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laurents-laces · 8 months

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It took me 84 years, but here's the notes for Pacat's Instagram live on January 22, 2022! You can find previous summaries here. This time I added a section for things that involve both capri and dark rise because there was a lot of that.

“It’s funny, I tend to write, as I think back on Dark Rise and then before that, Captive Prince, I tend to write these book ones that kind of don't necessarily reveal themselves until the end or cohere until the end or maybe are written for the re-read rather than necessarily for the first read… I kind of have this philosophy that difficult pleasures are the most enjoyable because you have to work to achieve them, and so you know, I like the idea that you get rewarded at the end of Dark Rise for reaching the end.”

Important Updates

There has been some progress on the capri News™, though it was epically delayed by the pandemic. It’s not a fourth book, hardcovers, Laurent’s POV, or a TV series

There were updates about Dark Rise and Fence too but none of it is news anymore because this happened so long ago. The capri fandom is just unlucky like that

Pacat has a new project! It’s very different and is more adult in tone than his previous works. It’s kind of monster-horror-gore, he’s been wanting to do something with a shounen horror vibe like Berserk or Attack on Titan. It’s coming in the distant future, not soon

Captive Prince

Pacat hasn't heard of the capri fandom term Smaurent (small Laurent) but thinks that the idea of him does exist in the books as he was a very different person as a young child. Pacat likes writing characters who explore the idea that one’s past leaves fingerprints on one’s present self and Laurent is the most extreme version of this that she’s written

A fan said that they think of “Damianos V” as being a roman numeral, so that Damen would be the fifth King Damianos. Pacat really liked the idea

Pacat cried for a really long time while writing Nicaise’s death scene. Got a few strange looks as he sat in the Melbourne State Library with tears streaming down his face for a few hours. Nicaise’s death was planned from the beginning, he was always a bittersweet character to write

Laurent is such a private person. Writing more from his POV would risk exploding the mystery of his character and might kill some of the tension in capri

The capri News is like a missive from Rohan- it's on its way and it'll arrive at some point, just when you need it most

A fourth capri book isn’t completely out of the question but there isn’t one planned for now

The Brazilian capri covers are their own thing but they don’t represent the books well. They have a very dark-ages-hard-masc-medieval aesthetic

How tall is Damen? Laurent thinks that he’s a foot taller and that sometimes it feels like more

Orlant: Rough exterior, heart of gold, didn't deserve what happened to him

Pacat pronounces Vere like Veer (veer off course) but that is not the correct pronunciation that Laurent and the Veretians use so feel free to pronounce it how you want

Pacat wasn’t really involved in the art for the Japanese edition but has been a fan of Chinatsu Kurahana for a long time. Usually the author doesn’t get much input for foreign editions. The Japanese publisher was very welcoming and let Pacat have some input, but he was such a fan of the artist that he let her do whatever her vision was. He gave a bit of a description for clothing but didn’t tweak any character concepts once they were drawn because he likes having different versions of the characters in different media. We shouldn’t think of it as an official version of the characters or as Laurent’s canon hair length

Dark Rise

The submission date for the Dark Heir manuscript was June 2022. At the time of this live, Pacat was just past writing the midpoint of the first draft, heading towards the climax. The climax has been planned for a long time

We absolutely get James's POV in Dark Heir. Pacat had just finished writing one of his chapters when this live happened

How would Anharion describe Sarcean in one word? The answer would change depending on whether Anharion was wearing the collar. If he was wearing it he would say whatever Sarcean wanted him to say

James is not named after the gay king james (James I of England)

We will find out about James’s mother at some point, either in book 2 or later

Pacat’s current favourite Dark Rise character to write is a new character from book two

It was important that the stewards were racially diverse. When Pacat was pitching Dark Rise he had little pictures of the characters to show what the aesthetic of the book is, it was art that he found online. Things might have changed since then but this was three or four years ago and it was really hard to find fantasy imagery of non-white characters. If you wanted to find mages or warriors in suits of armor, all the artwork had white characters. So he wanted to include different types of people in the traditional western fantasy aesthetic

