JOINT REVIEW: Kings Rising by CS Pacat
*All the trigger warnings*
NOTE: The review is pretty much spoiler-free but the comments are not. If you don’t want to be spoiled, don’t read the comments. Go read Kings Rising and then come back and talk to us about all the things.
Janine: Three years ago, Kaetrin and I read the first two volumes in Ms. Pacat’s Captive Prince serial. We decided that when Kings Rising, the much-anticipated third book, was published, we would review it together in a discussion format.
It’s important to stress that the three-book serial contains a number of problematic, potentially triggering or even traumatizing elements, including rape, slavery, orientalism, and childhood sexual abuse. Readers are advised that they may find it offensive, and this installment is no exception.
Those who have not read the first two books but are interested in them should avoid this review. It is best to read this series in order and knowing as little as possible about what happens. Readers who want to do so can find my review of the first two installments here.
Kaetrin: And mine here.
Janine: When we last met up with Damen, he was left in charge of Laurent’s fortress of Ravenel to wait for reinforcements while Laurent and much of his army rode out. The plan was for the two forces to unite on the battlefield in Charcy three days later, trapping the Regent’s army between them.
When the reinforcements arrived at Ravenel, they were, to Damen’s great shock, Akielon, and they kneeled before Damen, recognizing him as their true king.
This is where Kings Rising begins. When the Akielons chant Damen’s true name, Damianos, the Veretian residents of Ravenel recognize him as the man who killed Laurent’s older brother, Prince Auguste of Vere. The rumors the Regent has spread about his nephew, that Laurent is in bed with the enemy Akielons, are now proven true, figuratively and literally.
Damen has no choice but to command the Akielons to take control of the fortress quickly, before too much blood can be shed. But Damen soon has another problem to face. Although Laurent gave him his freedom, Damen chose to keep one of the slave cuffs on his wrist as a reminder of his experiences in Vere. The fact of his enslavement cannot be hidden from the Akielon officers, or from Nikandros, Kyros of Delpha and Damen’s childhood friend. Damen’s relationship with Laurent is hard for them to understand.
Worse yet, when Damen and his army, comprised of the Akielons and some remnants of Laurent’s own forces, arrive at Charcy, Laurent is not there. Damen and those he commands win the battle, but not without a lot of casualties, and at the end Damen discovers that the Regent is not even on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, Laurent’s absence is viewed by the Akielons as a sign that he is not to be trusted, sowing further discord between his men and Damen’s when Laurent finally turns up.
While Laurent expects Damen to believe the same thing the Akielons do – that Laurent tricked them—Damen believes there was a good reason for Laurent’s absence. But they must also deal with the now-public fact of Damen’s identity, the fact that he is the man who killed Laurent’s older brother.
The mix of emotions between them — anger, attraction, fear of betrayal – doesn’t change one thing. No matter how they feel about one another, the only chance to win their thrones lies in uniting against Kastor, Damen’s brother, and the Regent, Laurent’s uncle, and that means forging a truce, not just between themselves but also between their men.
But even if they can get past the abuse Laurent heaped on Damen when the latter was first given to him as a slave, and past Damen’s killing of Laurent’s brother, the Regent is a devious mastermind, one who schemes to exploit their unacknowledged feelings for one another to his own advantage. With all that standing between them, can Damen and Laurent win not only their kingdoms, but also one another’s hearts?
I feel like I had two reactions to this book, one emotional, and another intellectual. Emotionally, this was a very satisfying book. Intellectually I had some issues with it.
I still love these two characters. I can’t actually decide which I like more. Damen is clearly nicer, and a better man on the face of it – loyal, straightforward, honorable, trustworthy, and very capable when it comes to leading.
Laurent is frequently compared to a snake. He is devious, calculating, sometimes downright scary, and there are also times when Damen finds him infuriating. But he’s also young, bright, has a sense of fairness, is ahead of Damen on some issues, and has had to deal with his uncle.
Kaetrin: One of the things I loved in Kings Rising (among many things) was the almost pride Damen took in watching other Akielons start to appreciate the clever and twisty ways of Laurent’s mind and his biting, rapier wit.
Damen could feel the quiet exultation of Laurent’s men, while the Akielons looked a little dazed. Nikandros passed Laurent his reins.
‘Is this how you do things in Vere?’
‘You mean effectively?’ said Laurent.
Janine: Yes, that was fun.
If the arc in Captive Prince was that Damen came to the realization that no matter how much he hated Laurent, he had to help him for the sake of Akielos, and the arc in Prince’s Gambit was the slow shift of Laurent from enemy in Damen’s eyes to something much different, then the arc of Kings Rising is very much about resolving the remaining conflicts.
In this regard, I thought the plot needed a couple more complications like those in book two. It was a little too easy for the remaining conflicts to be resolved.
Kaetrin: Did you think so? I didn’t. In my mind, I had a picture of a coin, tossed in the air, spinning in slow motion, like in a movie. There were a number of times in the book that I felt the entire outcome turned on whether the coin came up heads or tails. I had a real sense of just how precarious everything was at numerous times in the story.
I thought there was a certain poetry to the methods used to resolve matters [I’m being vague to avoid spoilers] and even when I was reading with my heart in my throat sometimes, a part of me was admiring the skilled writing underpinning it; when I thought about it, I could see why it happened that way and why it was good that it happened that way, even though I hadn’t been expecting it at all.
Janine: You are absolutely correct that there was a much-needed sense of fragility to the truce, and to Damen and Laurent’s chance at a HEA, for much of the book. But what I meant when I said that I wanted a couple of plot complications is that in Prince’s Gambit the Regent was such a formidable enemy, and he arranged for multiple attempts on Laurent’s life to come from unexpected sources. Maybe it would have been repetitive for this book to continue in the same vein, but it felt like a dropped thread.
Kaetrin: My take on that was that the Regent thought he was already in the winning position. (I have more to say about that but spoilers!).
Janine: There were also some moments of comic relief in Kings Rising that were highly entertaining, but for me they undercut that coin toss feel you mentioned a little bit. One or two of those moments, while fun, were a little too comical given the high stakes – the fate of two kingdoms – that turned on them. On the other hand, I’m not sure I could have taken the same near-unbearable level of suspense and romantic tension that we had in Prince’s Gambit.
Kaetrin: Most of those moments for me were examples of Laurent being extremely clever so I pretty much lapped them up. I found the small breaks in the tension helpful – the only exception was something I’ll take about later on in the review.
Janine: Because I’ve had almost three years to think about what might happen in this book, I was able to guess at four of the big twists. There were also a few that I didn’t foresee, so I was able to enjoy the book quite a bit, but I think that if I’d been able to read the three installments back to back the very first time I read them, I would have been taken by surprise.
Kaetrin: I guessed two. Or, maybe I guessed one and agreed with someone else’s speculation about another back when the first two books came out. And now I want to know what the other two you guessed were Janine!
I think you’re right. Had we read all three books back-to-back I think the experience might have been more satisfying. With the endless speculation over the past three years, we have inevitably spoiled ourselves in some way. I’m actually a little envious of those who get to experience the series all at once with no gaps.
Janine: Some of the complexity and fraughtness of Damen’s relationship with Laurent was a little less present in this book. So much went unspoken between them in the earlier books and that served those books really well, but in this book, I felt that with Damen’s identity acknowledged by all, that same aloofness and unwillingness to speak of his feelings that Laurent has always displayed left me wondering how he felt about having made love to his brother’s killer – the kind of emotional conflict that had to be for him.
Kaetrin: I’m not good at subtlety in my reading and so there were quite a few passages I had to read over again for me to feel like I understood the subtext. I can’t say that I always did. I expected the tension between Damen and Laurent to be lessened in this book but I found it to remain fairly steady. Perhaps a bit reduced from the very start, but still present right up until the end. That is because Laurent plays his own game and doesn’t let Damen know about all of the pieces on the board. Even now, having read the full book I’m still wondering about some of the things and whether they were entirely planned by Laurent or serendipity.
Janine: That’s a good point. Maybe what I’m saying is that I wanted the book to go a little slower. I wanted Damen to have a little more time to grapple with a hard truth he discovers later in the novel, for example. This is a true enemies-to-lovers relationship so I wanted the weight of that to be fully explored. The novel could have benefitted from slowing down just a little, so that the realities of Damen’s and Laurent’s pasts and the way those pasts impacted their present could sink in a little deeper.
On another topic, there are two scenes in Laurent’s POV in this book, something that surprised me. It could fairly be argued that the trio of books are really one long, 900+ page novel, so the first of these Laurent POV scenes jarred me. Though it came early in this third book, it still felt late for the overall arc of the entire serial. I also thought it defused some suspense to have access to Laurent’s POV just then.
Kaetrin: Yes, this surprised me too. When I was reading it, I was thinking, “hang on Damen’s brother wasn’t’ Auguste. Is this a typo?” And then I went back and read more carefully and realised there had been a change and Laurent was the POV character.
Janine: The same thing happened to me.
Kaetrin: Unlike you, it added to the feeling of suspense for me. I still think there are things about what the reader learns in that scene which don’t exactly line up with what Laurent tells Damen later and my mind is turning over those puzzle pieces and trying to make them fit. So, for me, while it defused one tension, it created an entirely different one which hasn’t entirely been resolved.
Normally that kind of thing would drive me wild but here, I think it’s just evidence of how tricksy Laurent is and how no-one (well, apart from the author I guess), not even Damen. will ever have a handle on why he does everything he does.
Janine: I didn’t have that reaction, but the second scene in Laurent’s viewpoint was one of my favorite scenes in Kings Rising.
Kaetrin: Oh yes. That kind of took my breath away.
Janine: I thought of it in the same terms – that it almost robbed me of breath.
There were a few things that confused me. While we find out quickly where Laurent was during the battle at Charcy, we never do learn where his army was all that same time. Also, Laurent makes Enguerran his captain, and given Enguerran’s loyalty to Lord Touars in book two, this seemed like too quick a shift. Something similar seems to happen with Jord, who late in Prince’s Gambit was not in Laurent’s good graces.
All of the above are relatively minor quibbles for me. There were so many scenes in the book I found emotionally satisfying, but can’t describe much because I don’t want to spoil the book for readers. I especially liked those scenes in which others prove their loyalty to Damen, and I loved those scenes in which Laurent and Damen’s truce is tested and holds. Damen and Laurent had both been alone for a long time, so for them to have each other as allies felt really significant.
Kaetrin: Yes, me too. I had similar quibbles. The one big thing I wasn’t sure was sorted at the end sufficiently for me was the succession. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say there is a HEA. (After all, I’m a romance reader and I wouldn’t even open Captive Prince until the author promised me I’d get one.) I don’t want to say more about it because I don’t want to give away how things resolve, but I did have a question about the succession. Probably only a sentence or two would have sufficed to square that away for me.
Janine: I have lots more to say about that, but I’ll save it for our spoilery discussion in the comments.
