Pt. 2: Luke Fell First, Valentine Fell Harder
There’s this really interesting dichotomy in how Valentine is presented at the Academy- he was apparently both beloved and hated, a brilliant student yet an irresponsible one, popular and sought out yet built up his clique to consist of the formerly friendless. These traits at first appear incompatible with one another, and they are certainly contradictory… but they actually aren’t mutually exclusive. Instead, they speak to the singularity that Valentine was. He doesn’t completely fit into any of the familiar high school archetypes. He wasn’t “the cool jock popular kid” or “the aloof and broken outcast heartthrob.” Instead, he was a charismatic political zealot who either intentionally or unintentionally created a cult of personality even that far back. He possessed a personal magnetism that defied categorization, which is one of the reasons it was difficult for former Circle members to describe what it was exactly they saw in him back then… because it wasn’t that they didn’t see the warning signs or that Valentine completely changed between his teenage years and adulthood.
In fact, one of the primary narratives about the Circle days as told from several former members is that Valentine was handpicking a cult at the Academy, specifically targeting the lonely, the desperate, and the outcast. A lot of what Valentine did was textbook grooming- with every member of the Circle he asserted control through some combination of love-bombing, distorting personal boundaries, sharing secrets, creating a perception of indebtedness, and fostering a fear of reprisal should he ever be refused.
Luke was one of the only people that routinely vouched for a version of Valentine that was trying to make genuine connections with people, but even he acknowledged that, at best, his approach to creating these bonds had ulterior motives.
“There are those who believe Valentine has always been what he became, that he never loved anything but power. Then there are those, and most days I count myself among them, who believe the Valentine I loved back then was more than a disguise. That before he was a man consumed by darkness, he was a boy committed to doing what he thought was right— and committed to the friends he recruited to his cause.”
-Better in Black (BiB), Who the Wolf Loves (WtWL), pg 132
As for what I personally believe, I’m very much in the “people aren’t born wicked” camp, so I actually do feel that, in teenage Valentine’s mind, he may have genuinely believed that he was helping others. I think he had a “broken like me” mentality when looking for friends- certainty he was glib and charming enough to have become close to anyone he pleased, but he wanted to be with others that felt inferior, misunderstood, or sidelined. He was drawn to others that he felt were emotionally scarred in some way because they reminded him of himself, and his offers of help (while oftentimes accompanied by harsh methods) were genuine. Certainly a large part of this was also because he could maintain control in these relationships, but I just don’t subscribe to the idea that teenage Valentine was wholly Machiavellian in his motivations.
However, aspects of these traits certainly already existed in him, and I do tend to think that Valentine’s trauma from his intensely abusive childhood already manifested in poor emotional regulation, a desire for control in every situation, a tendency to manipulate others to get what he wanted instead of trying to approach problems head-on, and a compulsive avoidance of accountability- which are all traits that fast-track to disastrous interpersonal relationships if nothing is done to address them. So whether or not his intention was to create a cult during the Academy days, it really isn’t that surprising that even back then that’s what it seemed like he was doing. His pathological need for control meant he was approaching relationships in a way that primed dependence and disproportionality focused attention on those who were vulnerable to abuse.
And this is where his initial approach of Luke comes into play. The Academy wasn’t going well for him. In fact, “not going well” is a massive understatement- things were going so poorly that in Luke’s own words:
“Jocelyn was a natural Shadowhunter, I was not… I thought sometimes about running away, returning home in shame. Even becoming a mundane. I was that miserable.”
His internalized shame and belief that others were simply natural Shadowhunters while he himself did not possess the necessary skills based on some inherent deficiency was multiplied tenfold at the Academy. He was suddenly surrounded by students his age who were all better Shadowhunters than he was, because they were given the proper tools and training at home to be successful. But Luke didn’t register this. And neither did anyone else, because they all likely assumed that Luke did have the proper prerequisite training and was struggling regardless. It was becoming a self-fulfilling feedback loop that no one was bothering to look deep enough into to break:
This drove him to a place where he was in so much mental agony that apparently, he was considering willingly undergoing torture to have his marks stripped and being completely cut off from anyone he had ever known and loved to go live a life he had been taught was inferior since birth. In my opinion, a Shadowhunter considering becoming a mundane out of abject misery occupies the same mental space as suicidal ideation, because it’s the idea of taking irreversible measures to unmake oneself rather than live another day as they are. In fact, getting one’s marks stripped is apparently so painful that not everyone even survives the process. This is so drastic that I’ve actually never heard of another Shadowhunter who has talked about thinking of taking this step voluntarily. Even those who theoretically “chose” to undergo the process in order to be with a mundane romantic partner were not being given what I would consider to be a fair choice. Rather, they were forced to choose between two horrific options: either cut an indispensable person from their life or cut out a part of their very being. The point here is that it is beyond concerning to hear that “becoming a mundane” was looking like one of the only viable options to a fifteen-year-old Shadowhunter.