Favourite part of Dark Rise #1 is the ending because it was all of the pieces falling into place

Cyprian’s surname is not St. Clair but saying more than that would be a spoiler

Stewards have family in the outside world

Pacat would love to write short stories for Dark Rise like the ones for capri but she’s a slow writer so it would be some time in the future

Dark Rise/Capri

Justice’s appearance wasn’t specifically influenced by danmei, he has long hair because all the Stewards have long hair. The Stewards have long hair because everyone in the Old World had long hair and the Stewards carry on the sacred traditions of the past. This was inspired by the delightful long-haired-Laurent contingent in the capri fandom because they were so underserved by Captive Prince. No one in capri other than Ancel has really long, butt-length hair so Pacat wanted to change that in a new series

Where do you get inspiration for jewelry like Nicaise’s earring or James’s collar? Pacat has been thinking lately about the importance of creating a strong visual aesthetic for a character. The earring was created as a plot device. It’s long because it had to be very gaudy and noticeable because Laurent would use it as a disguise later, and it has blue sapphires because blue is Laurent’s colour. It's one single earring instead of a pair because it felt more poignant as a memento. The earring was more about purpose than aesthetics, but Pacat paid more attention to aesthetics in Dark Rise. When working on Fence, Johanna is so good at creating characters with an iconic visual look, and Pacat was thinking about that when he created James. He started with the idea of red because it's the colour of blood. The collar started off as a necklace that was a drop of blood, but it was changed to be more interesting and to have more of an impact. Pacat often thinks about the scene from the Hunger Games when Katniss is about to prove herself to the sponsors and they're not paying attention to her so she shoots the apple in the boar's mouth. A lesser author would’ve had her nail the bullseye but Suzanne Collins souped it up one more level, to come up with something slightly cooler or more imaginative. So Pacat goes through his finished drafts and thinks, is there anything I can turn up to 11? And the necklace wasn't at 11. So he thought about making it a choker, then a collar. A choker with rubies looks like a slit throat and that’s a very cool image, so that’s what it was changed to

Pacat is an only child so Tom and Auguste as older brothers aren’t based on personal experiences, but the idea of siblings has a strong importance to her. Dark Rise is dedicated to her half-sister Mandy who committed suicide when she was 15, which was the year Pacat was born

Fence Comic

The process of creating Fence: First Pacat writes the script, then it gets sent to the illustrator Johanna. It goes through a few rounds of notes where the two of them talk about the kinds of things they want to see happen, what would be cute or great in the upcoming storyline, and then Johanna does sketches. Then art edits happen, but usually the art is so incredible that it doesn’t need many edits so the only usual change is to make sure that Nicholas is left handed when he’s fencing. Then Boom (the publisher) looks over it before it goes to inks, then to the colourist Joana Lafuente, then to Jim Campbell for lettering. Jim places the speech bubbles and fits the script onto the page. Where the bubbles are placed and which words are emphasized makes a big impact on the flow of the script. Then everything gets sent back to Pacat for proofreading and editing of the lettering and then it’s done

Pacat worked very closely with Sarah Rees Brennan on the fence novels. They talked a lot about how events would play out, biographical details of the characters, made canon compliance edits, saw the books at every level and loved them. It’s impressive how Sarah can turn on a dime between two sets of opposing feelings when transitioning between emotions. Her books have a lot of wit and charm but also a lot of hard-hitting emotion

There was information about Rise and a preview but I'll skip over that part because it's already out now

Personal

When creating characters, Pacat often thinks of them in terms of dynamics they’ll have with other characters, or what they want to achieve, or what kind of archetype they resonate with, or how to build a backstory that gives them layers. Characters are interesting when they have more than one motivation, when they look one way on the surface but then different aspects of them from the past are revealed

Pacat was an Earth sciences major

Pacat chooses all the fanart friday posts himself and then his assistant Hannah sends a request to the artist