Seeing Damen’s and Laurent’s men also begin to thaw toward one another is very satisfying as well, even though I felt that given that all that had gone on between the two nations, this should have been a little harder to achieve.
Kaetrin: I agree. I went in wondering how on earth the author was going to pull that off. These are countries who have a history of violent war (particularly noticeable around the border) and longstanding enmity. I don’t think the book remotely suggests all the work was done by the end. But I saw, in the way the Damen’s and Laurent’s respective armies behaved and how they were managed, the seeds of how it would be done. And that was enough for me.
Janine: I have this issue with many books that feature warring fantasy nations. I think it comes of having spent my early childhood in Israel – I always feel that progress comes very fast in most books that have this as one of their conflicts, without enough setbacks to be completely believable. I think it’s driven by the need for a happy ending, which genre fiction, unlike real life, must deliver. I hasten to add that Laurent and Damen did face some setbacks, I just wanted one or two more.
Kaetrin: As far as the individual thawing between some of the more prominent secondary characters, I was prepared to buy it. I agree it was quick. But I also believed in the stark discipline to which both Damen and Laurent held their troops, no matter that they did this in different ways.
Janine: That’s an excellent point. I believed in that discipline as well.
Another satisfying aspect of Kings Rising was seeing Damen come to understand things he hadn’t seen or understood when he was the young, privileged prince. But I was surprised to see him, toward the end, placing his trust in two people who proved treacherous. Damen wouldn’t be Damen if he wasn’t too trusting, but I felt he should have known better by then even so.
Kaetrin: Yes, Damen tends to think in straight lines which is totally unlike Laurent. Even so, there was one thing I was staggered to realise Damen hadn’t worked out. It was so obvious and I had (obviously, in hindsight, wrongly) detected some subtext earlier in the book where I thought Damen was acknowledging [the thing]. I couldn’t quite believe that Damen hadn’t worked it out already, so when his reaction was utter shock, it jarred a little.
Janine: I read a lot of what Pacat is saying with Damen’s character as this: that sometimes we don’t see what’s right in front of our faces because we don’t want to confront it.
Kaetrin: Yes, now that you mention it, that makes sense.
Janine: One of the things I most loved about the earlier books (and especially the second) was the slow illumination of Laurent and his motives as Damen was surprised by him again and again. Damen begins the trilogy with his judgement clouded by his prejudices and his limited knowledge of Laurent and of Vere.
Kaetrin: I think both countries will be very different as a result of the time Damen and Laurent spent together over the course of the books. Laurent saw Akielos as something other than merely an enemy and vice versa. I was particularly pleased by one of the changes Damen announces.
Janine: Yes, I agree.
Since we have almost no access to other viewpoints besides Damen’s unreliable perspective in the first two books, we readers too may make assumptions that turn out not to be entirely accurate. But by the time this book comes along, we know Laurent and his country better, and so does Damen. Therefore, the surprises are fewer, but there were still some. That is fitting, given the place that the protagonists’ relationship reaches.
Kaetrin: There were some lovely intimate scenes between Damen and Laurent. I expect I’ll re-read Kings Rising at some point and I’m likely to savour them more. I’ll admit when I was reading (in a “who are you and what have you done with Kaetrin moment”), the second scene was getting in the way of clamor of “but what’s going to happen next?!!” that was going on in my mind.
Janine: Oh, I loved that scene. It was really romantic.
Kaetrin: It was. I need to re-read it to soak it in a bit more. And, even there, Ms. Pacat surprised me again. I thought she was heading toward one of the common m/m tropes that usually bugs me but she subverted things yet again and it was lovely.
One of the risks of Kings Rising for me was whether it would live up to the expectations I’d built in my head. I tried not to add to them in recent months but nonetheless my hopes were very high. A much-hyped book (even when the hype is only in my own head) starts at a disadvantage I think. At the end, I felt kind of stunned and unable to articulate my thoughts. My mind works much closer to the way Damen thinks than Laurent. And I think the author must think more like Laurent to have created him. Even though Damen is the (almost always) POV character, it is Laurent’s cunning which is the spine of the series. There is just no way I could have come up with the way things turned out and all the twists and turns to get there. Yes, I had a few quibbles and there are a few things I’d like to discuss with other readers to see if I can understand some of the subtlety that went, I fear, over my head. But it made me hold my breath. It had me wondering, even when the author promised a HEA, if I would get it. It had me admiring the poetry and the layers and at all points, I cared about the characters. For that and more, Kings Rising gets an A.
Janine: All the big story questions from “Did Laurent know Damen killed his brother?” to “Did Kastor, Jokaste and the Regent scheme together to ship Damen to Vere to serve as Laurent’s slave?” are answered, and that was another factor that made the book so emotionally satisfying.
But because my intellect was a bit split from my heart when it came to this book, I’m giving it a grade of B+.
My grade for the entire trilogy / serial is probably an A-. Prince’s Gambit is my favorite in the series, because it had the most character growth and for me, the most surprises, but this book was very rewarding as well.
Kaetrin: I’d give the whole series an A. I really can’t think of them as separate books. They don’t work as stand-alone stories in the least.
Janine: True. I’m dying to talk about Kings Rising, and the whole serial, in more detail, so we’ll be opening the comments discussion thread to spoilers.
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Just wanted to say thank you for the great discussion – I saw and read it in Q couple days ago really wanted to read the book before today but it is still waiting for me on my kindle . Fingers crossed I will like it.
I had the same fear that book 3 would not live up to the expectations I built up in my own head, and I’m thrilled to say that it did. I loved this whole series SO HARD, and I spent most of the time I was reading saying, “Oh God,” over and over in my head to myself. I simultaneously wanted to read it all as fast as I could so I would know what happened, and I never wanted it to end. Can’t wait to hear what spoilery things others talk about in the comments! I’m like Kaetrin, I don’t pick up on many of the subtle things until I re-read, or listen to what others are talking about.
Totally agree about King’s Rising being more satisfying emotionally than intellectually. I reread Books 1 and 2 afterward and also agree that from a character perspective, Book 2 is the strongest.
I thought having one scene from Laurent’s perspective was a mistake. We’ve seen everything else through Damen’s eyes — having the one scene that explains why Laurent missed the rendezvous was, to me, jarring…even though, as a stand-alone scene, it was fabulously written.
I was disappointed in the denouement. Secret baby disappears conveniently! Jokaste turns out not to be THAT evil! Regent does not get a big death aria! Kastor is a dim cartoon villain! Basil Exposition (tm Austin Powers) with tertiary character’s wife and THANK HEAVENS revealing of seekrit documents pertaining to archer character who never appears on the page!
All that said: I loved the descriptions of Laurent fighting, using techniques of two countries. I loved Damen’s amusement as his countrymen discovered the bitchiness and brilliance of Laurent. I loved Damen’s sense of yearning. I FELT Damen’s feels and wishes about the romantic summer palace — to me it looked and felt like Santorini. Such strong writing about the sea breezes and balconies and white stone and such dreams about being there with Laurent! And most importantly, I thought the shifting of Laurent and Damen’s relationship, both as people who were honest with each other and as kings/leaders worked really well. I enjoyed the book immensely while being very aware of its flaws. Lovely and satisfying ending to the trilogy.
[ALL THE SPOILERS]
I feel the third book was a bit unsatisfying, and I’ve been trying to figure out why. This review helped me see it. I sort of agree, I wish there were a few more setbacks tossed in the way. And after three years of fan speculation, the plot twists were not twists. The scene where Laurent admitted he knew Damen’s identity had little impact for me.
I envy the people who can now read all three books at once.
One of the things I really enjoyed about the first two books was the subtext. Pacat really is a master of saying things without saying things. And I agree, the love scenes were devastating. So intense and personal and intimate. I loved them.
After some thought, I decided I still dislike Jocaste. There is one major difference between Laurent and Jocaste: eventually, Laurent let his defenses down and began treating Damen like his partner. By contrast, Jocaste never had any reason to distrust Damen, and yet she never stopped manipulating him.
It’s a pity the baby wasn’t really Damen’s. I sort of thought the author was setting it up so Damen could have a child without being forced to marry a wife. And since Jocaste was the child’s mother, the baby would conveniently resemble Laurent. Sigh! Oh well. I’m not usually this soft-hearted, but the fantasy of Damen and Laurent living together in sweet monogamy with their precious son was very charming.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
@Sirius: Have you read the first two? Did you like them?
@Make Kay: So glad you enjoyed the book!
@marjorie ingall: There were actually two scenes from Laurent’s perspective. I totally agree about the first one, which you describe. But the second one, in which he frees Jokaste, slayed me. When Laurent said “I don’t know if you would have opened the door for me, but you opened a door for him,” my breath caught. That was one of my favorite moments in the book. I loved that reveal, and I ended the book with so much sympathy for her.
Yes, but there was more of that in book two. This is part of what I mean when I say I wish this book had slowed down a bit. Book two hit so many of the emotional beats just right. This book was a little too tightly crowded with events to allow those moments to really bloom. Though that summer palace moment was an exception.
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@Evelyn: Jokaste ended this book being one of my favorite characters. I read her very differently than you. I thought she started out with her defenses down when she tried to warn Damen against Kastor. Damen absolutley refused to listen to her so she did the only thing she could do to save Damen’s life and her own — slept with Kastor and convinced him to send Damen to Vere instead of killing him. Now that may be dark, but it is also heroic. She couldn’t possibly have wanted to become Kastor’s lover. And in the end, she not only had to sleep with him, she got pregnant (presumably by Kastor) AND she lost Damen to Laurent — who in many ways treated Damen worse than she did, at least initially.
I really want a book about Jokaste now.
I thought Pacat was heading to the same place, that the baby would be Damen’s and he’d have an heir, but I was glad she chose a less predictable route, and that Jokaste got to keep her child at least.
Now regarding the succession. Did anyone else find it terribly fitting and yet terribly poignant when Laurent said he would never marry?
My read on this was that it wasn’t just because he loved Damen, nor just because he’s not attracted to women, but also because of his history with the Regent. And given the way his love scenes with Damen have been reading, it felt to me like what was being said here was that as a survivor of sexual abuse, he just could not put himself through sleeping with someone he doesn’t love or trust, and is of a gender he’s not attracted to as well, much less marriage to such a person, when he loved Damen.
For all those reasons, it was terribly fitting, but given that all his blood relatives are dead, it was also heartbreaking.
But with regard to Damen and children, that was one thing I wondered about the future — whether Damen would have any children to assure his succession. Because Laurent was okay when Damen slept with the Vaskians in book 2, I don’t think it would necessarily be a dealbreaker for their relationship if Damen fathered a child. I could see them arriving at a place where Laurent is okay with this, and I also that think for both of their kingdoms, and the unified kingdom in the middle to lack heirs, would result in way too much political instability. Of course they could also each find someone unrelated to them to name as an heir, but it seems more likely that such an heir would be challenged.
