Why Captive Prince is misunderstood – and why it is a masterpiece
I am a huge fan of romances with the trope Captive/Captor (which usually are also enemies to lovers), so I have read a good chunk of it but most of the time without the enjoyment that Captive Prince brought me. Of course, it may depend on a lot of factors (including the writing style); however, there is a trend that I noticed in this kind of book, a trend that CaPri absolutely doesn’t follow.
The trend is the emotional power imbalance between the two main characters merged with the necessity, from the author, to be assured the reader knows that the Captor is absolutely a good person™. There is no space for ambiguity, for real hate between the characters, or for the narrative tension that happens from a captor/captive situation.
Now, you may say that of course there’s a power imbalance, one is the captor! Yes, but that’s the point: all the weight is on the captive, which is the one that faces the problem and hates the captor, while the captor, usually, has no reason whatsoever to hate them. It creates an “imbalance” where all the effort to surpass the captivity (or the animosity, as it happens a lot in normal enemies to lovers too) falls only on one main character. And the reader accepts that because the story shows you that the captor is good, so they deserve to be forgiven by the captive.
Just a couple of examples.
In “The Scottish Boy”, the narrative always justifies Harry (the captor) from the bad actions: even if he participated in the assault, he didn’t kill anyone important for the captive, keeping the “scottish boy” captive wasn’t his choice, he always treated him at best he could, and when the captive was hurt it was only indirectly Harry’s fault. The captive hated Harry for the situation, not for what he was, and it was easy for him to forgive since Harry was better than his real enemies.
In “Into The North”, Agnar (the captor) treated Magnus (the captive, a slave captured in battle) as if he were a guest: he cured him, he washed him, at some point one may believe Agnar was the slave since he took care of almost everything. And again, the bad things that happened to Magnus weren’t his fault.
In “Prince of Agony”, since we have both POVs, we know that Kazia (the captor) was doing cruel things to Lucien (the captive) only to save him from a crueler fate, because until his father thought that Lucien was suffering, he wouldn’t intervene in person to torture him. And even if Kazia was horrible, his choices of torture were most petty.
Now, I’m not saying those books are inherently bad (Prince of Agony was one of my favorite readings of 2024), just that they play “safe”. They don’t give the reader the chills of imbalance or cruelty, they want the reader to be sure, since the start, that the captor is good, they has always been good, they just need to free the captive or let him understand the situation. It’s not a coincidence that most of them are from both POVS or from the captor’s POV.
Captive Prince is not like that. It doesn’t play safe. It doesn’t assure the reader about Laurent’s inherent goodness, if only for small glimpses that Damen doesn’t catch. The author went to the line “I want you to hate Laurent as Damen does, and then fell in love with him as Damen does”. It is hard to ship a couple if you hate one of them and think they’re horrible people.
Not only, but Pacat created a story where Laurent's cruelty is necessary to create an emotional balance between the main characters, because at the beginning of the story it is Lauren who has more reason to hate Damen, despite Damen being the slave. If Laurent had been a good captor as the others, we, as readers, would have lost the theme of reciprocal forgiveness that happened between them. Damen needed to hate Laurent as much Laurent hated him for them to be equal. Something you usually don’t find in enemies to lovers, when one of the characters has more reason to hate the other than a generic “you’re my enemy”.
And that is why CaPri is often misunderstood as abuse: because readers are too used to being pampered by authors in safe situations that are incapable of accepting the complexity and the horror of a true balanced captive/captor enemies to lovers and mistake it for abuse. But, IMO, the complexity of feelings and the attempt to shock the readers are what make CaPri a masterpiece of enemies to lovers.