Least favourite book trope: band of misfits who save the world through a hail mary pass. Pacat likes a highly confident crew, not a small rabble of people who fluke their way into saving the world. It's not a bad trope, he doesn't know why he doesn't like it. He doesn't like Firefly because of this trope

He often reads fanfic on ao3 for more of a story than was in the original or more of a dynamic that was underserved in the original. But authors can’t read fic of their own works for copyright reasons

Owns multiple copies of the Lymond Chronicles. Book four is her favourite because the ending is so intense and devastating. Pacat often thinks of that ending when deciding what to do with her own works because most authors would’ve chickened out of writing an ending like that. She read book one for the first time in a restaurant at 9:00am and stayed there until she finished the book. She probably looked like a mess because of all the laughing and crying, and at one point one of the waiters came over to bring her a handkerchief and said “are you okay?” and Pacat said “I’m just at a really intense part right now"

Pacat does brainstorming sessions with friends to come up with ideas for books and looks at art books for inspiration

He’s reading the BL manga Twittering Birds Never Fly

Danmei dramas/web novels are really long so he isn’t familiar with most of them, but he ordered MDZS and he’s looking forward to reading it because he’s heard a lot of good things about it

Pacat doesn’t usually like love triangles, whenever he ships something in a love triangle he ends up choosing the unlucky guy. He liked Gale more than Peeta and liked Edgar more than Heathcliffe

#captive prince #dark rise #fence comic #instagram livestreams #cs pacat #my post

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hoodlessmads · 5 months

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Dark Heir spoiler thoughts:

Okay some of these are criticisms but please understand I really liked it! I liked it even more than Dark Rise. I’m just an overdramatic person and need to yell sometimes.

These don’t have any particular order, I’m just freestyling -

Reading Captive Prince years ago (and rereading since) before reading Dark Rise made me have an unfair resentment towards James for being basically the same character as Laurent but not as good and that continued here

Will is the second best character Pacat has ever made after Laurent and book 3 might push him ahead

I loved seeing Will use more and more of his evil powers

The best one being where he possesses anyone with a brand and his eyes turn black and he turns into Legion (maybe shoulda turned that off before trying to appeal to Violet…)

Finding out his mom actually was tying him to bedposts and beating him this whole time somehow shocked me because for some silly reason I believed one of the most unreliable third person subjective narrators ever, Will, that she was a nice lady just doing her best. Anyway I love this revelation because it makes such perfect sense, it’s just, “Oh. Of course.”

Violet and Cyprian are both himbos yet Violet is somehow the only character with a single brain cell left at the end of the book

Cyprian drinking from the cup makes no sense after they had a whole discussion in the first book about how drinking from the cup put the Stewards into the Dark King’s plans and made them his thralls and was the entire reason they died, a massacre which Cyprian experienced viscerally, and then he goes and drinks from the cup anyway and oops surprise Will can in fact enthrall him. Cyprian is able to fight it off but that doesn’t change the complete recklessness and out-of-character-ness of it to me.

Violet/Cyrprian is a good ship

Phillip/Visander is hilarious (in a good way)

Will/James is fine but I wish I was more compelled by them than I actually am. For being the main couple, I don’t feel like their relationship has been given the room it needed to develop organically and instead it feels like we’re falling back on physical attraction and a vague shadow of a past relationship in the old world that we didn’t get to see. It’s hard not to compare to Damen/Laurent which by contrast was developed so painstakingly.

Elizabeth is incredible

Visander sucks, actually

The whole Light kind of sucks. The Stewards, the Sun Kingdom, they were all assholes

People with black-and-white morality are truly terrible, aren’t they? And pretty much everyone is like that except for Will, James, and Violet

Sometimes I felt like that fact was really being hammered in on purpose almost as though to make James murdering like 300 people seem less bad (but it didn’t….)