I don’t know how I want this to be resolved. Perhaps it was left unanswered because there is no perfect, neat and clean answer.
@Janine: Ah, you’re right about the second scene from Laurent’s perspective. And again I’m irked, even though, again, the writing was great. If you make an authorial decision to tell a story from one character’s POV, you stick to it. What made the first two books so good was Damen’s reading of and feelings toward Laurent constantly evolving, and Laurent’s obliqueness that masked so much depth. And I agree about the whole narrative being too crammed, with too few moments of powerful human connection. STILL LIKED BOOK 3! But the other two blew my tiny mind.
(Oh, also, there was no single jaw-dropping HOLY SHIT THE REGENT IS LUCIFER moment comparing to boy-catamite-head-in-a-bag.)
Janine, I have read the second volume only. I enjoyed it and I patted myself on the back for skipping the first one – I know I would not have continued this series after the first volume. I read tons of spoilers and that was enough for me. It is not even the slavery setting per se, it is Laurent manipulating Damien to the extent he did. I understand he had reasons, tons of them, I just know that manipulative character can set me off in a much less violent setting, and when Damien could not really fight back I would have ended up hating Laurent. Yeah. Anyway, I am looking forward towards reading this one since I did enjoy the second one
>I thought she started out with her defenses down when she tried to warn Damen against Kastor.
Did she?? I missed that.
That changes it a bit. She is a very interesting character, I admit, and I adore how complicated and dangerous she is.
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@marjorie ingall: Yes. I agree, Laurent’s POV came in too late and was jarring. But when I reread book one, I noticed that the opening scene isn’t from Damen’s POV either, it’s from the POV of Guion, then Vere’s ambassador to Akielos, who is talking to Jokaste about the slaves about to be given to Laurent. So I think Pacat may have intended to set up the narrative to go into other POVs, but then she put us into Damen’s for so long that we lost track of the fact that it isn’t a one POV novel.
Agreed. I’m not sure how long that would have remained sustainable; at some point the characters have to see past one another’s defenses in a romance. But I think if this book hadn’t been “crammed” as you say, the last few reveals could have had more impact.
BOOK ONE SPOILERS
@Sirius: The first book is a difficult read in many ways, but the one great thing it has going for it is that Damen comes in with his own set of misconceptions and prejudices against Laurent and Veretians (and perhaps he has to feel that way, since he’s killed some of them, including Laurent’s brother, in his days) that he starts to learn to see through. While Laurent manipulated Damen into a couple of situations in book one, I felt that for the most part he wasn’t so much manipulative to Damen as Pacat was manipulative to the reader by withholding the truth about Laurent from us through putting us so much in Damen’s head. To me Laurent having Damen beaten within an inch of his life and then sexually assaulted was far worse, and those weren’t manipulations, they were just abuse.
@Janine: is Laurent gay? I’ve heard that said before, but truthfully, I assumed he was simply (as you said) a survivor of sexual abuse. He’s shown disinterest in women, sure, but… he’s totally disinterested in everyone. The only person he has shown sexual feelings towards is Damen.
He definitely could be gay. I do find it interesting he chose not to have a wife. I, too, thought it was sad but appropriate.
Truthfully, I don’t mind if Damen takes a wife. I was prepared for it the whole series. Mostly I feel curious about who the successor will be. I dislike it when authors leave too many loose ends.
One thing I did realize: Jokaste’s son never could have been king of both nations. He’s a bastard, born out of wedlock. Surely the Veretians would never accept that, not with all their taboos. Perhaps it’s better the child was not Damen’s… imagine what would happen if Jokaste’s son tried to take the throne and the Veretians rejected him.
Janine, I was not very clear – I was trying to say that I can handle abuse in fiction (or not, that really depends on the case by case basis) in theory, but I *know* that manipulativeness plus abuse would have been my undoing. In other words if Laurent was real and wanted to make a good expression on me, I think he should be very grateful that I learned about his behavior in book one second hand so to speak :-).
I am not sure if you remember but I reviewed “Bloodraven” here, and the violence towards the prisoner/slave there is significantly more than anything “Captive prince” could offer. So just saying that it was not the main reason I skipped the first book.
@Evelyn Elliott: SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
That was how I read what Laurent said to Jokaste:
Then later there’s also this:
Kaetrin – this is exactly how I feel
” There is just no way I could have come up with the way things turned out and all the twists and turns to get there. Yes, I had a few quibbles and there are a few things I’d like to discuss with other readers to see if I can understand some of the subtlety that went, I fear, over my head. But it made me hold my breath. It had me wondering, even when the author promised a HEA, if I would get it”
I recently reread books 1 and 2 to prepare for this, and those two held up on my reread exceedingly well. I ADORE this series and I hyped it up in my head and I was so scared I would reread and be less enthused. Was not the case.
I really enjoyed Kings Rising. I liked that Laurent still had to work through things with Damen and being with someone who killed his brother. She was so consistent with writing Laurent – even to the very last page – I just think with all the twists and the plotting etc.. it kept me captivated to the end.
I was not thrilled when the baby was introduced, and I totally expected it to be Damen’s, so I was happy it wasn’t.
I looooved what we got from Jokaste and how both guys interacted with her.
I also loved Nikandros’s role in the book.
I loved that Damen had to over-power and prove to Laurent that he out-matched him physically in that sword/wrestling scene..
I’ve seen some upset that Laurent not only escaped Govart in the cell, but then escapes the fort as well (and uses his injured shoulder to throw that chair) and some upset about Guion’s wife at the end – I guess it was too “lucky” and not enough calculated planning. But it honestly didn’t bother me. .Maybe you can classify me as a fan girl – luck plays into life. And Laurent – faced with death – found the strength.
So – yeah – it was a great read for me.
BOOK 2 SPOILERS
@Evelyn Elliott: It isn’t stated outright that Laurent is gay, but I thought it was strongly implied in book 2. In the scene at the inn after they meet with the messenger Laurent gives his ring to, there is this conversation between them (kindle location 1354, original self-pubbed edition of Vol. 2):
Then, in kindle location 3126, Laurent says:
What I took out of that was that by age nine or ten, Laurent already knew which gender he was attracted to and was just as glad to leave the begetting of heirs to his brother.
@Janine: I remembered the first quote. I took it to mean Damen was asking Laurent if Laurent was straight, and Laurent responded that no he was not straight.
But I’d forgotten the second quote, where Laurent implies he never “grew into” a love for women. Thanks for pointing it out.
@Mandi: “I also loved Nikandros’s role in the book.”
ME TOO. My gosh. And Makedon, or whatever his name was. I nearly cried with laughter when Makedon got Laurent drunk.
@Sirius: Sirius, I read Bloodraven on your recommendation, and found it very difficult going. (Admired it, but felt sickened by it.) Even with Laurent being manipulative and often hateful in the first book, I think you’ll find it worth reading. Would it make a difference if I said I don’t see it as a love story, but rather a coming-of-age tale? I think it’s Damen’s story, about someone from a straightforward culture who thought he knew how the world worked being thrown into a new world of manipulation and coyness and pretty surfaces and court treachery. Damen goes from hating Laurent’s guts to being attracted to him despite himself to feeling glimmers of something deeper (that don’t come to fruition until Book 2). I got such a kick out of the construction of Book 1 — such well-composed levels of plotting and twistiness! So layered! I feel the need to preach the gospel! (You should feel entirely at home ignoring me, though!) And then after the devious puzzle that was Book 1, the big emotional payoff for me came in Book 2.
BOOK 1 SPOILERS
@Sirius: No, I got what you meant. I was just trying to say (perhaps not very well) that I really don’t feel Laurent was all that manipulative to Damen in book one. To his uncle, yes, absolutely! But Damen merely saw the front Laurent presented to his uncle and the court, and bought into it. It wasn’t directed at him.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS for KINGS RISING
@Mandi:
Agreed. But I wanted more of that.
Yes! Me too. To have someone who was totally on Damen’s side was so satisfying! Although I wanted Nikandros to come around re. Laurent after Laurent gave his life to save Damen’s, and that didn’t happen.
That didn’t bother me. I was confused when Laurent thinks about how he was captured in that scene but later tells Damen he arranged for it. I couldn’t decide if the latter was supposed to be Laurent lying to Damen, or if it was just poorly worded or a continuity error.
I actually LOVED the bit with Guion’s wife. Even though Aimeric was a villain, he still deserved for his mother to come to his defense.
@Janine: I was irked that Guion’s wife came out of nowhere. (I forget her name. Some variant of Lois.) I get how we only saw Aimeric in a military context, so why would we ever see his mom, but I still wish we’d met her before, even peripherally. And I didn’t think of Aimeric as a villain! I thought he loved The Regent and made Poor Choices because The Regent played him like a fiddle. I think he came to love Jord, in his way. He was an ignored fourth son and he did dumb shit and regretted it (granted, after Laurent surgically destroyed him in showing him the truth). As a previous dumb shit doer, I have sympathy.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
@marjorie ingall: Her name was Loyse. I agree she should have been mentioned earlier. This is another example of how the book was a little rushed. I wonder if we would have been better off with two books in place of this one; I think the first half could have been expanded into a book in which Damen grapples with the reveal that Laurent knew he who he was all along, Laurent more slowly forgives Damen the death of Auguste and their two armies are unified into one, with Jokaste showing up at the end. And then the fourth book could have been reserved for the rest, and then Damen could have been given more time to grapple with the other reveals, including the Regent’s abuse of Laurent.
With regard to Aimeric, I mainly saw him as a villain because in book 2, after Orlant discovered that he was behind the insurrection in Laurent’s army that began when Laurent and Damen were away in the town of Nesson, Aimeric killed Orlant, then pretended that Orlant was the traitor. I think others died in that insurrection, too, but Orlant was a character I really liked and cared about.
@Janine, As you and I have discussed this series before, and I have to decide now if I’m going to push through and read it all the way, I’m wondering if you could articulate in more detail some of the issues you have with this third volume. Maybe you’ve already shared them, but I got the sense from your review that you may have had more reservations — intellectually, as you say — than Kaetrin (I apologize if I’m misreading either of your perspectives here).
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
@Janet: Are you asking re. the problematic stuff specifically? I think the slavery issue was resolved about as well as it could possibly be, given where we started in book 1. The portrayal of the Akielon slaves as trained in submissiveness is troubling, as Sunita has mentioned in the past, and that aspect remains consistent with the previous books, although Damen refuses to sleep with slaves in this book, which used to be unlike him and which others in Akielos find difficult to understand. I can elaborate more on the issue of “pets” in Vere and the future of slavery in Akielos, if you would like, but I’m not sure how much you want in the way of spoilers. There is a conversation between Damen and Laurent on the subject that I liked a lot, but I don’t know how you would feel about it.
With regard to orientalism, much of this book takes place in Akielos, which doesn’t have the same Middle Eastern feel, but is more ancient Greek in its aesthetic. The Veretian aesthetic and architectural style does not change, but I don’t see how it could.
