You know, when I first read the books when I was 15, I felt like that. The world is kinda super mean to Kellen, and it kinda sucks. Especially cus I related to him so damn much.
now though? I get it. Kellen grew up with the world handed to him. He was raised to put himself and the jan’tep people above all other walks of life. Like he may be Sha’tep but he’s still Jan’tep. The enlightened people. Better than the rest of the world, can do no wrong. The centre of the universe, so to speak.
on top of that, everyone in the spellslinger universe subscribes to the One Great Man myth. The idea that all it takes is for one super cool guy makes history. So Kellen, like a lot of kids, believes that they ARE that one great man, at least at the beginning. The thing is, rarely does Kellen live up to these ideals, which makes him see himself as the underdog. And it’s not that he’s not an underdog, it’s just he’s not as oppressed as he thinks he is, because not living up to impossible standards doesn’t make you a victim of anything except the system that put you there.
Kellen learns a lot throughout the books. The biggest thing he learns though, is that the story he tells himself, the one where he’s a lowly boy born for greatness, unjustly held back by a cruel world that hates him, is remarkably false. He’s not ‘held back’, the world doesn’t plot against him, and the other people aren’t just side characters in his story.
He learns to listen to other people, learns to understand the way they think, what they want and what they need.
He learns to let go of what he tells himself, and to trust that his body knows what he can and can’t do.
Learns to let go of the hero’s tale written by his people to push the ideas of what a Jan’Tep mage should be, and instead to work towards becoming the man he wants to be.
in other words, he learns to be an Argosi.
I actually love the series So MUCH. There isn’t a fictional character that I relate more to than Kellen. The lessons he learns are harsh, and sometimes they hurt, but they’re lessons I think teenage me needed to learn too.
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