#yfandes

[lukasspookas]

vanyel ashkevron fanart

[jerseyartblog]

13 Inspirations - 06: The Last Herald Mage Trilogy

Imagine you're in middle school and your best friend hands over a little beat-up fantasy paperback featuring a sad, silver-eyed wet rat of a man clutching onto a mysterious, white horse with bright blue eyes in the middle of a rain storm. You don't know it yet, but reading this paperback and the tale of Vanyel Ashkevron--his bittersweet first love, his rise to become a hero, and the legacy this once-in-a-generation mage leaves on the series overall-- is going to make some things *click* in a good and important way.

And then you'll run to the library to get your paws on every Heralds of Valdemar book available soon after.

.

The Last Herald Mage is a lot of things--it's a YA-to-New Adult fantasy series with a beloved, gay main character who overcomes a lot (and I mean, a LOT) of hardship to save the kingdom. It's got song lyrics in the back of the books, because Van is also a Bard, and there's memories of you and your other middle school buddies making up melodies to match, because it wasn't easy to find MP3s of the Actual Recorded CDs back then. It's got magical psychic horses that are partnered to young mages; and believe me, everything is better with a psychic horse leaving sassy side commentary in the MC's head. And most of all, it was one of my first, major introductions to an openly gay MC , whose struggles and triumphs were celebrated, and that meant a LOT to my preteen self, so I had to do something for this lil challenge

.

;') Got realllly busy so I am a few days behind and while I ambitiously made thumbnails of every illus I imagined I'd color and Finish, it hasn't panned out that way.... but there is something more freeing and exciting about taking stabs at all the pieces for this project when I get the chance and still being happy with the end, sketchier results.

[enderfeather]

today i felt like inflicting emotional damage

closeups, timelaps, and all that fun jazz under cut

oh wow, where did these pixles come from???

[falconfate]

Had to doodle some horses, so of course I made them Companions… I’ve had Van’s little saddle nap pose stuck in my head ever since I read that scene, desperately wish I was riding often enough to try it out for myself lmao (don’t try sleeping in the saddle at home).

Anyway. Helloooooo Valdemar series fandom. I’m currently devouring these books as fast as I possibly can.

Also I gave Sayvil a Roman nose because even in reincarnation I don’t think you can ever be rid of the Ashkevron nose. (And who would want to be? (can you tell I love a good distinctive nose))

[meat-loving-meat]

yfandes be upon ye 🫵

traced from this image:

[geneseedraws]

Vanyel & Yfandes, and Bard Stefen from Magic's Price! Yeah I wasn't done drawing fanart for The Last Herald-Mage books, this series is gonna stay with me forever 💅💕

I had to draw older Vanyel with his pretty silver streaked hair, and Stefen!! He's such a sweetie🥺🥺💕 I'm just so happy for starting my "book journey" with reading something so wonderful and impactful to me. Like these characters are in my heart, Vanyel and his life throughout the whole thing... Ahhh I can't recommend it enough, I loved it all so much!! 😭😭💕💖

[checkoutmybookshelf]

The Trilogy I Read When I Need Sad and Fury

*CONTENT WARNINGS FOR THIS POST:* Mentions of sexuality, sexual assault, depression, and suicide. Take care of you, and skip over this post if any of these topics aren't a good choice to engage with!

So this is not my original copy of these three books. My originals are in the book tubs in my Dad's basement in Alaska. So this copy is on my bookshelf because I was overwhelmed and sad in the first year we moved, and quite frankly, Mercedes Lackey's the Last Herald Mage Trilogy is what I reach for when I need a good solid cry. This heckin' chonky omnibus edition holds three complete novels: Magic's Pawn, Magic's Promise, and Magic's Price. Let's talk Herald Mage Vanyel Ashkevron.

Mercedes Lackey, similar to but less egregiously than Jim Butcher, is an author I sometimes need to raise my eyebrows at. But we'll start with the good things (and there are many of those) about these books.

Magic's Pawn begins with simultaneously spoiled and neglected rich boy Vanyel, who fits into his family home about as well as a square peg in a round hole. He desperately wants to be a Bard, but lacks the qualifications to be accepted into the Bardic Collegium. Once his father is completely fed up with Vanyel, he is shipped off to his Aunt Savil at the Collegium, where he can take classes and figure out his life.

Figuring out his life for Vanyel entails falling head over heels for his Aunt's Herald Mage trainee, Tylendel, and finally putting a name--shay'a'chern--to his own sexuality. Vanyel is happy with Tylendel for a hot five minutes before Tylendel chooses violence and massacres the family that murdered his twin brother, and then commits suicide in the aftermath. The aftermath also involves Vanyel catching a brainful of magical backlash that basically triggers every potential magical gift Vanyel could have gotten. He also ends up seriously ill and depressed because all of this went down in a storm, he lost his lifebonded, and could hear people's thoughts and interpreted them as blaming him for Tylendel's death. Vanyel then also attempts to commit suicide, but is unsuccessful.

Literally the only good thing about this three-day period in Vanyel's life is that he bonds with Yfandes, a companion, and she can mitigate some of his new powers and reassure him that he is loved.

To save her nephew's life, Savil takes Vanyel to the Hawkbrothers. This works, and Vanyel is trained in both Hawkbrother techniques and as a Herald Mage.

Magic's Promise opens with a fully trained, adult, and notorious Herald Mage Vanyel returning from a campaign along the Karsite border. He is UNDERSTANDABLY burnt out, and heads up to his family home for what turns out to be the worst trip home ever. Half the castle is accusing him of banging everything on the estate down to the sheep, and the other half is trying to seduce him.

To make things worse, Vanyel has to take a child with an out-of-control gift that on first blush appears to have murdered an entire neighboring castle (it didn't, the poor kid was set up). The kid is also a dead ringer (pun not intended but I'm leaving it) for Tylendel, which wasn't helping Vanyel on any level.

To make things even more complicated, Vanyel has set himself out to stud; he is secretly the father of Shavri's daughter. This is complicated because Shavri is the king's lifebonded, Vanyel is getting confusing feelings about her, and the king is dying of a vaguely defined wasting disease.

This book was mostly eyebrow raising, if I'm being honest.

The final book, Magic's Price, gets even more eyebrow-raising because if the previous book was setting up a ton of heartache and really super sketchy prejudices, this one kicks it up to 11 and aims it all at Vanyel. From watching his king die slowly and painfully (eyebrow raise over the "chronically and terminally ill person is an object of abject pity) to getting stabbed in his family home to getting beated and raped (massive eyebrow raise, we don't need to keep doing the rape trauma plotline) to dying holding an army back alone.

It might possibly sound like I don't like this trilogy; that's not accurate. This is my go-to "I need a good cry" and "I need a good rage session" trilogy, and the storytelling and sheer heart in the trilogy are never not compelling and well plotted. It just has a lot of eyebrow raising, and it's a very heavy trilogy that tends to lean perhaps overly much on sexual assualt trauma in books two and three.

I'm starting to get the sense that my relationship with a lot of my books is most accurately summed up as "It's Complicated" and y'know what? We're leaning into that, because my Mercedes Lackey shelf is overflowing and there is a reason for that.

[bookspark]

Yfandes - during one of the brief moments Vanyel sees both her Companion and human forms

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