Honestly, I want to make an Ode to Madoc.
As an editor, I think he really sums up a lot of the reasons why I love Holly’s writing so much.
(I’m going to yap for a while, but he deserves it.)
We’ve got the classical folklore call-to-arms: an ogre breaks into your home and slaughter your parents. What’s left for you, if not revenge?
Then realism, even in a folk world: you’re five, how the fuck are you supposed to avenge them?
- Then, a personal touch to make it even more scary: he’s not an ogre, but a redcap. He bathes his cap into his enemies’s blood. That’s how scary he is. Thanks to Shrek and other tales, Ogres aren’t that scary in the mind of a reader. But a redcap? Yeah, that’s creepy.
But redcap, or ogre, Madoc is the masculine traditional man, with it’s pros and cons. (I really don’t want to make this political, but he kinda is?)
If he were more logical, less violent, he wouldn’t have killed their parents. At the same time, was he a little less honorable, he would have left the twins there. They were toddlers, they would have died somehow.
Bringing them to Elfhame and glamouring them would have been a sign of weakness, because they’re not his problem, but he couldn’t kill children (I’m kinda sure he would, at least before becoming a dad).
Raising them himself is the true show of his character. He thinks of it as a punishment for himself, to pay back for his crime, but in reality it is just a second crime. Not only I’m sure he enjoyed it, but the ones who actually suffer from it are the twins, again.
Was he a little less self-centered, less focused on a world made of honor and punishments, he would have found them an accommodation in the mortal world. Or at least care enough to notice what they were going through.
And in the end, the murder wasn’t Jude’s inciting incident, but Madoc’s.
For Jude, it’s her childhood. And even if she spent her childhood in the magical kingdom of Elfhame, having a fucked up childhood is so much more relatable and realistic than avenge-your-parents kind of motive.
Back to Madoc, his “punishment” is simple: he will see his children amount to everything he dreamed for himself, basically every parent’s dream.
But since he is a very fucked up parent, he hates it.
To sum up my yapping, Holly manages to mix enough fantasy elements to make us dream, with enough realistic elements to make us see and feel them.
An ogre breaks into your home, slaughtering your parents. How does he feel about it? Will he be a better parent?
But there is no such thing as the better parent. Parents are by definition the most morally grey characters: if they’re good, they’ll do their best.
But that isn’t always the best.
So Madoc, the murderer, the ogre, becoming the parent is absolutely genius.
And it’s also why I’d dying to see Jude as a parent!