I don’t go here but tell me more about Evi your musings on her intrigue me // @versin-surfin
Were you a fan of Beauty and the Beast as a kid? Is Love Redeems one of your all-time favorite tropes? Do you enjoy 30+ year old women depicted as calm, cool, in control bosses who can have it all in the successful career, the enamored husband, and the happy family? Is the underdog destined to win in all your happy endings? Are you a firm believer in good things happening to good people? Is there a sense of certainty in you when you consider that love, not war, will save the world?
Then Evi Kh0lin is not the character for you.
Her story, as we know it, starts with her as a refugee from her homeland for reasons unknown, fleeing from one corner of the earth to the other with her older brother. Their peace is only bought upon promising her to a warlord -- a match made for her, not by her. So starts her tenure as a stranger in a strange land among the ruling family of the narrative.
The intervening years are spent as a dutiful wife, raising sons in her husband's long absences, and eventually dying. That much, we know for certain from the first book. Anything more than that is a heinous spoiler. She haunts the narrative even before we, the audience, are aware of her, a blast of Chekhov's bullet from a far future book, a sliver of the past that our protagonist cannot recall. She's a melody underpinning the song of her sons and husband, just under the wardrums and wailing of violins.
She wanted a better world for others. Her husband will either build it in her absence, or ruin any hope of such a thing coming to fruition.