But I don’t dislike James because he murdered 300 people, I actually love villains and I especially am attached to the idea of everyone being redeemable. But what I don’t like is the book telling me I should like James without giving me a good reason or the book downplaying his actions to make him seem more sympathetic. He can have murdered all the Stewards and still be compelling, we don’t need to diminish what he’s done in order for him to be likable

Also everyone in this book except like, Will and maybe Violet and James is an idiot (and I’ll excuse Elizabeth for only being ten). Someone send these characters to Psych 101, they don’t seem to understand the concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy…

Like obviously if you tell someone they’re evil over and over again for their whole lifetime they will become evil

Theory - I don’t think Violet will turn on Will. I think she’s just shell-shocked. She wasn’t really given a chance to take a stance before James Peter Panned him away. Violet knows exactly what it feels like to be told you are evil because of some past thing, and she knows Will better than any of the other characters. And she knows that morality is not black and white (Tom is her brother). She’ll definitely end up in Will’s corner by the end.

Theory - The line of the Lady and the line of the Dark King are the same bloodline and they split off later. Sarcean’s “cataclysmic night together” with the Lady was mentioned not once but twice. Pacat doesn’t waste lines. The child that the Lady had was Sarcean’s, or at least one of them.

Will better figure out how to destroy that collar quick…before they both get even more traumatized. I think that will be one of his main goals in book 3. Or I hope…otherwise it will be hard to develop the genuine romance

I sure hope Will can also figure out how to expel that shadow from Cyprian before he like… dies. Don’t do that to Violet D:

So, I’m not a huge fan of YA in general (outside of YA anime and manga which for some reason hits different). I used to like it a lot, it used to be most of what I read. I grew up reading series like Redwall, Darren Shan, Demonata, Pendragon, and so on. But I’ve grown out of the genre (I’m 27). Not every adult does - one of my best friends who is a year older than me still really enjoys YA. But because I don’t like YA, I think my enjoyment of Dark Rise/Dark Heir is influenced and my criticisms may be unfair.

But I find that with fantasy series like this, I the books really need to be longer. Or there needs to be more of them. I feel like Dark Rise has so many moving pieces, enough characters that there could be a trading card game (and there are literally collectible cards), so many different magical artifacts and magical powers, an entire magical old world beneath the semi-magical 1820s Europe world to develop, and also by the way a whole story that took place 10,000 years ago that has to be told at some point. I find myself feeling like all these different elements are being introduced and moved on from too fast and I wish they were all given more time to breathe. I think that’s part of why the relationship between Will and James feels a bit rushed to me. I don’t know if the short length of the series was Pacat’s choice or an editor’s, though. I don’t feel like Captive Prince had this issue because there were no supernatural elements, the cast was much smaller, and the plot was comparably simple so a lot of it got to be characters just talking to each other, which was great, and the world building was accomplished mainly through these interactions. The plot and world of Dark Rise is much larger in scope but the page count is the same (a little longer maybe).

So wait who is Mrs. Duval

Why did Ettore leave the Stewards anyway? Other than the obvious, which is that they suck

Where was Grace during the whole ending scene? Wasn’t she there but just not saying anything. As this total calamity befalls her only remaining friend group she finally has seen too much and just nopes out and is busy making tea in the corner or maybe popcorn

I do really like Cyprian btw in spite of thinking his moral code is shitty. Gave Violet a chance but sold Will for one corn chip… I see how it is (okay that’s not fair but you know what I mean, he has flaws)

It sounds like I’m in the majority when I say that I still don’t like Devon - I saw that theory about him being the final big bad and I’m so on that train. I think he’d make a good enough final villain. I agree there is something predatory about him and Tom. I don’t necessarily think Pacat wants us to root for them as a couple, though. There were better ways to pull that off if that was the intent.

Not to repeat myself but Phillip was such a pleasant surprise. Like who is this fruit and how did he get here

So next book, I hope (assume) we get to see the rest of the old world story filled in so we can understand where it all went wrong for Sarcean and also the exact nature of his relationship with Anharion because so far it’s been quite vague (intentionally I assume). Like….. you know….. did he agree to put on the collar?