I’m harping on this because I think it’s an important glance into Luke’s headspace at the time. A lot of the Shadowhunter stigmas that prevent honest conversation surrounding mental health still bind Luke all the way through to the present day, so we have to rely on a lot of half hinted at sentiments or sentences that are delivered nonchalantly, but which contain a heavier weight. I don’t think I’m being dramatic about how close Luke was to taking potentially life-threatening action (whether that took the form of getting his marks stripped or purposefully going after demons he wasn’t prepared to face or something else entirely) when Luke is so adamant about this talking point:
“I carried my secrets there, my silent burdens, invisible to everyone. Everyone but Valentine.”
“I was quiet, polite, and the other students were polite to me, but I possessed no friends. I did not know how to make them: I had always had you, for so long that I did not recall any first meeting, any decision to bond ourselves together. It had simply happened, and I did not know how to make it happen again.”
“It was Valentine who saved me.”
“I felt a great defensiveness rise up inside me. Valentine had saved me, made me whole. I owed him everything.”
When someone feels invisible and that their pain is going entirely unseen (especially a teenager), that is never a good sign for the state of their mental health. That is especially the case when compounded with social isolation, which seems like it was very intense in this particular situation. Luke apparently wasn’t able to connect with a single person on any kind of meaningful level, with the assertion that he didn’t even know how. And the language “Valentine saved me” is very strong, and was an important enough detail to Luke for him to relay in both the version of this story that he writes about to Jocelyn and the extremely simplified spark-notes version he tells Clary. This makes me comfortable in making the prediction that had there been no intervention from anyone else, Luke one way or another wouldn’t have been at the Academy (or anywhere in the Shadowhunter world at all) come the start of the next semester.
This meant Luke fit exactly with the profile of the kinds of people Valentine reached out to with offers of friendship. People with huge holes in them that nothing they had tried could fill, people who were perceiving themselves to be failing to live up to the steep expectations of their warrior culture, people who the system was objectively failing. Luke told two different versions of the story about Valentine’s initial approach, but while I’m more inclined to believe the more detailed account he wrote in his story to Jocelyn and discount what he said to Clary as a purposefully simplified mashing together of multiple events to make a short, linear, and easy-to-follow story, I do think it’s worth noting how in both versions, Luke insinuated that he was scouted out beforehand.
“He came to my room- I’d never even thought he knew my name. He offered to train me. He said he knew that I was struggling, but he saw in me the seeds of a great Shadowhunter.”
“I carried my secrets there, my silent burdens, invisible to everyone. Everyone but Valentine. That was always his great skill: his ability to read people and know what they wanted to hear, what they most yearned for, and what they were hiding. He must have watched me as I went to classes alone, and ate alone…”
Valentine had singled out his mark, and now it was time to seal the deal, so to speak. A group of students were at the archery range together and Stephen Herondale was making a fool of himself, missing the target and getting amused cheering from the students around him. This stood out to Luke, who had a deep-seated belief that any sort of mistake signified unworthiness. He was amazed that Stephen could miss the target and still be praised by others. It was at this moment that Valentine decided to make his move:
“You’re a better shot than him, you know. You just hold yourself back because you’re afraid people will think you’re showing off.”
I ducked my head, looked down. “If you say so.”
He handed me his own bow. “Go on.”
I went to stand before the target. Raised the bow, strung the arrow. Took my shot.
It hit, dead center. This time the laughter and clapping was for me. I turned around and grinned at Valentine, who was leaning against a nearby tree. He grinned lazily, beckoning me over. “Have lunch with me today,” he said.”