With regard to rape, there is one side character who is raped off screen. The perpetrators are punished — violently, which is also problematic.
With regard to childhood sexual abuse, Laurent is a survivor, which I think most readers know by the end of book 1 or if not, certainly by the end of book 2. We also, late in the book see the Regent, who is the perpetrator, accompanied by a pre-pubescent child (IIRC, no sexual act between them is shown, but still). The Regent is the biggest villain in the series and I closed the book feeling that the book took a clear stance that pedophilia is wrong, slavery is wrong, and rape is wrong. But in the end, we still have a romance between Damen and Laurent, who arranged for Damen’s rape. And that is certainly problematic.
Also, I would add, the first sex scene between Laurent and Damen, late in book 2, read as consensual to me, and took place after Laurent had agreed to free Damen. But Damen was not freed until the morning following that sex scene. Again, I read it as consensual — in fact I read it as being all about consent — but that in itself as problematic as IRL a slave cannot give consent.
As to my additional reservations (outside the problematic stuff above), I think if this book had been expanded into two books, there are a lot of turning points that could have been explored in more detail.
For example, we learn that Laurent knew from day one exactly who Damen was and that Damen had killed his brother. If one reads the first couple of books carefully this becomes evident before it is articulated in this book and a lot of Laurent’s feelings toward Damen can be inferred from things he says and from gestures, actions and other cues. But still, I wanted more of Laurent’s emotional conflict with regard to his romantic feelings for Damen to be articulated in this book.
As another example, Damen finds out quite late in this book that the Regent molested Laurent when the latter was left in his care after Damen killed Laurent’s brother. There are a lot of clues Damen has, including, for goodness sake, all the care that he has to take with Laurent in bed, yet Damen doesn’t see this. The only way I was able to read this is that Damen didn’t want to see it (and in fact, in book 2 Damen says something similar about Kastor’s betrayal of him at the beginning of book 1, “I didn’t want to see it.”) I think that is very much Damen’s character. He is someone who can be extraordinarily perceptive when he wants to be, and extraordinarily oblivious when he wants to be as well.
That aspect of the books was what I enjoyed most about them, but for this reason I wanted a more detailed and clearly articulated reaction when Damen learns about what the Regent did to Laurent after he himself killed Laurent’s only protector. Damen saying “I’ll kill you,” to the Regent was satisfying, but I thought more was needed. These books are very rich in subtext and things left unspoken, which is a lot of what I loved about book two, especially. But book two took more time with Damen’s emotions, reactions, observations and realizations than this book did.
All that may make it sound like I didn’t enjoy this third book, but to the contrary, I enjoyed it a great deal. The major questions were all answered to my satisfaction, except for the question of Damen’s succession as Kaetrin said above. It made this book very satisfying to me. I can’t say whether you’ll feel the same way. Let me know if you have further questions. I’ll be glad to answer them.
I LOVED this trilogy and really enjoyed the final installment. I wanted to stick up for that first scene in Laurent’s POV. I felt it was important, and, maybe it’s a failure of imagination on my part, but I don’t see how the author could have achieved the same effect without it. It wasn’t just important to know where Laurent was during the battle at Charcy, we could have gotten that reveal from Damen’s POV later. But I do think seeing it from Laurent’s POV gave us the following information: (1) no matter how it worked out in the end, this was not something he’d planned or wanted or manipulated into happening; (2) he legitimately thought he was about to die and kept twisting and trying anyway. I think until that scene Laurent was starting to seem almost super human in his ability to manipulate and plan 8 steps ahead of everyone else. But in this scene we see the truth. He doesn’t see everything coming. He’s just really good at turning situations to his advantage and then making other people believe he’d meant for things to go that way all along. If I’m remembering correctly, that’s the way he plays his capture. “I never meant to meet you at Charcy. I was off getting us another fort. Thanks for doing your part.” But we know, because we were in his head, that that’s not true. And it puts everything that follows, and everything that came before, in a different light. At least for me.
FWIW, I loved this series, and I could not stomach Bloodraven.
@Corina: I, too, loved the scene from Laurent’s POV. It was a fascinating insight into his character… and yet so much still feels held back.
I thought it very telling that Laurent refers to Damen as “the Akielon slave” in his head. Not Damen or Damianos. It’s almost like he’s trying not to admit it to himself. As though he doesn’t want to acknowledge it… not yet.
@Corina:
I actually got that in book 2, from the ambush he didn’t plan for until Damen uncovered it. But that’s still a good point.
Maybe I should reread the book with this in mind because I wasn’t sure if that was intentional or a continuity error on the author’s part. But you’re probably right! I think I wanted Laurent to stop playing games with Damen by this point in the book, so I didn’t want him to play this at all.
I also didn’t like that he lied to Damen about the reasons he slept with him and I read that scene as Damen not really believing him on that score, but feeling hurt nonetheless. I’m wondering how others here read that.
@Evelyn: Oh yes! I forgot about the “Akielon slave” in his POV. That was another great character beat, and that’s how I read it too. I recently re-read the books and I’m pretty sure that he never refers to Damen by name until his identity is acknowledged in Book 3.
@Evelyn: I couldn’t stomach Bloodraven either. I cried uncle after one or two chapters.
That’s a really interesting reading. It jumped out at me because Damen wasn’t even a slave anymore at this point in the story, but I put it down to the author being coy about whether Laurent knew Damen’s identity. I really like your reading of it though! Laurent would have had a really hard time allowing himself to dwell on the truth of who Damen was.
I can’t believe it’s been three years!
I thoroughly enjoyed Kings Rising. I’ve read it once and read through parts again. I suspect even then I’ve missed stuff. This book must have been a real technical challenge to do all that she did, and I was super impressed, even if I have some issues.
But I didn’t feel Aimeric’s mother came out of nowhere! Even during my first read-through. Guion is surprised she’s coming, then supposes Loyse is dragged along to ensure his good behavior, and he’s allowed to think that. But, in fact, Laurent has brought Loyse with them for another reason entirely. And I wanted that for Aimeric; I wanted someone to be on his side. His father sure wasn’t.
I’m also not sure if Laurent expected to survive, that this was part of his saying he’s the end of his line. Though I fully agree with your comments too, Janine, just that there may have been more than one reason he says it. I think Laurent thought his uncle would likely destroy him, but he could keep Damen alive. He’s sacrificing himself at the end so Damen can win against his uncle (he thinks). No? But I’m a bit fuzzy on this too, because I’ll admit I got very caught up in the personal, romantic story.
I did a double-take when a chapter ended with the line of dialogue, “yes, uncle”, and I thought this was the bombshell for Damen (or at least the moment where he could no longer keep his thoughts from going in a certain direction), and the next chapter starts with Damen musing about something else entirely. I turned the page back and forth a couple of times (or, you know, swiped) till I realized its meaning hadn’t registered for Damen.
I watched an hour-long interview of the author, with questions, and she gives a solid reasons why Damen didn’t see how the Regent had abused Laurent. But I still struggled to square that with Damen being so sensitive and alert to Laurent’s reactions in bed. Anyway…one could argue he’d have blind spots if he only recently rejected slavery…so I will go with that.
Oh, and finally (I know this is a mishmash of a comment), I actually liked Laurent’s first scene a lot. Because he’s so alone, and he’s carefully (despite himself) not allowing himself to hope for help, or dignity, even. And at the end of the book, Damen comes for Laurent and stands by him, offering both! “He has more honor and integrity than any man I have ever met.” This in front of the uncle who constantly says the most terrible things about Laurent’s character.
Well, maybe I’m a marshmallow, but I swooned. It was nice kind of bookending (admittedly not the very beginning or very end, but close enough for me).
Thanks for this discussion space and the review!
@Janine: Hmmm, I hadn’t really thought of the ambush in that light. You’re right that we see Laurent’s fallibility there, and actually in a number of earlier places. He admits as early as Book 1 that he didn’t expect his uncle to try to kill him. I guess it’s less that we see in such a detailed way how he turns his setbacks into wins and plays them off as intentional. And I definitely think that wasn’t a continuity error. (Unlike Jokaste’s hair, which is explicitly described as dark in one of the earlier books. At least the versions I have. ::harrumph::)
I agree though that seeing him fall back to lying to Damen was frustrating. But it also seemed … inevitable? With Damen’s identity known by everyone now, with everyone knowing his most important ally was the man who’d killed his brother … there had to be a bit of self-protective back-sliding.
@Corina: “MORE that we see in such a detailed way” not less. Urgh.
@marjorie ingall: I *loved* that Jokaste didn’t turn out to be so evil after all. That was a true revelation for me. I didn’t pick it. That was the bit where I lost my breath. I love the way Pacat can shift an entire character’s actions with but one or two sentences. It’s entirely consistent but I never pick it. It made sense to me that Laurent would be the one to see through Jokaste – after all, they both love Damen and they think alike.
The two scenes from Laurent’s POV didn’t bother me (apart from my initial confusion because I didn’t realise the POV had shifted). I was glad to know that Laurent hadn’t betrayed Damen and that Damen’s faith in him wasn’t wrong. But I still do have some questions about how he came to be captured, what happened to his army and his negotiations with Guion. I wonder if this will be one of the short stories in the “Captive Prince World” that Pacat is planning to write? I’d love to know what happened.
@Evelyn: You know, I thought that too for a while. But then I thought, well, if Jokaste remained the evil woman we believed her to be and if the child did belong to Damen, then it’s likely that Jokaste would be executed and then Damen would have a son brought up knowing that his father killed his mother! The more I thought about it, the less “perfect” that ending felt so I was very relieved when the child didn’t turn out to be Damen’s after all.
I still do have questions about the succession though. Laurent doesn’t want to marry and he clearly identifies as gay, whereas Damen is bisexual. Before they were intimate, Laurent didn’t mind it when Damen “serviced” the Vaskian women so I guess it’s within the realm of possibility that he would consent to Damen fathering a child with someone else but I doubt Damen would marry that woman. (Illegitimate children can inherit in Akielos as long as there are no legitimate offspring so this wouldn’t be a problem.) Also, I suppose Damen and Laurent could adopt a child – there wasn’t any talk in the series that I recall about adoption but I imagine it’s possible. I would really like to know how the pair planned to arrange the succession. It has to be something they think about. They have a duty as Kings to ensure the succession and after all the struggles I just can’t believe that they would say “eh, well that will be someone else’s problem because we’ll be dead”. I think they’d have to do something but there wasn’t a clue in the book (so far as I could see) as to what that might be. That was the biggest hanging thread for me.