The tricky thing about this series is that once the reader learns that Will is the Dark King, it’s hard to maintain any sort of external tension. Right? It’s hard to feel afraid of the forces of the Dark when the protagonist has total effortless control over them just by virtue of who he is. Will can literally just be like, “No, don’t” and everything’s fine. He did just this at the end of Dark Rise. I find the way Dark Heir seems to end with their “only hope of stopping the Dark army” destroyed to be pretty unconvincing. Why on earth would Sarcean create a destructible object that is the only way of controlling his own army? Of course Will should be able to control them with his will alone. If he can control Shadow Kings and make them die with his words alone, why didn’t he try yelling at the shadow army to stop trying to possess people? This doesn’t make sense to me. And if people become Returners through his magic, shouldn’t he be able to exert some control over their existence the way he does with the branded? Pacat has done a good enough job at getting us to know Sarcean (an extremely good job btw) so as to make the destroyed brand plot point unbelievable. Anyway…

Instead, the tension in Dark Heir is almost entirely internal or realized in character relationships rather than physical threats. The tension is between Will and himself, and between Will and his friends. (There are tensions between other characters but focusing on the main plot here.) The possibility that they might find out and abandon him, and the possibility that he might actually be as nasty of a guy as Sarcean was, the slim chance that he might learn something that makes him go, “You know what, I agree with my past self after all.”

Now that everyone has found out who he is, that particular source of tension has sort of evaporated, so now in book 3 Pacat has to find a way to make Will’s conflict with himself and his friends compelling enough to carry us through 450 pages (I don’t expect this will be difficult). What I see as the problems now are 1) what was Sarcean actually planning and how did he plan on getting Will (himself) to fall in line with them (this was a question in Dark Heir as well but now it’s bigger), 2) how is Will going to destroy his own (Sarcean’s) Dark artifacts so he can free James, and 3) Can he convince anyone to ever love him (oh no ouch).

If I had to rank these books at this stage I’d probably give Rise a 3.7 ish…. and Heir a 4.2. I’m holding out for Dark King to be a 5 or close. (I don’t know what the actual title will be, I’m just guessing lol.) I definitely think Dark Heir is an improvement over Dark Rise since I always thought the most interesting part of the latter by far was everything that happened once Will learns he is the Dark King at the very end.

“Are we going to talk about the magic pseudo-sex scene—“ No and I hope we never will

#dark rise #dark heir #cs pacat #dark heir spoilers #will kempen #will is the beEEeEeSsst #let me know what you think

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irregularcollapse · 4 months

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giving Laurent bunions was an inspired choice. of course he would wear shoes that pinch! of course. the following bit here is really physical and evocative, I really liked it.

"Laurent steps in with his sandals still tied. His feet are indeed rubbed raw, and the wounds on his ankles and the bony protrusions at the bases of his big toes sting more sharply in the cold water. "

if you've got dvd commentary for this or any other earlier parts, I'd love to hear about it! somehow I've not read this fic b4 so I'm reading it now and im really enjoying it!

hope ur having a good night 🌃 and happy new year!! ✨

Hello! Thanks so much for this question, and for reading my work. It's so exciting that you're experiencing it for the first time!

This is such an interesting bit you've pulled out (which comes from Chapter III for anyone playing along at home). Thanks for saying that it's physical and evocative—what a lovely compliment! And exactly what I was going for, so that's super validating. It's part of something I like to focus on generally in writing, but especially when writing characters like Laurent and Damen: writing the experience of inhabiting a body.

This will have fewer quotes/bits of evidence than I usually like putting in an analysis, but I'm not feeling the best and my brain is a bit foggy 😅 So I hope you don't mind a lot of rambling! Hopefully you can see the substance there and what I'm getting at.

Laurent and Damen are both incredibly physical characters, in almost opposing ways. There are the obvious physical differences between them, a point of constant remark from Damen and outsiders: in Captive Prince Damen observes that Laurent's "body had the same impossible grace as his face," whereas Damen's own body is reacted to with fear by the Veretians (driven by their xenophobic prejudices). Laurent is touch-averse, whereas Damen is naturally tactile; they are both touch-starved. They are also both keenly aware of and in touch with their own bodies: Damen, being a legendary warrior and lover, can make his body an instrument of violence or tenderness as though it is natural; Laurent is most aware of the ways his body is a threat to him, and so has worked hard to make it useful and defensible (learning fighting, swordplay, maintaining fitness, etc.).