This anecdote is actually the reason that I’m so sure that it was lack of proper training and not lack of proper skill that impacted Luke’s performance at the Academy. He was at the very least an excellent shot, better than Stephen Herondale, who was known to be a gifted warrior in all areas. This alone proved he had the coordination necessary to be a good Shadowhunter, but the pieces just weren’t fitting together correctly for whatever reason. And Valentine saw that too. He didn’t approach totally lost causes, so he must have seen in Luke someone he could help and shape and mold. I actually think this was a big part of Valentine’s strategy- seeking out Shadowhunters that needed a little extra one-on-one attention in order to be on level with their peers, and whom the system was failing because it relied so heavily upon families to provide that individualized instruction and didn’t really seem to have a good alternative should parents or guardians fail in this area. This seemed to have been the case with at least Robert, Luke, and Hodge. But as much as they all felt they were failures compared to their peers, they were all Nephilim at the end of the day with angelic blood coursing through their veins. If the books show us anything, it’s that almost every Shadowhunter has the ability to become a decent warrior if they are even halfway trained, and Valentine seemed to understand this. This meant he probably wasn’t too worried about being unable to produce results, although he also had no qualms about leveraging their sense of desperation and inferiority to make it seem that his tutelage produced a greater miracle than it actually did. And so he was ready to rinse and repeat this approach with Luke- take him under his wing, help him gain the confidence he was lacking, and see what could come of it. Except for Luke surprised him.
Now, we don’t have Valentine’s point of view to confirm exactly what happened, but we do have this from Luke:
“I believed he saw something special in me. He must have, to single me out- to pair off with me in training classes, to study with me for exams, to choose me, again and again, when he had his choice of anyone.”
Very quickly, something changed. We go from a cockily smirking Valentine waving another poor lost soul to “have lunch with [him] today” to Valentine choosing Luke for every single activity, from studying to sparring to just hanging out. This apparently got so intense that Luke was invited to spend the entire summer at his house- an invitation that seems to have been exclusive.
“I spent the summer at Valentine’s manor house, learning to ride horses, training with him, listening to him talk about his passion for change within the Clave, about the dangers of Downworlders, about how things needed to be done differently.”
The thing is, we know that Luke’s self-esteem was in the gutter and that he was a fairly non-confrontational person, especially at this point in his life. He wasn’t someone with a massive ego that needed to be stoked by Valentine putting on a charade for him. Luke would have felt honored if Valentine had spent a fraction of this amount of time with him, and would have been very understanding that he had people he would rather hang out with and things he would rather do. In fact, I don’t think Luke would have ever even dared to initiate any kind of interaction at the beginning of their friendship, that’s how insecure he was. This means that Valentine was taking point on all of their bonding activities, and he actively chose Luke over and over and over again, for everything, it seems.
But why? What was so different about Luke than the others? What was Valentine so enamored with? At the end of Who the Wolf Loves, Luke went to see Madeline Bellefluer who was an outside observer of the early Circle days at the Academy. He had a conversion with her, in which she made the following observation:
“We both know who I’ve listened to, Madeline.” I set down the tea. I’d lost my appetite for comfort. “Valentine saw it in me from the start. That I was looking for someone to tell me what to do.”
“That can’t really be what you think.”
I’d wrestled with the question for years, why Valentine had chosen me. There were so many students who were stronger than I was, smarter, fiercer, better with words or weapons. Why me, if not because he recognized something in me he knew he could control?
“You know what Jocelyn told me, back when she was first getting to know him, before she totally lost herself?… She told me he was good at pinpointing weaknesses, but his true genius was finding hidden strength, and exploiting it for his own purposes. He didn’t pick you for your weakness, Lucian— he picked you for your greatest strength. Your loyalty. He knew it was a double-edged sword— that you’d always ignore yourself and your needs for the people you love.”
After the fallout of their relationship, Luke seemed to have spent a great deal of time combing through his memories and trying to recontextualize them to make sense with the villain that Valentine became. This is a very normal human reaction to betrayal and heartbreak, but in doing this, Luke couldn’t separate the forest from the trees. He was probably remembering Valentine’s need for control and the hints of darkness and malice that existed even at the beginning, and combining that with his own miserable self-concept to paint himself as someone who must’ve been attractive because he was weak and easily controlled. Madeline took his self-deprecation out of it and offered an outside view that flipped everything on its head- a suggestion that Valentine chose Luke not for his weakness, but for his strength.