I disagree (with respect!) about the difference between Jokaste and Laurent. I think Laurent eventually let his defenses down with Damen because Damen was changing. When Damen first arrived in Vere, everything was black and white. So the person Jokaste had been dealing with *would not see* what was going on. Jokaste clearly saw the writing on the wall and had tried to warn him (I’m interpolating here) but he would not believe her. The idea that Kastor would betray him was such an anathema to Damen, he would not even entertain the thought. (And, even with all the changes in Damen, right at the end, he *still* gives Kastor a chance to kill him because he so badly wants to see the best in his brother.) So she did what she could to save him. When Jokaste sees Damen again in Akielos, she doesn’t know he’s changed and she doesn’t know the extent of that change. So it made sense to me she’d treat him the way she’d treated him in the past.
@Janine: Did you read the way things ended that there would be three kingdoms Janine? Vere, Akielos and a unified kingdom in the middle? I read it that the entirety of Vere and Akielos would be united as it had onces been. So, after Laurent and Damen went to their eternal reward, there would be one king (their heir, whoever that may be) for the whole region.
(I totally agree with you about Laurent not wanting to sire children by the way. And yes, it was heartbreaking but so fitting for him.)
@Evelyn Elliott: @Janine: I’d love a book about Jokaste too.
@Evelyn Elliott: Oh, I had forgotten about the Veretian taboo about bastardy. Now I’m even more keen to know how they were going to manage the succession! Maybe adoption??
I love this series so much! As an anime fan it hit so many of my weak spots and reminded me of, among other series, Berserker, which features a dark haired warrior and a blond, charismatic leader.
I think the 3rd book would have really benefitted from a higher page count — not to indulge fans but to allow the plot to some room to breathe. Things at the end read as kinda rushed and almost abbreviated to me, in particular. I can usually do without epilogues but, damn, this is one of the books that really needed it!
SPOILERS, AHOY.
What did everyone think of the court scene? It was too neat a dénouement by half, for me. Perhaps I need to reread — which I will quite happily — but the letter and Aimeric’s mother’s testimony were did not feel like the killing strokes necessary to turn the Veretian council and soldiers/court present against the Regent in an instant. Perhaps it’s because I thought such a moment needed more drama, after everything?
I am astonished, yet satisfied, that Laurent did not predict how the KingsMeet situation would unravel. He is not omniscient after all lol. As I read it I realised what the Regent planned to do and hoped ferently that somehow Laurent had worked the whole thing out ahead of time — but Pacat confirmed in the Captive Prince Live Q&A that he had not seen that reveal coming.
I was not amazed that Damen did not realise the Regent had abused Laurent — it’s a sad reality that persons miss signs that seem only obvious in retrospect.
@Kaetrin: that’s another interesting point about Jokaste.
There’s one particular fanfic I love (“Now Again a Beloved Son,” http://archiveofourown.org/works/1091079/chapters/2196071) where Jokaste is portrayed in a similar manner. She’s still dangerous, but she’s portrayed as a sympathetic and complicated woman.
There is some shockingly good fanfiction for Captive Prince. I suppose it’s appropriate, given the author got her start writing fanfiction. It’s my guilty pleasure.
@Mandi: YES!! I re-read books 1 and 2 about a month ago (I vastly under-anticipated how long it would take me LOL) and they held up exceedingly well. I did notice that I the bits I had been confused about the first time made sense to me on the second go round. Something I patted myself on the back about actually!
I saw the comment you are referring to about the escape from the cells in Fortaine. I have no problem believing that people will do extraordinary things in life and death situations so Laurent swinging the chair in a desperate last-ditch attempt to save his own life was no problem for me at all.
As for him getting out of the cells – well, I think what happened (I’m obviously interpolating, it wasn’t in the book) is that Laurent made a deal with Guion and then left him in the cell while he went up and made his presence known to the castle staff and Loyse. I suspect he also made his deal with Loyse around this time as well. Then he had Guion released. I think he’d have had to do it this way because otherwise, Guion could just have killed him; no-one knew that Laurent was in the cells so he could have gone away with it. I think Guion didn’t want to get his hands dirty but I’m not convinced he wouldn’t have killed Laurent if he had the opportunity.
I also think that Laurent must have been captured in his camp by stealth and when he freed himself at Fortaine, he sent a message to his troops to meet him there. But I’d dearly love to know what actually happened!
@Sirius: I think you will like it Sirius. We have slightly different tastes in books but I believe our Venn diagram is in agreement here! :D
@Make Kay: You and I can watch with wonder as all the things we missed are revealed in the comments! It’s the best thing about discussing books – seeing what others picked up that I missed, or discussing different takes on the same thing.
@Janine: I suppose those scenes could be taken that Laurent didn’t see himself as sexual at all. But I do agree with you that he’s gay.
@Kaetrin: “What did everyone think of the court scene? It was too neat a dénouement by half, for me. Perhaps I need to reread — which I will quite happily — but the letter and Aimeric’s mother’s testimony were did not feel like the killing strokes necessary to turn the Veretian council and soldiers/court present against the Regent in an instant.”
My gosh! I thought the exact same thing. I’m gratified to know I am not the only reader who frowned at that scene.
I was honestly puzzled when the entire court turned on the Regent at once. For all they know, the people testifying for Laurent are simply lying. I think there should have been more evidence. The book definitely should have been longer.
As for the last scene: the way I read it, Laurent was definitely proposing that they join together and make it one kingdom. In a deeper sense, I think Laurent was asking Damen to join him in a permanent union. Almost as though it were a marriage proposal or a love confession.
@Jorrie Spencer: Time flies!
Yes! I felt the same way.
Good points about Loyse (Aimeric’s mother) being introduced earlier, too.
I wanted that too.
I read this similarly, and just forgot to list that when I was discussing Laurent’s motives there. And yes, I thought he sacrificed himself so Damen would go back to the army and defeat the Regent and Kastor. He never expected Damen to stand with him instead, and you’re also right that it bookends the first Laurent POV scene — something I hadn’t thought of before. The bells proclaiming a new king at the very end of the book are also a bookend — to the beginning of Captive Prince.
@Corina: After the ambush, Damen and Laurent discuss their success, and Laurent says “I’m not used to my uncle miscalculating.” Damen says it’s because the Regent is operating at a distance, and Laurent disagrees, saying that the Regent’s inability to predict Damen is what made the difference in the outcome of the ambush. This is when I first realized that Laurent’s life depended on a lot of luck, as well as on his discipline and quick wits.
@Kaetrin: I wasn’t totally clear on it. Laurent says to Damen, “Ios is yours” and Damen says to Laurent “You have Vere,” and then Laurent says “And the centre. We both hold the centre.” And soon after that he adds, “It was one kingdom, once.”
It’s not clear if he means the center was one kingdom or all three were one kingdom, so it’s a little hard to tell whether Damen’s inference that Laurent is making a suggestion here means the suggestion — unifying a kingdom under both their rule — refers to all three, or just to the center.
For me it is muddy because if all of Vere was once under Akielon rule or vice versa, it is certainly not suggested by anything that comes earlier than this in any of the books. There’s no sign of architecture or other cultural markers that suggest such a common beginning to say, Arles and Ios. Of course, it could still be the case, but it would have been better for some groundwork to be laid if this is what it means.
SPOILERS FOR ENTIRE SERIES (though I mostly talk about Book 3)
I loved Books 1 and 2 so much that, although I was v. excited, I was afraid that my expectations for Book 3 were way too high. It turns out that Kings Rising was one of the few exceptions because I adored it! I ended up re-reading the first two books and starting Book 3 right after wrapping up Prince’s Gambit so reading Book 3 was a very smooth experience for me. Soon as I finished it, I went ahead and started it again. LOL!
FTR, it was pretty obvious that Laurent knew who Damen was circa Book 1. His disdain for Damen is rather epic from the moment Damen’s presented to him. Granted, it’s probable that Laurent suspected (and rightfully so) that having the heir to Akielos/Laurent’s brother killer was a v. nasty joke by the Regent.
Out of all three books, I found this one to have more humour than the previous two (Chapter 15 and the “Charls”, for example) as well as all those Damen/Laurent scenes that were hot and tender at the same time.
TBH, I can sorta handwave the fact that Damen was so slow on the uptake regarding Laurent’s abuse by his uncle (probably because he wasn’t looking for that? After all, he was super shocked to find out that Nicaise was the Regent’s pet in Book 1). Also, it didn’t bug me as much how stubborn he was about acknowledging that half-brother never had the best intentions. Yes, he sounded pretty sure about Kastor’s involvement in the Akielos plot but seeing him face-to-face confused him. Just like Laurent was not willing believe that his uncle would actually sentence him to death. People get tripped up by their families and all that.
My actual gripe with the book is the ending itself. I feel that the trial (which had whiffs of an Law & Order episode) was rushed. It might’ve worked nicer (for keeping the tension going just a tad longer) if the trial had been split into two or even three days. Oh, and also the Vere Council is the FAILIEST! I’m thrilled that Laurent’s begun building his own Council (that actually has a woman in it!)
Oh, did y’all know that C.S. Pacat will be releasing 3 short stories in the nearish future? The first one is about Jord/Aimeric (set during their relationship in Book 2), the second one is Damen/Laurent a few years after the ending of Book 3, and the third one is a surprise. I’m not sure why, but I’d think it’d be neat if the third short story was a bout Jokaste.
@marjorie ingall: I was always of the view that Laurent had to know who Damen was. It was the only way I could understand Laurent’s level of viciousness to Damen. If he’d merely been a random Akielon, it didn’t fit for me.
But for Laurent, Damen represents everything that is wrong in his life. He doesn’t know the Regent betrayed the King and urged him to leave the keep at Marlas and attack. He doesn’t know that the Regent arranged for the King to be killed. For Laurent, all he knows is that Damen killed his brother and in the same battle, Laurent’s father was also killed. That left Laurent without protection and it was then that the Regent started to molest him. So everything awful in Laurent’s life stems from Damen/the Akielon royal line (of which Damen is the personification). While the things Laurent did to Damen were awful, I do see what led Laurent to those acts and why. But that whole line of reasoning falls apart if Laurent didn’t know who Damen was from the beginning. When I re-read the first two books again so I’d have the story fresh in my mind for Kings Rising, it seemed even more obvious to me. From the very first reaction Laurent has to Damen and right on through.
Pacat, S.U. (2013-02-02). Captive Prince: Volume One (p. 15). Kindle Edition.
(I still did a fist pump to myself when I found out in KR that I was right!)
@Janine: I thought the groundwork for the single kingdom was laid pretty well with all the discussion of the Artesian ruins that were mentioned as being found all the way from Aquitart (at least) to Marlas to deep in Akielos. When they’re camped beside the stream on the way to Kingsmeet, Laurent speaking of the ruins: “They’re Artesian aren’t they? From the old empire, Artes. They say it used to span both our countries.”
@Corina: Oh, great point!!!! How did I miss that? I do remember that scene when you mention it, but I somehow managed to forget it later!
I do hope the third short story is about Jokaste. Would be very excited for that.
@Janine: @Janet: I think this book avoided a lot of the pitfalls of the earlier books but it obviously nevertheless carried those problematic things over. Those things happened and can’t be erased. However, I too ended the book being clear that the narrative does not condone or endorse slavery, rape, pedophilia and abuse.