A line that I love to pieces is when, in Prince's Gambit when Damen is watching Laurent sleep, he comments that "perhaps it was more accurate to say that it was rare to associate Laurent with a physical body at all: you were always dealing with a mind." It's so wonderful because it is exactly what Laurent strives for, and Damen is the only one to truly give it to him: that despite Damen's attraction to him, which has truthfully been there since their first horrible meeting, Damen values and sees Laurent's mind the most, and meets him there.

Both of them come to wear their bodies as sites of trauma, and even write trauma on each other's bodies, but what they come to find with each other is the body as a neutral space, as separate to the body as a site of pleasure. There are lots of examples of this, but right now I'm thinking of the part in The Summer Palace when Damen leads Laurent through the palace naked because they can, and no one cares, and it wouldn't matter if anyone is looking because it doesn't mean anything (and in that, it means so much). It's all very "you can fuck anyone—but with whom can you sit in water?"

So what does this have to do with Laurent's battered feet?

When bodies are sites of trauma, whatever the cause of that trauma may be, we become keenly aware of them. It is very common for survivors of CSA to not only have dissociative episodes, but to have a hyper-awareness of their bodies and how they are perceived—I've written a bit about this here as well in relation to Laurent so I'll try not to repeat myself too much. But one of the ways I've written this into the narration of EIAT is in the way Laurent experiences his physical reactions to things, and in the way he notes, in particular, the weaknesses in his body. He wants his body to be a tool, and so he catalogues and notes when that tool is compromised.

It is also in the way he notes the features of his own body, this sort of pragmatic way of describing the parts which form him—such as those "bony protrusions." It's additionally a kind of tethering, a reminder of his corporeality and humanness (and a measure against dissociation, which he comes dangerously close to when Damen arrives and starts to force him to confront reality). Laurent also canonically uses physical pain as a grounding force (e.g. provoking Damen into hitting him when he is destroyed with grief over Nicaise's death), so focusing on the stinging of the water in the cuts is part of that as well.

I'm losing my tenuous focus and ability to string sentences together a bit, so the last thing I'll clumsily say is that it's yes, a physical manifestation of these restrictive clothes he wears as his armour and also the physical containment he wraps himself in, the containment itself being grounding etc. while the slight physical discomfort caused by it (Laurent even in Damen's narration noted for fighting through discomfort) being a very mild form of self-flagellation, forcing himself to bear the mild pain as a way to prove his strength and keep himself in line, simultaneously not wanting to show weakness and also believing that he deserves/has earned the pain (hey, Damen does that too!).

Thank you so much for reading! And for asking the question! I'm very sorry that this isn't at all polished, and is probably a bit nonsensical in places—I'm feeling a bit inarticulate and scattered today! But I really wanted to answer this question hahaha

(Pssst if anyone else wants a DVD commentary on a bit of my writing, send me a passage!)

#my writing #asks #even in another time fic #captive prince #captive prince fic #contains maybe more book commentary than commentary on my own writing whoops

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merrivia · 1 year

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Here’s a mini dose of Captive Prince theorisation for you:

I think it’s possible Laurent had been spying on Damen from afar for years.

He hadn’t the power to do so too closely, but did enough to get a sense of who Damen was, filtered through the lens of his hatred for him, of course. After all with his ascension only ten months in the future at the start of Captive Prince, would Laurent not have already started to lay the foundations of his plan to kill Damen? And when does he do anything without preparing and plotting, months (years) in advance?

The evidence is there, I think. We know Laurent, by virtue of being the Crown Prince, is part of a network of nobility across Vere, and that he uses scouts and messengers frequently.

He also seems to know exactly what Damen looks like. Damen has no idea what Laurent looks like prior to meeting him, but Laurent is absolutely sure of Damen’s identity.

We know that Laurent is aware of Jokaste and her relationship with Damen as he taunts him with it in Captive Prince.

