Koen’s coin

When does the main character cross the line between likable and unlikable? Do we even need to “like” the main character? How far can we, as authors, go before we cross that line and readers say, “that’s enough”? These questions popped into my mind recently as I traveled further down the road of the dark fantasy and grimdark genres. My Absolution of the Morning Star series is an epic dark fantasy. As such, it has consistent darkness that lies just below the surface. Yet, it is not always grim and hopeless. There are plenty of moments of levity, and light appears in flashes like a partly cloudy day. My main character, Erikson Gray, has flaws and chooses poorly, but ultimately he is good. Being only on book three of six, I don’t entirely know if Erik’s end will be happy, but it will not be hopeless.

But for Koen, my current project, I wanted to go even darker. It takes place in the same world but happens before Erik is born. Thus, it has to be grim. For those who have not read my series, Koen is Erik’s father whose death in the first chapter of the Dawn of the Lightbearer (book 1) sets a series of events in motion. Conflicting stories of Koen fill Erik’s world, and he never truly knows which are truth or fabrication. For some, Koen was pure evil, and others just a tragic figure. I want to continue to play with this dichotomy as I tell the story of Koen’s three-year disappearance, where he transforms from Emperor Vesper’s favorite son to the great villain (real or imagined) of Lucardia.

I don’t want Koen to be necessarily good or entirely likable. I want him to be a flawed individual thrust into the terrible world immediately after Emperor Vesper’s twenty-year war of unification. Confronted with difficult choices, I want Koen to be wrong, yet, in his poor decisions, the reader can still understand why he makes the choices that he does. I think this is a much more honest way of writing. But, in choosing poorly, Koen commits “evils,” and ultimately, my question boils down to when does he become evil? I’m happy with a gray area, but I’m wary of going full demon. I don’t want Erik’s father to be a villain. The onus of that falls squarely on the world created by the emperor and others. Koen will suffer for his actions, and he knows he will suffer. He enters this hell willingly in the hopes that he can pull Lucardia out of its cycle of violence and mayhem. For Koen to have that noble mission, there always needs to remain a semblance of good in his heart.

I’ve just completed the first chapter of Koen’s tale, so I am far from knowing if I will succeed in my task. The reader’s introduction to Koen will be a shock, but I hope it doesn’t scare them away. I hope I leave just enough doubt in the reader’s mind, so they say, “who is this guy” and keep reading. Ultimately, Koen’s story will not have a happy ending. That is immediately apparent if you’ve read Dawn of the Lightbearer, but sometimes that happens in this world. We all constantly flip the coin, going between highs and lows, and for some of us, our end happens to land on the unlucky side. But our death is not what defines us. What is truly us is our life and its impact on the world. In Koen’s sacrifice, he creates a spark of hope, and I think that is poetic and a story worth telling.

Cheers!