Madeline’s theory (well, I suppose it was actually originally Jocelyn’s theory) was that this was why Valentine selected everyone that he did. I think this is an important insight, but it is also lacking. I don’t discount the point of view of everyone else in the Circle, who all attested that they were targeted for their weaknesses. Jocelyn probably didn’t see this particular side of Valentine as much because by the time he was pursing her romantically, every other member of the Inner Circle (except Celine) was already a well established part of Valentine’s orbit, and he had very different motivations behind choosing Jocelyn as his future bride than he did in recruiting any of the others. In fact, her experience as a part of the Circle was quite different from anyone else’s, and so I think her point of view was always missing some context and led to her interpreting Valentine differently as well.
Valentine’s great skill was that he could pinpoint weaknesses in an individual, and then foster a sense of indebtedness as he gave them the perceived antidote to that weakness. It wasn’t obvious or physical weakness that he was concerned with- as I said before, assisting in those areas was more about cementing friendship. If we take Robert as an example, outwardly Robert seemed to be struggling with applying runes. Valentine helped him to learn to overcome his fears in that department and it certainly made Robert grateful to him. But the true struggle that he saw within Robert was something deeper, something he never would have willingly admitted, maybe not even to himself. He saw that Robert was emotionally cowardly and possessed very limited self-awareness, so he offered Robert an environment where he felt like he didn’t have to be accountable for any descisions. That was the true way Valentine bound people to him so tightly- by finding these insecurities that went beyond the surface and digging into the core of what these people were truly terrified of, he ensured that they would do almost anything (including committing blatant atrocities) to cling to the feeling that Valentine was giving them- that feeling of safety, of security, of absolution from guilt, of freedom from responsibility- whatever it may have been that was creating that particular chasm inside of them.
This particular brand of emotional control wouldn’t work on just anyone, so I actually think Luke was onto something when he thought that Valentine approached him because he could see weakness in him. It goes back to everything the narrative established before about Luke’s difficult home life, about his abandonment complex, about his desperate insecurity and non-existent self-worth. This was the hole Valentine expected to fill.
But Jocelyn and Madeline’s insight wasn’t worthless just because it was incomplete. Valentine may not have been seeking out people based on their strengths, but I think he was certainly drawn to strength when he encountered it… like a month to a flame, I’m not sure he could help himself.
Valentine grew up in an environment that placed strength of many varieties on a pedestal, whether that came in the form of courage, beauty, self-mastery, warrior excellence, or angelic birthright. Valentine was expected to exhibit perfection in all of these areas to reinforce his father’s idea that he was exceptional, even when compared to other Nephilim. It created a sense of inflated ego within Valentine, but it also must have seemed lonely or alienating at times. It was a “heavy is the head that wears the crown” mentality- he was groomed to be a leader among Shadowhunters, and taught that the burden of that responsibility meant that he could connect with others in a way that was commanding, mentoring, or indulgently benevolent, but never truly equal. He could assist them with their weakness, but they could never be allowed to see his. This was also probably where his lack of compassion stemmed from when he ultimately caused his most loyal friends suffering or even death- because he believed somewhere deep down that it was part of their duty to him as lesser individuals. He would support them as long as he could, but when push came to shove they were interchangeable and he was not. He may even mourn them in his own way- but people were not vibrant individuals to him as much as they were stewardships that he was somewhat fond of, but could ultimately let go of if necessary.
This mindset shone through in the way he raised both Sebastian and Jace- both felt that they needed to be better than everyone else around them, and if they couldn’t, it signified an inherent failure. Jace of course learned to foster genuine love for his family and friends, but it took him a long time to unlearn the idea that feeling that kind of care for them was a debilitating weakness that could only get himself and them hurt.
That kind of attitude towards strength and weakness caused a sort of catch-22 to occur. Valentine could not tolerate weakness in himself, but he needed to be around others with significant weaknesses in order to exercise his brand of manipulation that allowed him to be in full control. This meant Valentine was purposely surrounding himself with people whom he could not fully respect. Meanwhile, he worshipped strength and continually strove after it- so it makes sense that he would have been genuinely attracted to it in others, especially if he found it to be strength equal to his own. This was literally why he fell so deeply in love with Jocelyn:
“The way [Valentine looked at Jocelyn]… like she was a different species than the rest of them, a higher species. “Can’t you see it?” Valentine had confided once, early on, when Robert had asked him how he could be so sure of love, so soon. “There’s more of the Angel in her than in the rest of us. There’s greatness in her. She shines like Raziel himself.”
-Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy (TFTSA), The Evil We Love (TEWL), pg 367
I also believe it’s why there was such a switch-up when it came to Luke. When Valentine originally came to Luke, it was because he saw his weakness. But it didn’t take him long to see that Luke wasn’t like any of the others he had approached offering a balm to their deficit. Luke didn’t need anyone to fill that hole for him- he was somehow alright just letting it exist. There is an inherent bravery in that, because for someone who truly believed himself to be weak and wanting in so many areas, Luke still refused to compromise his values or let anyone else do his thinking for him. He could be convinced, but not coerced. As Amatis put it:
“Luke was always so basically good, whatever Valentine tried to get him to do— sometimes I thought he and Jocelyn were the only really good people I knew…”
Luke wasn’t ever going to be able to see this trait as a strength- in fact, he almost certainly saw it as a weakness. But I think this is what impressed Valentine most, more than even his loyalty or cleverness or self-sufficiency (because Luke’s strength was never just one thing, he was impressive in a myriad of areas.)
“He told me I was brave and clever; he told me I was unlike the others who scurried around, snatching up crumbs of his attention, Robert and Michael and Hodge and even Maryse. I believed it all- that he saw in me not a follower, but an equal.”
Later on, Luke started to doubt if any of this was true, or if it was all just vain flattery to further sucker him along. But a brief look into the crumbs we have about their dynamic compared to how Valentine treated others in the Circle reveals a stark difference that definitely wasn’t just in Luke’s head.
“Valentine smiled at me. It’s shameful to remember now, how easily I fell for that smile. How I came to crave it. The knowingness of it, the sense that he could see straight through me. It always amused him, my stubborn determination to pretend away what was so clear to him.”
“Then look me in the eyes and tell me you feel nothing but friendship for Jocelyn Fairchild.”
I looked him in the eye.”
“When I was young, my mother left to us to join the Iron Sisters,” I told him. “She asked me to be brave. Brave enough to let her go.”
“And you were,” he said. “You did. You’ve told me what it cost you.”
“I held out as long as I could,” I told him. “After a month, I wrote a letter. I told her I missed her. That I thought I could handle her absence, but I’d been wrong. I missed her. I needed her, and so did my sister. And—” I hesitated here. Valentine’s respect meant everything to me. What would he think of me, once he heard my secret shame? “And I asked her to come home. No, I begged her. I told her the longer she was away, the more I feared she’d stopped loving me. I asked her to please, prove me wrong.”
“You wrote it down, but you didn’t send it,” Valentine guessed.
“What makes you say that?”
No matter how much Luke self-reports cowardice or scraping and bowing to Valentine, it just doesn’t show through in the content we actually have. Luke resisted letting Valentine define him even if Valentine claimed to be able to “see straight through [him],” he looked Valentine straight in the eye when Valentine was purposefully trying to get under his skin, and Valentine clearly had respect for him and the restraint he showed after his mother left. Although I am not going to put all the examples here, The Evil We Love and The Wicked Ones both clearly showed that the other Circle members didn’t approach Valentine this way at all. Robert was devastated and caved immediately when Valentine shared his perception of Robert’s cowardice, handing the reigns over to him to define the narrative moving forward. Celine flinched away from him when he used his verbal knives against her. And when speaking with Robert and Celine about their respective inner demons, Valentine took a tone of manipulative condescension as he steered them to the conclusion he wanted them to make. It’s almost hilarious that Luke’s major concern in his own conversation with Valentine was losing his respect- that wasn’t even a thought that ever crossed the minds of the others, because they never assumed they had his respect to lose.
Later on, Luke still never acted like the rest of them when it came to Valentine. If he disagreed with him he just said so, he didn’t tiptoe around it.
“So you won’t tell us where you got your intel from,” Lucian said, the only one other than Jocelyn who could question Valentine with impunity, “but you want us to sneak off campus and hunt down these werewolves ourselves? If you’re so sure the Clave would want them taken care of, why not leave it to them?”