The beauty of the scene in book 2 where Damen and Laurent were first intimate, when they were on the parapet/balcony thingy (technical term!) was that when Laurent asked, Damen’s answer was “I am your slave” and the subtext to that was so breathtaking I just loved it. I know that technically Damen was Laurent’s slave then and that consent should therefore be a non-issue (as in a slave cannot consent) but I nevertheless felt that there was consent here.
I, too, wanted more about Laurent’s conflict over loving the man who killed his beloved brother. The first Laurent POV scene indicated to me that he had powerfully strong (positive) feelings for Damen but when Damen and he confronted each other, both knowing who the other was, Laurent’s reactions were also visceral and negative and, authentic. Because we didn’t get much in Laurent’s POV there wasn’t really any opportunity to get inside his head to see how he reconciled these things. I wonder if any of the side stories will be in Laurent’s POV? I hope so.
@janine
“I also didn’t like that he lied to Damen about the reasons he slept with him and I read that scene as Damen not really believing him on that score, but feeling hurt nonetheless. I’m wondering how others here read that.”
I didn’t think Damen believed him either. Rather he looked him over and recognized Laurent was injured and then just took Laurent’s verbal attack as something Laurent couldn’t stop himself from doing. Laurent was fighting for his political life and his life (which were one and the same) and he was still incredibly angry about his brother’s death.
But of course it was hurtful and hard to see Damen just take it. Laurent only stops lashing out (I think) once Damen thinks his son is in the Regent’s hands, and is wounded by the news. It’s no longer in Laurent to treat Damen this way.
I guess I read Laurent as having had to be vicious for so long to survive that it’s hard for him to stop until he regains a certain level of trust with Damen; despite Damen’s gentleness in bed, Laurent feels very exposed by what they shared. The scene where he realizes Damen wouldn’t have taken advantage of him when he was drunk helped too.
Anyway, I’m going off on a tangent and this isn’t even what you asked!
Btw, I love the point about the Regent not taking Damen into his calculations.
@corine
Cool on the Artesian ruins. I’d forgotten their significance, but I liked it.
@Kaetrin
You’re right! That would have been an excellent time for Laurent to talk to Loyse and see where she stood when it came to her son. To see if she would stand for Aimeric.
@Evelyn: Yes, this!
@Corina: ooh, good point.
Okay, I’ve gotta ask.
In one of the sex scenes, it almost seemed like Laurent was deliberately trying to hint that his uncle molested him. Laurent is quite young. Laurent says that he has only been with one other person, and that it’s been a very long time since anyone touched him.
I feel the implication there is fairly clear. Laurent is quite young; he says it’s been a long time since he had sex. Logically, that means he was likely a child the last time he had sex. And his uncle is a known pedophile.
I get the impression he was on the cusp of saying it. Damen asked him what was wrong, and Laurent paused.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
@Maz: I was mostly, but not totally, okay with the trial scene because I guessed that the Regent was behind the death of Laurent’s father, as well as behind the battle at Marlas, three years ago when I read (or perhaps when I reread) book two. Although I didn’t guess that Paschal knew! When Damen asked Paschal why he served Laurent and Paschal said something like “Men find themselves in the places they put themselves,” (paraphrasing from memory), I thought Paschal chose to serve Laurent because as the former physician in the Regent’s household, he knew the Regent had abused Laurent.
The one thing about the trial scene that bugged me most was the backstory about Nicaise stealing the document proving the Regent’s guilt from Govart and giving it to Paschal. Nicaise was clever for his age, but I didn’t expect him to be *that* clever — or that disloyal to the Regent, so that aspect of the trial jarred me.
I also agree that the scene was rushed. I wanted more time for Damen to dwell on the fact that the battle at Marlas (which began when — this was only explained in book 2 — the Veretians offered parley and then attacked in the midst of it) was the Regent’s brainchild. This could have relieved Damen a little with regard to his killing of Auguste. If Laurent’s uncle hadn’t talked the king into pulling this trick, Auguste never would have died. There could have been a real parley instead.
Thanks for the scoop on Pacat’s plans for more stories in this world. I’m not sure what I think about Jord / Aimeric — there’s no HEA there. But I’d love to read more about Damen, Laurent and (hopefully!) Jokaste.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
@Kaetrin: That illegitimacy taboo was on my mind the whole time I was thinking about the succession, and about unifying the kingdoms, way back when I was reading book two for the first time. I think they’ll have a tough time of it, getting past this hurdle, the hurdle of slavery being so accepted in Akielos, and the enmity of their two peoples. For this reason I’m looking forward to seeing how Pacat handles all that in the short story she is planing to write about Damen and Laurent’s future. At least the succession issue may become easier to resolve if they are uniting their kingdoms!
@Evelyn: I am tempted, so tempted to click on the Jokaste fanfic link. But that could be a deep rabbit hole.
@Kaetrin: I loved your explanation of how Laurent got out of Fortaine’s cells!
@Evelyn:
Now that Corina has pointed out the Artesian ruins, I’m inclined to think you are right. But I wanted to add here, that when Damen realized Laurent was still wearing the other slave cuff, even though he no longer had to, I read that as a kind of wedding symbol as well — much like a wedding ring.
Incidentally, I also LOVED Damen’s initial maneuvering of Laurent to force him to wear that slave cuff by gifting it to him in front of all their armies’ upper echelons. I was all “Damen, you go!” For once, he maneuvered Laurent into something he didn’t want to do, so the shoe could be on the other foot.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
@Kaetrin: The first time I read Vol. 1 (Captive Prince) and Vol. 2, (Prince’s Gambit) I didn’t think Laurent knew. I thought Laurent could still hate Damen not as “a random Aikelon” but as someone who had served in the Akielon army, including at the battle of Marlas, and was also named Damen. So I thought Laurent saw him as a stand in for the real Damen, but didn’t realize he was actually that Damen.
When I reread the books immediately after finishing Vol. 2, I read with an eye toward whether that was actually the case and I started to change my mind and realized that Laurent knew. There are so many lines that clue us in to that ( and esp. the fact that Laurent, who never drinks anything but water, gets drunk the day he is given Damen) but they are deliberately written so that they can be read either way, which was very clever, and reminded me of Megan Whalen Turner’s writing, in that Turner’s books are written to be read one way, and then reread a different way.
I have to say though, that the first time I read Prince’s Gambit, thinking that Laurent didn’t know, that was such a powerful reading experience. The whole time Damen was agonizing over having killed Laurent’s brother and Laurent not knowing, I was right there with him, and I felt like the power shifted in their relationship multiple times, even though Damen was for most of the book Laurent’s slave. The idea that Laurent, who had never consented to sex with anyone, finally consents to sex with Damen without knowing who Damen was, pretty much blew my brain out, and served as a sort of balancing of the scales for what Laurent did to Damen in Captive Prince (Vol. 1). Because it’s not like Laurent could fully give consent if he did not know Damen’s true identity.
When I figured out that Laurent knew, that was amazeballs. So I think the books can work both ways, for readers who can deal with nonconsensual situations. Readers who can’t should pretty much stay way from these books, because the scene in which Laurent directs Ancel’s oral assault on Damen is rape, pure and simple IMO.
There is a part of me that wishes that the reveal to Damen that Laurent knew all along had been stretched out more here. If Damen had thought Laurent didn’t know when they had sex but only found out later, and it took a while for Damen to learn that no, that knowledge had been there from day one, that could have worked really well too, but it would have been more agonizing for Damen.
In any case, that we can notice new things when we reread these books is a big part of what I appreciate about them.
@Jorrie Spencer: Yes to all of this!
Can you link to the author Q&A? I’d love to watch it.
@Janine: Thank you for this. I have no issue with spoilers at all, and actually prefer them. Once I read through the rest of the thread I will let you know if I have any additional questions.
@Jorrie Spencer:
That was how I read it too.
I thought he stopped earlier. I’ll have to pay attention to that during my reread.
I was kind of floored that he would think otherwise of Damen and wanted him to trust Damen more, but when I stopped to think about it I realized it has nothing to do with Damen and everything to do with his uncle. It’s heartbreaking that trust comes so hard for Laurent.
Hello everyone! Great review! I loved this book so much! I do wish the promised epilogue had been in KR, because I think it would have made the reading experience feel more complete. Oh well, I guess I’ll just print it out once it’s released so I can stick it to the end of my copy…
Regarding the Artesian empire: even though it’s only named in Kings Rising (reasonably early on), in PG Laurent and Damen walk through some ruins Laurent used to play with Auguste in. I thought it was a very subtle piece of worldbuilding that only reveled its thematic importance in KR.
@Corina Whereas Jokaste’s hair was dark in the self-pubbed versions, in the Penguin versions she’s already blonde!
@Jorrie Spencer: I saw Aimeric as a victim (of the Regent, and, even of his own father’s political machinations) and I thought that Laurent in the end saw him that way too, so it made sense that he would go to Aimeric’s mother – the other most likely person to see Aimeric that way. I think Laurent would still have punished Aimeric. I don’t think he would have let him off or anything but I think he nonetheless felt pity for the child Aimeric had been.
@Janine & @ Jorrie As to the conflict between Laurent’s words and his actions, I am half convinced that Laurent deliberately held things back from Damen in Kings Rising because he didn’t think Damen would see what he saw. And, I am also half convinced that Damen accepted this because he thought the same thing!
@Kaetrin:
Here it is! It’s a delight to watch. Pacat and her editor are adorably giddy throughout: C.S. Pacat Live Stream: https://youtu.be/Z0z-UYz-V6A
@Eve: Yes, I wondered even back in PG whether there would be a joining of the kingdoms so I was half expecting it. (Mainly because I’m all about the HEA and it seemed to me that’s what would have to happen for them to be able to spend any actual time together, rather than any clever prescience or anything, I hasten to add! )
@Imani: thank you!!
@Janine: I thought Laurent stopped lashing out much earlier too — for diplomacy’s sake, initially, but the Okton (sp?) + Makedon’s uncle’a griva did the rest lol. When they both admitted they missed each other — this book is such a romantic read.
@Kaetrin: It’s here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0z-UYz-V6A
@Evelyn: I think there was probably a part of Laurent who wants to tell Damen, but I didn’t read him as being on the cusp of speaking of it, rather circling around it tentatively, perhaps trying to see if Damen had any chance of seeing beyond what he was saying. But I’m not sure!
@Janine “I was kind of floored that he would think otherwise of Damen and wanted him to trust Damen more, but when I stopped to think about it I realized it has nothing to do with and everything to do with his uncle. It’s heartbreaking that trust comes so hard for Laurent.”
Yeah, Laurent’s too upset to even think clearly. Even made me wonder if his uncle used alcohol to manipulate him.
