were strictly monogamous prior, Oberon never elevated any of his flings to equal standing with Mab. That’s the main thing that sticks in her craw. It also doesn’t help that she had grown complacent in their marriage and stopped going out of her way specifically to please her husband, something Titania (at the point we’re introduced to her, at least) is very adept at. Now, Oberon is a terrible person, short-tempered, faithless and cruel, but there aren’t many Fae in the upper echelons of their society that embody many virtues we recognize. Think of decadent aristocracy at its most detached and you get a decent feel for Oberon’s court. While I’d like to think Mab elicits some sympathy, it should be noted that she’s not that admirable of a character. It’s just that she’s on the receiving end of the kind of cruelty she would regularly dish out herself and is never fully cured of her haughtiness and vindictiveness.

Now let’s dive right into the likely controversy that may be sparked around her section of the story. Let’s make no bones about it. Rowland raped her and there’s no excusing it. I wanted Rowland to sire Puck via Mab and I envisioned her trying to seduce him in a ploy to be free of her chains, and that ploy failing because, honestly, Rowland isn’t dumb enough to release an extremely dangerous High Faerie who has repeatedly expressed her intention to kill him just so he can have a supposedly transcendental sexual encounter. I found myself stuck, though, as I realized that this would destroy just about any sympathy Rowland might have as a character. (He’s got plenty of bad points, but it’s not like he’s without redeeming value.) This led me to come up with the idea of the madness that took hold of Mab, both a natural side-effect of her imprisonment and also a metaphysical thing due to the Fae’s reliance on the natural spirits to sustain them. (Things like cut stone and wood lose their vital essence, for instance, making human settlements basically dead zones for the Fae.) This drove her to desperation and I wanted to establish a certain closeness between her and Rowland that ends up being exploited. Yes, she did solicit him initially, but she didn’t consent under the circumstances that followed. I then wanted to have Rowland show indirect signs of guilt after the fact but I also thought Mab showing her utter contempt for him was important too. And, yes, in case you were wondering, all this was allowed to happen according to Oberon’s design. While Rowland deserves guilt for raping Mab, Oberon is vastly worse for orchestrating the circumstances for his wife to be enslaved and raped just to teach her a lesson. Yeah, he’s a real scumbag.

I did like contrasting Mab with Simona. Here you have two women in Rowland’s service, both far more long-lived and powerful to justify serving under him, one who despises him and the other who loves him to the point of fanaticism. In the end, though, it’s the one who hates him who bears him a son, even if he never knows the son in question. (Though as noted in the text, Rowland did regret never consummating his relationship with Simona after she was gone. It was purely for political concerns that he kept his hands off her and you might argue that his pent-up unresolved feelings for Simona got displaced onto Mab when she tried to seduce him.) For Rowland’s part, he cared for both of them in his own clumsy way. I’m sure you can sympathize with the poor mortal woman who found herself being stacked against those two.

I’m not entirely sure I did full justice to the character of Mab in the brief seven chapters I gave myself to work with, but it was an interesting effort all the same. Next time we’ll be looking at our final lead in TTWC3, the red warlord Akasame. Stay tuned.

Stock fantasy races like Orcs, Goblins and Trolls tend fit the Always Chaotic Evil mold, no doubt in part as an easy way to have them slaughtered en masse without triggering any moral compunction. Some more recent authors go to great pains to avert the stereotype. I don’t set out explicitly to upend what you think about when you hear the word “Goblin”, but my two Goblin leads in the Trident War Chronicles are among the more sympathetic, so you could be forgiven for thinking that was specifically my objective. No, I just develop characters in ways I find interesting.

Actually, Urgill was more of a stock Goblin character in earlier incarnations. Only as I tried to make her more interesting did she become a more rounded character (and in many ways more upstanding than a lot of my human leads). Her tragic infatuation with Rowland was an early development, but as she became a consecrated warrior maiden kept from fulfilling the traditional female role in her society, that infatuation took on grander proportions. You can imagine the fantasy that took shape in her mind, her returning to her homeland in triumph with her otherworldly prince to liberate her people from the Monarch Lich. Of course, even if Rowland had any intention of helping her, even if he loved her the way she wanted to be loved, that dream would’ve been doomed to failure. Her ultimate fate was almost a mercy.

Originally Urgill went to Notos entirely of her own volition, a terribly ill-thought out bit of teen rebellion. Now it’s part of a plot by her father that’s still ill-thought out, but has a little more credibility to it (if you ignore the overwhelming power of the Monarch Lich, which is something no one who hasn’t faced him directly has a good handle on). You feel more of a touch of destiny in Urgill’s mission, even if she was destined for failure.

It might’ve been fun to have more scenes of Urgill’s rivalry with Simona, but I think I had just the right amount. If I showed too much of Simona’s merciless contempt for Urgill, there wouldn’t be much audience sympathy left for her. I did like the juxtaposition, Urgill who was elevated in the eyes of her people contrasted with the debased Simona (not so much in Rowland’s service, but definitely in her old life as a comfort woman). Both of them had their unrequited love for Rowland, though as we learned, under different circumstances Rowland might have actually responded to Simona’s feelings. I still feel a bit sorry for Urgill getting hooked on someone way out of her league.

If she had the resources for it, it might have been interesting to see Urgill found a community south of the River. It definitely would’ve sown the seeds of future conflict, but Rowland’s ruthlessness put an end to that possibility well before it could present an actual threat.

And I guess that does it for Urgill. Next time we’ll deal with Mab, a character who developed in some interesting ways that I look forward to discussing. Stay tuned.