All of this information might be put down to Laurent being politically aware and making it his business to generally know what was happening in Akielon.

I think this bit though, was what clinched it for me. How does he know Damen likes this epic?

While I don’t think he had the political reach to have the kind of spy network that the Regent no doubt has, I do think he made it his business to glean what he could about Damen, collecting scraps of knowledge that could later be used against him if needs be, some of which surely came from spies. After all, that is how his mind works.

And a part of me definitely thinks if you had searched through Laurent’s papers at some point in the past, you’d have found a portrait of a younger Damen. One which I’m sure he committed to memory before throwing in the fire.

#captive prince #capri #laurent #damen #damen of akielos #laurent of vere #just a possible theory I guess #lamen

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deripmaver · 9 months

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Griffith, Sex, and Power

Feat. a brief special guest: Laurent of Vere from Captive Prince (spoilers, and of course canon typical content warnings for both Berserk and Capri)!

Ok time for a complete 180 from all my Berserk meta posts so far hahahah. Probably this is one that’s been made before, but I wanted to take a crack at it possibly from a different angle than before. This’ll be just sort of a ramble, no panels ‘cause those panels make me sad and I don’t want to go looking for them.

In CS Pacat’s Captive Prince, Laurent of Vere was directly inspired by Griffith from Berserk. Part of what allows the audience to forgive him for the sexual violence he causes Damen is when we learn that said abuse is just being replicated from his own experiences. Laurent has learned by being abused as a teenager that sex and power are intrinsically linked (as he says to Damen, his perception of sex is that it occurs “as a man takes a boy”), and so when the man who killed his brother (and lead to his abuse in the first place by leaving him with his uncle) is put in front of him, the ways he dominates and reasserts power over him come from his own sexual trauma.

It’s not hard to see how this characterization draws from Griffith. As a young teenager, he is given the “choice” (which isn’t really a choice at all) to make money to sustain his dream by winning battles, and thereby sending his followers to their deaths, or by prostituting himself to Gennon. As far as we know with what’s given to us in canon, up until he sleeps with Princess Charlotte this is his only sexual experience - purely transactional, a show of power from those who have it forced upon those who do not have it.

When Griffith has sex, in Princess Charlotte’s case, or... commits sexual assault, in Casca’s case (twice), it’s not a coincidence it happens at moments where he feels at his lowest and most powerless. It’s ALSO not a surprise that he replicates the dynamics he’s familiar with during these sexual encounters. With Charlotte, he goes to see her to regain a sense of control and authority after Guts leaves, and during that encounter she expresses uncertainty at the beginning, outright saying no before eventually just kind of submitting to it. This encounter I think falls into somewhat of a gray area of fictional consent, because we see ultimately Charlotte happy with it, and thinking only fondly of it in later chapters, but it’s undeniable it’s coercive and considering how the whole thing is framed vs the sex between Guts and Casca is framed, I think the discomfort is intentional.

Then, of course, with Casca, these encounters are outright sexual assault and rape. Again, it’s not a coincidence that these happen when Griffith is feeling completely shattered, completely without power, at rock fucking bottom. It’s heavily implied that some of Griffith’s torture was sexual in nature, if not outright rape though considering how much rape of women there is in Berserk I’ll forever be pissed as hell that Miura didn’t bother to show any of that happening to an (adult) male character if that is what he intended.

So now, as far as what’s been shown in canon, Griffith’s sexual experience is underage prostitution, coercive sex with Charlotte, and now possibly rape combined with torture. After this, he assaults Casca in the wagon (only stopping because he physically can’t go through with it due to his injuries) and when he’s able to move again as Femto, rapes her. Rape is fully about power, and to Griffith sex is about power in general, and the eclipse to me is a very clear show from Griffith that he’s the one with power, he’s the one whose will the world bends to, and he needs to reassert that power over everyone.