@Evelyn: I think he wanted Damen to know and was dropping hint after hint after hint but Damen was just blind about it. It was the one area which I felt Damen was just a little too dense actually. I can buy (mostly) that he didn’t want to see it, but it did stretch my credulity a little even so.
In fact, there was a scene in KR where I thought that’s what Damen was talking about!! Let me find it…
Here it is:
Damen was talking about killing Auguste, ostensibly, but I also thought he was talking about the Regent’s abuse. But I was wrong because Damen didn’t know until Kingsmeet.
@Janine: I definitely want the Damen/Laurent story and I’m so hoping the third is either Jokaste or Laurent’s capture and escape from Fortaine.
I wasn’t sure why The Regent didn’t just kill Govart. He was a dangerous piece to leave on the board and I found it difficult to believe that The Regent would scruple to kill him. Maybe Govart had hidden the papers with someone in an “in case of my death…” thing but I’d have liked that more spelled out.
@Janine: I will be disappointed if the succession isn’t addressed in the epilogue/short featuring Damen and Laurent after Kings Rising.
(re my theory about Laurent’s escape: thx! :D)
@Kaetrin
‘I think he wanted Damen to know and was dropping hint after hint after hint but Damen was just blind about it.’
I actually interpreted this slightly differently. I think it’s not rare for victims to want their loved ones to know what happened to them without having to go through the pain of revealing it, or dealing with the aftermath. I think Laurent desperately wanted him to know and, at the same time, he needed Damen to a) be the kind of person who would never imagine such a thing, and b) see him as something other than a victim. Laurent can be direct and honest about his feelings, but he was not forthcoming at all about this. I think it’s very in-character for Damen not to realise, and for Laurent to love him because of it.
@Janine: I was convinced that Laurent had always known by the time I got to the first intimate scene in Prince’s Gambit so I always read it that way. But I completely agree the stories, right up until the reveal in Kings Rising, can be read either way. That is one of the beauties of Pacat’s writing IMO. All those tricksy layers! That said, I don’t think the story would have worked for me if Laurent had not known all along. I don’t think I’d have been as understanding of his actions otherwise (not condoning or approving of course, just understanding) and I think it would have, in my eyes, undermined Laurent’s super-clever mystique.
@Eve: Yes, that works too. I can see that.
I think my hesitation is because I identify with Damen’s obtuseness. I figure if *I* can see it, anyone can! And it was *so* obvious to me, I was all, “come on Damen! Keep up!”
@Evelyn: Re. the scene between Laurent and Damen in which Laurent says he’s not a virgin but it’s been a long time. Laurent is twenty when he says it, and “a long time” could mean three or four years to someone like Damen, who is sexually active. So it doesn’t necessarily imply that he is a survivor of childhood abuse. It only reads that way to us because we had already guessed the truth.
I think Damen had enough clues to put it together, though. He didn’t see it because he wanted to remain oblivious.
@Corina and Eve: I have the original editions and I noticed that continuity issue with Jokaste’s hair color! But it makes sense for her to be blond, since that has been presented as Damen’s type.
@Kaetrin: I agree Aimeric was a victim, very much so. That doesn’t excuse his killing of Orlant, though. He was young, but I think the point was made in PG that Laurent was only one year older.
@Imani: I loved that Okton scene, and the griva scene was hilarious. With the Okton scene I thought at first it would turn out to have been an assassination attempt — that one of the other riders was in the Regent’s pay. And I still wish that it had been, but I loved the scene anyway.
@Kaetrin: I wondered if Damen knew when I was reading that scene, but I wasn’t sure. Damen has been blind to so much, often because he didn’t want to know, so I was prepared for either possibility.
@Janine: Oh yes, I don’t think Aimeric’s behaviour was excused by him being a(nother) victim of the Regent. He did some shitty things, including to Jord (it’s why I’m ambivalent about reading that forthcoming short actually, but I do think he came to care for Jord, even so.)
@Kaetrin:
I think these things were supposed to be reconciled by two things: (A) The reveal that the Regent was behind the assassination of Laurent’s father and more importantly, behind the battle of Marlas, which led to Auguste’s death, and (B) Laurent’s killing of Kastor. Very late in the book, there’s this:
(p. 340)
I think the first paragraph of that is poorly written and confusing. How can Damen see an expression in Laurent’s eyes that he remembers from his own? Did he look in a mirror while thinking about having killed the brother of the man he loves? If so I don’t think we’ve seen him do that. Otherwise, he can’t possibly remember an expression in his own eyes.
Also, what does Laurent not flinch from? I think it’s supposed to be his own killing of his lover’s half-brother, but it reads like he’s not flinching from his expression, which he cannot possibly see.
So it’s a clunky paragraph (which is disappointing because when Pacat is at her best she writes very, very well) and it marred this moment for me. But even if it hadn’t, I think I still would have wanted Laurent’s own thoughts on the topic of Auguste’s killing, in his own words, whether in internal narration or in dialogue.
@Kaetrin: Laurent’s escape from Fortaine could make for a great story too, but I’m hoping for Jokaste’s. As I said, I could read a whole book about her now, and she deserves a HEA.
Great point about the Regent and Govart. It should have been explained better.
@Kaetrin: I’ll be disappointed if it isn’t addressed also, but I suspect it will be.
@Eve: Agreed.
@Kaetrin:
Yes, I think you’re probably right. By the time I read this book, I very much wanted him to have known all along.
@Janine:
Yes, agree. It was a little clumsy.
I still felt that while there was a symmetry between the killing-the-brother thing, it was different. Auguste was only ever presented as a good guy. He was honourable in battle and all the other things. Kastor was a weasel. Sure, he and Damen had history together as children but clearly, Kastor didn’t feel the same way about Damen as Damen felt about him. Kastor killed his and Damen’s father and sent Damen into slavery. It is never suggested that Auguste would do anything remotely resembling that. So I didn’t see them as “equal”. There was a symmetry and a kind of bookend but they were not “the same”.
And, I didn’t see that by killing Kastor Laurent reconciled his conflict between loving Damen and Damen being responsible for Auguste’s death. I did think that the Regent’s involvement mitigated Damen’s involvement (but not erased it) and you’re right, I think it could have done with more exposition from both Damen’s and Laurent’s perspective.
@Kaetrin:
It didn’t feel equal to me either, but I thought it was, in combination with the reveal that the Regent was behind Marlas and behind the King of Vere’s death, intended to feel like a balancing of all the scales. Like you, I wanted more than that though!
Yes. We are on the same page. In my head, I like to fantasize that Laurent knew that Auguste would want (or if Laurent believes in an afterlife, maybe even that Auguste wants) Laurent to be happy, even if the reason for that happiness is Damen’s love.
@Janine: SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
I too figured out that the Regent was deeply involved with how things went down in Marlas and the coup at Ios. In some ways his end game was actually what Damen and Laurent had begun to take steps towards at the end of the book: to unite all the kingdoms so that Vere would become an empire. His contingency plans had contingency plans of their own. The Regent was not infallible, however. There was 1 mistake he made: he didn’t get Paschal killed. Who, by the time the book ended, was the only person who knew all of the story and not just what Paschal’s brother wrote as he lay dying.
Although young, Nicaise was definitely quite precocious so I can see him picking up a little bit of tricks from the Regent during the time they were together (which, I sorta assume was quite often). I can imagine Nicaise handing over the document to Paschal shortly before Laurent is sent to Acquitart or maybe sometime earlier during the first book. He might’ve thought of it as a type of insurance, maybe something to hold over the Regent if things got dire? Though, sadly, he never got to play that card.
I had an inkling that Paschal was going to turn somewhere near the climax of the novel because he’s been one of those secondary characters that keep popping up. He took care of Damen in Book 1 and (to a lesser extent) Book 2 plus he looked after Laurent since he was a baby. So it seems that Paschal was the Regent’s blind spot. Who woulda thought?
I’m fine with the third short story being about anyone except the Regent for I don’t think there’s been any other villain who I’ve despised so much before!
@Janine: Actually, I think Auguste would understand what Damen did. They both are/were warriors and their “duty” was to fight for their respective countries. I would think that Auguste would see what Damen did as having “honour” and he would not see it as murder, but the necessary and inevitable consequence of their positions and their countries being at war.
So, yeah, I agree that Auguste would want Laurent to be happy and, I even think he would see Damen as a fitting partner for Laurent.
You know what annoys me?
I actually didn’t figure out the whole “the Regent was behind Marlas” thing. I was totally ignorant. I also didn’t realize that Laurent knew Damen’s identity. I had no clue about Jokaste’s baby, either.
I only found out when every fan everywhere began speculating about that stuff.
I’m dense. I wish I had stayed ignorant so I could’ve been surprised.
@Kaetrin:
You know something else I would love to know? What was it that Laurent offered Nikandros when he first suggested working together, or else what it was that Nikandros proposed to Laurent. We know that the messages between Laurent and Nikandros were sent early on in Prince’s Gambit. At that point, Nikandros had no idea Damen was alive and Laurent was planning to fight to the death with Damen in a fair fight once (or if) Damen helped him reach the border alive.
That being the case, I’m doubtful that all that Nikandros was offered, or proposed in his own offer, was to be Kyros of Ios. I think it far more likely that the deal they made hinged on Nikandros being made King of Akielos after they defeated the Regent and Kastor. But of course, things shook out very differently, with Damen coming back from the dead. And Nikandros strikes me as not without some ambition.
I would have liked for this to be discussed between Damen and Nikandros. It could have been very interesting, and could have fit in nicely in the scene in which Damen tells Nikandros that Laurent wants Delpha.
Responding to some things I missed earlier in the discussion:
@Evelyn Elliott:
If Damen married a woman who intended to live with him, bear his children and support him as a consort, but he ignored her much of the time because he loved Laurent, I would have a hard time with that. I don’t like it much when the HEA comes at someone else’s expense. It would be like a Prince Charles / Camilla / Princess Diana situation. Not romantic at all.
If Damen genuinely fell in love with his wife and Laurent didn’t have something similar with someone else, that would also feel unequal.
But Damen taking a wife might work for me if it was some kind of arrangement like he had with the Vaskians in book 2. Say, if he married a Vaskian queen (or the queen of another such matriarchal kingdom, who had a satisfying life of her own to lead over there), and they had some kind of long distance shared custody agreement, but didn’t live together or get together much except for procreation purposes. When Damen had sex with the Vaskians in book 2, I thought Laurent was turned on, so I don’t think Laurent would mind.
@Kaetrin:
That’s a great point and one I didn’t think of (I was on the same page with everything else you said about Jokaste, though).
@Imani:
More drama (also more obstacles from the Regent) would have been good there. The scene wasn’t as lacking for me as for many others here though.
That wasn’t clear to me from the text of the book, but it makes sense in hindsight.
@Maz:
Good point, but Damen risked his life on that. But the bigger issue for me was that Damen brought Guion along to Ios because he trusted Guion to speak on Laurent’s behalf, instead of against him! Could Damen possibly have been more clueless there? This was after Guion’s treachery at the border battle in PG, and after Aimeric’s betrayal was revealed.
