Captive Prince thoughts…because why keep them in my head when I can yap online.
For once, I have read a book that deserves an epilogue and didn’t have one. I admire the restraint :’)
Edit: i have found the summer palace. AHHHH “you were watching the road”. Perfect. Perfect.
Laurent’s arc: It was written such care and understanding of the effects of surviving grooming/csa.
He’s only 19. He still lives in the same home as his abuser, helplessly watching the same pattern continue. He’s still his uncle’s ward. That’s a really complicated emotional clusterfuck. And it’s clear that Laurent isn’t “over it”… he’s deep in avoidance or finding ways to cope around it. If felt so real.
When he said he remembered his Uncle extending that trip to Guilon’s fort…the bitterness of that line. AHHHHHH. The discard is the part of abuse that doesn’t often make it into stories because it makes people complicated in their victimhood…but here, the reader was trusted to understand how Laurent feels, which I love so much?
In this world of cheats and vipers, I’d also assumed that some awful detail of what happened to Laurent was what Govart had on the Regent? I was bracing for Laurent to have to calculate his trauma into the politics and lose another choice. And I’m so glad he didn’t have to. In the real world, you don’t get justice unless you put yourself through a trial, but that’s why fantasy exists right? To feel justice with dignity…to get to see love simply beat power.
Other thought: I love that Laurent straight up is a type A perfectionist and Damen loves that in him. It’s so common to see a character’s “healing” be that they loosen up and lose this defense. But I appreciated the way both fighting and all these other prickly things about Laurent are in him forever now… it’s not like he’s going to unmake himself or regret who he is. As someone who is guarded, it was refreshing to see that trait in a character be treated with understanding. Laurent has no reason to loosen up until the world proves itself to him again.
Last tangent: I hope that the first layer of dismantling shame has already happened for Laurent with the whole “you slept with your brother’s killer” stuff.. but I am really intrigued by how shame works for him as a character. When he’s in control, he doesn’t seem to have much, but then when he’s not, it can paralyze him. How does that work when he’s now not fighting for his life every day and might want to be able to ease up a bit? Idk idk rich fanfic territory for sure.