As an aside, it’s very interesting to me that in those moments of powerlessness, the people he uses to reassert his own power aren’t the men who have taken from him, but women. I mean, during the eclipse he’s hurting Casca to get at Guts, but like... He doesn’t rape Guts LOL when he easily could. I’m sure most of that is just Miura not wanting to draw sex (even if it’s rape) between adult men, but taking a more meta view, it replicates power dynamics and hierarchies of misogyny and oppression in the real world in an interesting way.

Griffith, as a character, knows what it is to be powerless, and is desperately climbing for more and more power throughout the story of Berserk to never experience that again. However, in doing so, he becomes the same as the oppressive nobles who hurt him, and once you accept that hierarchy it chips away at any intrinsic sense of justice you may have. This hasn’t come up again since his rebirth, but it will be interesting to see what his reaction will be if something happens that does shake his absolute authority over humanity, and what he’ll do about it. I think that moment might be coming up sooner than we expect.

#berserk meta #berserk #captive prince #griffith #Laurent of Vere #we interrupt ur regularly scheduled casca meta etc etd #etc etc

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vulpeskei · 1 year

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Ok but I cant imagine how badly it must have hurt Laurent to start falling for Damen.

TW: CSA mention

(All of this is just my personal interpretation of Laurent's behaviours throughout the trilogy. If anyone has a different one I'd love to hear it!)

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Captive Prince

Before Laurent met Damen personally, the image that he had of him in his head was of a barbarian. The person who killed his brother. He probably even thought Damen was just as bad as his uncle or blamed Damen for indirectly causing the circumstances that led to his abuse. Could be a stretch, but this would probably explain why Laurent seemed confused that Damen wouldnt 'perform' with Nicaise in the ring.

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Prince's Gambit

Then in the second book, Damen shatters this image again and again. He genuinely tries to help Laurent and ensure his survival, and even gets to know Laurent better than he'd like. Damen's changing thoughts about Laurent's behaviours are demonstrated thoroughly throughout the second book, even learning when Laurent is too overcome by emotion to think rationally and when he needs to be calmed down or simply left alone. This probably even leads to frustration because Damen isn't supposed to feel this safe to be around. He isn't /supposed/ to feel this comfortable around his brother's killer.

This frustration is most clearly pictured in these scenes:

Laurent's fluctuating opinion of Damen definitely caused a lot of inner conflict for him. He was angry and he wanted to be angry for his brother, but on the other hand his brother's murderer was probably the first person he genuinely trusted in a long time, and these feelings probably became more complicated when you take into account how Damen reminds him of Auguste. He tries to suppress any semblance of romantic/sexual feelings for Damen because having those emotions at all feels like a betrayal of the one other person he truly loved, but that of course doesn't go very well for him.

Eventually, his attraction to Damen gets too hard to ignore and maybe the reason why he rushes to express these emotions right before Damen is scheduled to leave the Veretian army is because he knows that the next time he faces Damen, if at all, will be as King: the person who killed his brother. It would be easier to get it out of the way and rationalise it while Damen is still a slave rather than grapple with it later. Maybe "Laurent, I am your slave" assured Laurent in it's own way, because as their affection for each other grew, that lie became a comfort for them both; they wouldn't have to face the truth until later.

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King's Rising

When Damen's identity was revealed to the Veretians and they continued to fight together out of necessity, Laurent found himself with two different ideas of who Damianos is: the one who was loyal to him and the one who took everything he had.

Then they get close again and Damen stops finding comfort in the lie that they built for themselves because he can't anymore. Starts acknowledging his past and wanting for Laurent to take him as he is. And Laurent finally realises that one way or another he has to process the fact that these two Damens are the same people. He has to cope with the fact that he might be falling in love with one of the people who hurt him most.

This brings all of the conflicting emotions that he wanted to suppress back, which is why he reacted so badly when Damen tried to directly acknowledge what he'd done:

I hope you enjoy this post that is absolutely made by a person who likes these books in a normal way. I am so neurotypical about captive prince i like it a little bit

#captive prince #capri #damianos #laurent #lamen #damianos of akielos #laurent of vere #character study #???#hyperfixation #i literally spent hours on this post adhd is a menace #anything for my babygirl

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