Maybe Damen didn’t really trust Guion, but chose to bring him on the miniscule chance that Guion would help Laurent, because Damen only had straws left to grasp at. But if so, I would have liked for that reasoning to be explained in Damen’s thoughts, because as it was, I thought this decision was too trusting even for Damen.
@Janine: I agree with you re a potential marriage for Damen. I’d not want him to be married to someone and for that woman (or Laurent for that matter) to be left out in the cold. That would spoil the HEA for me also.
@Kaetrin: I think Auguste would understand Damen’s actions in killing him, yes. Would he understand Laurent falling for Damen after that though? I don’t know (Auguste is said to have been a straightforward thinker, and less complex than Laurent). But I think he would want Laurent to be happy.
@Evelyn: I did guess that the Regent was behind the King of Vere’s death, but only because the Regent wants two things out of life — world domination and young boys to abuse. The deaths of Laurent’s father and brother gave him access to the throne, and to Laurent. So I thought he had to have somehow arranged for it.
And re. the Regent being behind Marlas, I only guessed that because I thought it would partly exonerate Damen, and some evening of the balance sheet was needed.
We all miss things though. I didn’t figure out that Laurent knew about Damen until after reading others’ speculations about it, and then rereading the first two books to see what I thought. Likewise, I only guessed that Jokaste would have a baby she would claim was Damen’s because of some speculation I read years ago. And I missed a lot of the things that others have brought up in this discussion (like the one unified kingdom plans, which I had speculated on when reading book 2 but still didn’t get out of reading book 3!).
Missing things is a lot of what makes the books satisfying for me. So I sympathize with your desire to have come to this book without reading any of the earlier speculations. Part of me is sorry I’ve had three years to imagine and speculate on and discuss with others all the things that could possibly happen in this book. It does spoil a bit. But I still enjoyed the book.
If Damen deceived his wife, I agree, that would be cruel of him. And that would ruin the HEA.
But I honestly cannot imagine Damen doing that. Maybe I have rose-colored glasses on, but it seems like he has a very strong sense of honesty and fairness. I would like to think that if he took a wife, they would discuss these things beforehand.
@Janine: Maybe Damen didn’t really trust Guion, but chose to bring him on the miniscule chance that Guion would help Laurent, because Damen only had straws left to grasp at. But if so, I would have liked for that reasoning to be explained in Damen’s thoughts, because as it was, I thought this decision was too trusting even for Damen.
Hmm, I dunno. Unlike Laurent, Damen’s nature is to trust people (based on his denial about Kastor’s involvement throughout most of the series, we can guess he tends to see the best in people). His surprise at Guion’s “sudden” betrayal is probably a mix of Damen thinking that Guion had truly repented for siding with the Regent + the fact that Guion never tried to escape (with or without his wife). From what I remember, there’s no description of the conditions Guion and Loyse were under when Damen and Laurent (plus their respective armies) made their way to Ios.
So Damen felt no need to doubt his faith in Guion’s potential testimony at the trial. Thankfully, though, Laurent had a hidden card after securing Loyse’ testimony.
@Evelyn: But I honestly cannot imagine Damen doing that. Maybe I have rose-colored glasses on, but it seems like he has a very strong sense of honesty and fairness. I would like to think that if he took a wife, they would discuss these things beforehand.
Oh, there would totally be a long discussion. Vere culture is v. focused on lineage (to the point of implementing measures to avoid bastardy as much as possible). So, given that Laurent doesn’t seem too keen on having sex with women (due to most probably identifying as gay) and Damen doesn’t give off the vibe that he’d be OK with bedding other people now that he’s commited to a relationship with Laurent (at least that’s how I’m reading it), I’m thinking that they would do some kind of adoption deal. Maybe secure an allegiance with, let’s say, Patras by naming one of the Patras king’s offspring as heir to the new empire?
Given that we haven’t heard much (if anything) about surrogacy in the CP ‘verse, I’m not sure that would be an option Damen or Laurent would bring to the table.
I’ve been really enjoying all the comments – half the fun of reading a book is discussing it after!
I also enjoyed it emotionally but had some problems intellectually. I’m willing to suspend a bit of disbelief but there were just a few too many things I wondered about, right from the start with what happened to Laurens army when he got captured. There was a throwaway line that sounded like they’d been killed, but then he has an army by the time he sees Damen again.
But my big gripe is the denouement. Why did Laurent and Damen even go to the kingsmeet when by that stage they both knew that Jokaste was gone and the baby wasn’t Damen’s?
Why did no one suspect that the Regent had a reason to spread lies about Laurent (ie with Laurent out of the way the regent would be king). Ditto when Kastor started saying that Damen had killed their father.
If Jokaste was actually trying to protect Damen, why did she send him to kingsmeet where the regent would be waiting?
So many questions! I did love the book and want to see more emotional moments (eg nikandros warming to Laurent, actual ILY discussion between D and L etc etc) but I felt like it was not as well thought out as previous books. Which is a shame, because I’m sure Pacat is capable of it.
I am a bit more than a year late but…we have to talk about Nicaise.
@Ieskela: Sure – what about Nicaise would you like to discuss?
@Kaetrin: I think she meant it as a figure of speech.
Has anyone here read the new short story? I have not. I’m curious if the succession question is answered there but don’t want to spend $1.99 for 30 pages.
@Kaetrin: The dynamic between Laurent and Nicaise. I think there’s a lot that could be said of it.
(There’s a lot I would like to say here but unfortunately, I broke some bones in my right hand recently and could only type with my left, which is hard. -_-” )
If there’s a discussion you could open up about it, I would find it a delight to read it. :)
@Ieskela: I’m sorry to hear about your hand leskela. Ouch!
It’s been a long time since I read Kings Rising so I’m not sure I have anything particularly profound to say about Nicaise. Maybe Janine can chime in?
The blog’s not going anywhere though so when your hand gets better, if we haven’t come up with anything by then, please feel free to start us off! :)
@Kaetrin: It’s not like I’m any more profound than you!
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
Here’s basically what I recall. It’s pretty clear that there’s a connection between Nicaise and Laurent because both have been abused by Laurent’s uncle. If memory serves, Laurent essentially offers to free Nicaise in the first book and Nicaise declines because he’s (IMO) justifiably scared of the whole sitaution he’s in and also, doesn’t want to show vulnerability.
In book two the uncle sends Laurent Nicaise’s skull and at first it appears he does this to solely mess with Laurent’s head. The conclusion Damen reaches is that Nicaise must have hit puberty and gotten too old for Laurent’s uncle.
In book three we learn that before he died, Nicaise had stolen the documents and given them to the doctor, I think? I’m fuzzy on this part. I read this as indicating that he decided to make his move from the uncle’s side to Laurent’s, but too late to save his own skin.
It’s a heartbreaking and super-disturbing aspects of the books and sometimes I wish Pacat had been less brutal about this whole aspect of Laurent’s uncle. I did initially think you meant “We’ve got to talk about that” as a figure of speech, Lekesla, and were trying to indicate you had issues with what Pacat had happen to Nicaise. I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you did.
King’s Rising felt rushed relative to the first two books (esp. Prince’s Gambit, my favorite in the series) and didn’t have the same depth. With the passage of time, I feel my grade should have been a B rather than a B+.
Interestingly, I am currently rereading Megan Whalen Turner’s Queen’s Thief series which has certain similarities, including an ancient Greek vibe, enemy countries the protagonists want to unite, unexpected strategems and twists, and an amazing romance at its center (as with Pacat’s books, the romance doesn’t start until the second half of book two), but is written with greater subtlety, less brutality, no rape, and fresher gender role dynamics. A fifth book is coming out in May, and I’m super eager for it.
Anyhow, I do recommend that series highly to fans of Pacat’s series, though the first book reads more MG than YA, and you have to stick with the slow start.
@Janine: What I most remember about Nicaise (after all this time) is that I didn’t like him but I felt very sorry for him because he had been horribly abused and had (what I understand to be) a not uncommon reaction to his abuser (in that he thought it was true love). His end was hideous and he was a victim even when he was victimising others. I think maybe Laurent’s compassion for Nicaise helped to show him as a more nuanced character than I would maybe have found him otherwise?
I haven’t changed my grade for Kings Rising. And, unlike Janine, I didn’t feel it was rushed at all. There were some things I didn’t like but overall, I still think it was a fabulous end to a wonderful series. I’m so looking forward to whatever CS Pacat comes up with next.
(Also, I got to meet her recently and she’s just as awesome in person as I had been expecting. Super friendly and lovely.)
@Kaetrin: Oh, I liked Nicaise. I had way too much sympathy for him not to forgive all his misbehavior. I laid all that at the foot of Laurent’s uncle. Nicaise was only a child. Thirteen, right?
Maybe rushed was the wrong word but it was certainly paced differently from Prince’s Gambit, and the slower pacing of Prince’s Gambit worked better for me.
As, I was saying…… the Laurent-Nicaise dynamic. There are at least 5 instances that I would like to dwell on:
[Note: Before you go further, let me just say that it’s been 3 months since I read Kings Rising, and several months since I read the first two books. My memory’s quite fuzzy about particular details by now, but I do recall instances that, if not the same, are similar to those I’ve outlined below.]
1.) When Laurent was teasing Nicaise, asking the latter if he would like to be the former’s pet.
2.) The times they went to great heights just to out-bitch each other. Case in point: Laurent’s plot with Erasmus, and Nicaise losing the bet and having to turn over his sapphire drop earring to Laurent.
3.) Nicaise standing on Laurent’s side and practically begging the Regent to spare the Prince’s life, an act which resulted to his pretty head being chopped off his delicate shoulders…..
4.) Laurent looking out the window, his fingers curled over Nicaise’s earring, after he was presented with Nicaise’s severed head
5.) Laurent thinking of “Nicaise, standing in the courtyard with a handful of sapphires”. (There’s something about this line that’s so powerful, enough to stir something in me when I read it.)
Their interactions always had a hostile superficiality, but beneath it, there is something much deeper that connects them. And I cannot even begin to describe it but I love these two so much. I honestly pay much attention to what little moments they have in the novels, more than the development between Laurent and Damen.
Don’t get me wrong, I recognize full well the beauty and the intricacies of the relationship that blossomed between the two princes. But with Laurent and Nicaise, there is just something so tender between them, something so wordlessly touching. I cannot form sentences for it, but when I think hard about it, their parallelism is enough to make me tear up. It’s a connection that only the two of them can fully understand without having to say anything. And I find that so heartbreakingly beautiful. <3
@Ieskela: It’s a connection borne of shared trauma and grief I think (even though Nicaise didn’t recognise it as such) and it stands apart from anything other type of relationship in the book. Added to that, Laurent desperately wanted to save Nicaise in, I would suppose, much the same way he wished someone had saved him.