“The Clave is useless,” Valentine hissed. “You know that better than anyone, Lucian. But if none of you are willing to risk yourselves for this— if you’d rather stay here and go to a party…” His mouth curled as if even speaking the word repelled him. “I’ll go myself.”
It is also interesting that Robert said that “Lucian [was] the only one other than Jocelyn who could question Valentine with impunity” because impunity indicates a lack of reprisal- which was demonstrably not the case. Valentine immediately censured Luke in front of the group for challenging him… but Luke didn’t seem to particularly care. That’s what the actual difference was between him and the rest of the Circle- they lived in fear of Valentine’s disapproval and temper. Just a few paragraphs after Valentine snapped at Luke, he also lost his temper at Hodge, and the response from Hodge was very different.
“Hodge pushed his glasses up on his nose and leapt to his feet. “I’ll go with you, Valentine,” he said, too loud… “I’m always at your side.”
“Sit down,” Valentine snapped. “I don’t need you getting in the way.”
“What good does your loyalty do me when it comes with a big mouth and two left feet?”
Hodge paled and dropped back to the ground, eyes blinking furiously behind thick lenses.
Jocelyn pressed a hand to Valentine’s shoulder— ever so gently, and only for a moment, but it was enough.
“I only mean, Hodge, that your particular skills are wasted on the battlefield,” Valentine said, more kindly. The shift in tone was abrupt, but sincere. When Valentine favored you with his warmest smile, he was impossible to resist.”
-TFTSA (TEWL), pg 348-349
Hodge paled, almost cried, and Valentine had to reign in his anger and make amends. With Luke, no such apology was necessary. He absorbed Valentine’s anger and moved on. Luke was strong enough to handle Valentine as he actually was, and not quail under the intensity of it but instead meet him head-on. There was no one in Valentine’s life before that point that he could say that of.
This created a problem- or rather, what Valentine would later come to see as a problem- because Luke wasn’t just a follower to him. Luke was an equal, someone he could share his burdens with, someone he could show his true colors to and not be afraid that he couldn’t handle it. Valentine only loved Luke because he was strong- but because Luke was strong, he wasn’t corruptible. This also turned out to be an issue with Jocelyn. It is such a delicious irony to me that Valentine Morgenstern was only capable of loving people who were strong enough to defy him. We see this again with Jace:
“Turning in astonishment, she saw Jace by the door, his arm still raised, and realized he must have flung the dagger with enough force to knock the black sword out of his father’s hand.
Very pale, he slowly lowered his arm, his eyes on Valentine— wide and pleading. “Father. I—”
Valentine looked at his bleeding hand, and for a moment, Clary saw a spasm of rage cross his face, like a light flickering out. His voice, when he spoke, was mild. “That was an excellent throw, Jace.”
For Valentine, who craved control, surrendering his heart must have already been terrifying enough. After all, Valentine believed firmly that “to love [was] to destroy, and to be loved [was] to be the one destroyed.” (City of Bones, pg 279). Loving another person does give them the power to hurt you… and the only people Valentine could let into his heart were people who were able to resist his control, think for themselves, and stand on their own two feet without him.
“Valentine shook his head. “You tore my heart out years ago,” he said, and even Clary could not tell if the sorrow in his voice was real or feigned. “When you betrayed and deserted me.”
Clary might not have been able to tell if Valentine was sincere, but he was. There was no reason to try to manipulate Luke here- he wanted nothing from him. This is the most vulnerable we ever see Valentine, next to his genuine grief over Jace’s death in City of Glass. Luke may have fallen for Valentine first, but Valentine fell much harder… and this is actually where the whole mess of their parabatai relationship truly begins. Because now that he loved him, Valentine just had to have him. That’s just how Valentine worked- for him, love = possession. It wasn’t enough anymore for Luke to just be in the squad, not even if he was his partner for every project, his opponent for every spar, and his roommate. No, Valentine had to make sure it was permanent. As he said to Stephen:
“When you’re lucky enough to have a Graymark by your side, you do whatever you can to make sure it’s forever. I should know.”
Well, forever indeed. Next up, we will take a deeper look at how this bond actually ended up looking once it was formed, and why things started going wrong (featuring Jocelyn!)
