Lucivar

Can a murder be a likeable character? In the Black Jewels series by Anne Bishop, the answer is yes.

Ms. Bishop creates an entirely unique system of magic and in doing envisions a new system of order and justice. If you harm someone, you incur debt to them. These obligations can, and generally are, repaid in pain inflicted before, or after death. Or both. And there’s a certain appeal to this idea of karmic debt and personal justice. During the course of the series, most of the characters knowingly take another sentient being’s life. Because Ms. Bishop’s world is so intricate, I’ll spend a bit of time over the next few weeks on each of the main characters and how she separates their actions from the antagonists’ schemes.

In perfect operation of this society, the Blood – magic users – are the realm’s caretakers. Blood queens are the final authority. Warlord princes serve and pledge themselves to queens who uphold the Blood’s code of honor. Service is given freely. At the start of the Black Jewels series, this social contract has been broken by a power hungry witch. As a result, warlords in her territory are corrupted or enslaved.

Which brings us back to murder. In the Black Jewels, murder isn’t against the law. How does Ms. Bishop create characters we love setting where one of the major principals of our society – do not kill – doesn’t exist?

She makes us love them. And they – or at least the good guys – all have a deeply rooted moral code.

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS SO READ ON AT YOUR PERIL.



In the first chapter of Daughter of the Blood¸ we meet Lucivar, a dangerous warlord prince and a sex slave. Another warlord, who led a failed slaved rebellion, is slathered with bacon grease and sealed inside the ruins of a rowboat for rats to gnaw to death. Hours later, Lucivar escapes his imprisonment and releases the man from the boat. The warlord asks why the queens treat them so badly. Lucivar replies that the queens have “no honor” because the evil among them now rule. He tells the man that all the good people are “destroyed or enslaved.” After comforting the man, Lucivar breaks his neck.

But Lucivar’s a protagonist.

And we like him. A lot.

Why?

Part of it is because what he does isn’t illegal. But that’s the smallest reason. Lucivar has a strong moral code. It’s not ours, because it doesn’t condemn murder, but it’s there.

The very first lines of the novel tell us he has no sympathy for the man. But Lucivar’s actions show that he does. He offers the man a shoulder, a promise that the queen who did this to him will pay, and then a quick death. Lucivar gives the man the only mercy he can. Lucivar prays for a queen he can serve and call friend.
His prayer is answered by seven-year old Jaenelle. She asks him why he killed the warlord. He replies that the man was suffering. Lucivar, the cold-blooded murder, is replaced by a Lucivar who is kind to and cares for the safety of a child.
What does the initial murder tell us about the world in general and Lucivar, in specific?

In ten scant pages, Ms. Bishop paints a rich picture of her world and shows us how very different it is from ours. The blithe cruelty of two bad queens, the one who sentenced the warlord to death and a principal antagonist who is introduced in a flashback, contrasts Lucivar’s mercy killing and sets up Jaenelle’s introduction. Ms. Bishop promises us that Jaenelle will be queen worth Lucivar’s service.

So why do we like Lucivar?

Because even though he’s a slave, he’s not broken. He still hopes and wishes for a good queen. Subjected to cruelty, he maintains his code of honor and basic goodness. Offering comfort both to a condemned man and a child.

Lucivar’s larger than life. Drugged, he maims the queen who imprisons him. Politics keep her from killing him. So the queen sentences him to a fate, in his mind, worse than death. The salt mines will corrode his wings – did I mention Lucivar wasn’t human. No? Sorry about that. Lucivar is Eyrien, a winged humanoid, and he’d rather lose his balls than his wings. As punishment, he’s assigned to work in the mines.
Rather than rats, despair gnaws on Lucivar. He bides his time as slime eats his wings. In a final act of defiance, he breaks free for a suicide flight through the mountains. We love him for that indomitable spirit. For fighting long past when a sane person would have bowed his head.

In addition to his strong moral code and spirit, Lucivar’s unfailingly loyal. Jaenelle stops the suicide run and saves his life. A life he then offers to her as his queen. In the second book, Heir to the Shadows, Jaenelle is drugged with the same aphrodisiac Lucivar was given in Daughter of the Blood. She must excise the drug through sex or violence. Lucivar takes her to the wilderness even though he believes Jaenelle will kill him in her insanity.

Lucivar, wings and all, is someone we want to be. He has all the qualities we admire: honor; compassion; integrity, and loyalty. Ms. Bishop’s sensitive portrayal makes us like, no love, a murderer.