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1* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: Canonically! Near the end of ''Brightly Burning'', Herald Pol notices that Lan is using his powers more and more destructively, culminating in a SuperpowerMeltdown that nearly kills everyone in both the allied and enemy armies. We see in Lan's POV sections that using [[EvilIsBurningHot his powers to kill people]] has been [[SlowlySlippingIntoEvil decaying his morality]] and making him more sadistic beyond [[LivingEmotionalCrutch Kalira's]] ability to regulate him - when Kalira is killed, Lan only wants to burn the world. Pol, and Lan's friends, choose to remember the end of Lan's life as more of a HeroicSacrifice done to save Valdemar, rather like the one Vanyel made before him.
2* AngstWhatAngst: A few characters get the "keeping it together during a crisis, collapsing afterward" version.
3** In ''Arrow's Fall'', Talia suffers ColdBloodedTorture and rape before the Heralds rescue her. When ThePowerOfLove finally kicks in and cements her bond with Herald Dirk, everything seems to be okay... until she reveals that she is having flashbacks to her sexual assault whenever he touches her. It takes some time before she is mentally recovered enough to feel ready for a physical relationship again.
4** In ''Winds of Fate'', Dawnfire's body dies and her mind is stuck in the body of her bondbird. She was supposedly quite close to Darkwind, enough to want to essentially marry him. Darkwind has intense anguish when her body is found but then moves on immediately, thinking about Elspeth as more attractive and interesting than Dawnfire. When he encounters her as a bird he's upset over her situation again, and her EmergencyTransformation into an Avatar has him in agony. Then he doesn't think about her at all in ''Mage Winds'' or beyond. Dawnfire herself no longer has POV after she's made into an Avatar and has only a few appearances, but she doesn't mention him either. Even in a scene where she manifests to a group that includes him, there's no connection or acknowledgement that they even knew each other.
5** During ''Winds of Fury'', An'desha is too busy trying to reclaim his body from Mornelithe Falconsbane to really dwell on his situation. By ''Storm Warning'', he has regressed into a weepy, timid child in a man's body with cripplingly low self esteem and constant fear that Falconsbane will come back. It takes him most of a book, plus some EpiphanyTherapy, to truly get over what he's been through and develop a stable personality.
6* {{Anvilicious}}: The ''Last Herald-Mage'' trilogy had a gay protagonist. Much of his character arc was devoted towards overcoming the homophobia of his abusive family, accepting his sexuality, and realizing that it did not make him 'wrong' or 'bad' in any way, all portrayed at great length. To present-day readers, the trilogy probably seems a little overwrought. But the books were published in 1989, a time when homophobia was much worse than it is now, and openly gay characters in fantasy [[http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/04/25/for-the-sake-of-vanyel/ were rare]].
7** In the Mage Winds trilogy, that Nyara doesn't deserve and is not responsible for the abuse her father inflicted on her is briefly raised in the first book, then repeatedly and at more length in the second. In the third it's baldly stated by Stefan's ghost and Nyara considers it carefully and decides he's right. This is not subtle, though applied to survivors in general it's a good message.
8* BrokenAesop: In ''By the Sword'', Tarma and Kethry (and Warrl) play AesopEnforcer to make sure Kerowyn learns that sometimes you have to work with people you don't like. But in Kero's subsequent career as a mercenary, she gets along well with all her cohorts except the one Captain who nearly drives the Skybolts into the ground, meaning she was absolutely right to not want to work with the woman. It could be argued the payoff is that she tried to make it work until Ardana did something that ''everyone'' could agree was bad management, but once the Skybolts recover from that setback, Kero ensures that they ''never'' work under someone she dislikes, because she won't trust her people to someone she doesn't trust herself.
9* CompleteMonster:
10** [[TheEvilPrince Prince Ancar]] is the sadistic, spoiled son of King Alessander of Haldorn, who [[{{Patricide}} murders his father]] to [[TheUsurper take over the throne]]. After murdering Herald Kris and capturing the Queen's Own Herald Talia, Ancar tortures her more for sport than information, [[FrameUp framing them]] for his father's death as an excuse to start a war with Valdemar. He also consolidates power by having anyone even remotely related to him killed, uses magical MindControl to turn his male citizens into mindless soldiers, and even drains his own lands of power to increase his own. And if all that weren't enough, he personally uses BloodMagic and enjoys sex with captive young girls... sometimes in combination.
11** The closest thing to a BigBad in the series is a Sorceror-Adept who [[ConstantlyChangingName starts off]] going by [[NamesToRunAwayFromVeryFast Ma'ar, the Mage of Black Flames]]. He's at his most nuanced then, acting in what he thinks are the best interests of his people and inspiring genuine loyalty, but he does also take power by moving against "decadent foreigners" and starting a [[ANaziByAnyOtherName purge of the Kaled'a'in]], then moving against other countries. This sparks the Mage Wars, and his greatest opponent created weapons to use against him which started the Cataclysm that [[WorldWreckingWave devastated much of the world]] and had a ripple effect through time itself. Though defeated, Ma'ar didn't actually die, as he had set up a GrandTheftMe system so that he could [[FamilialBodySnatcher take over the body of any his descendants]] once they started showing signs of magical ability. He continues this over two thousand years, "seeding" the world with children so as to never run out of descendants. In the ''Literature/LastHeraldMageTrilogy'' he's in his Leareth incarnation and spends decades systematically killing off Herald-Mages, but also playing around with such cruelties as deciding to reenact a myth in which a god was fed on by crows every day and regrew his flesh every night on a minion who had failed him. By ''Mage Winds'', he's Mornelithe Falconsbane and has undergone quite a bit of VillainDecay twisting him into a StupidEvil creature who sometimes just eats human flesh. He's still quite formidable and monstrous, and retains his old vendetta against the Kaled'a'in and their descendants. To this end, Falconsbane would force Starblade, elder of the k'Shenya, to destroy his people's Heartstone, almost wiping them out and corrupting their valley.
12** ''The White Gryphon'': Hadanelith is a minor villain who possesses the Gifts of [[TheEmpath Empathy]] and Mindhealing, but uses them [[GoodPowersBadPeople to serve his own sadistic desires rather than to aid people]]. When first discovered, he is found to have been using his gifts to [[MindRape warp the minds of women]] until they live only to serve him in slavery, [[SexSlave sexually]] and otherwise. He is exiled from the city of White Gryphon under the relatively loose laws and customs of their society. Rather than die in the wilderness, he makes his way south to the Haighlei kingdoms and is recruited by the EvilChancellor to assassinate high ranking members of their society in order to frame the delegation from White Gryphon. In doing so, he is permitted to indulge his sadistic fantasies and accordingly tortures his victims before killing them.
13** ''The Collegium Chronicles'': Master Cole Pieters puts children as young as four and five to work in a mine. He forces them to sleep in a basement, feeds them so little that they supplemented their diet by stealing the pig slop whenever they could, and is known to [[WouldHurtAChild beat the children to a bloody pulp with a mallet in front of the rest of the child workers]] should he deem it "necessary" for control of them.
14** ''Closer to Home'': [[BitchInSheepsClothing Brand]] is the charming, psychopathic heir of House Raeylen. He begins by seducing young [[TheIngenue Violetta]] of House Chendlar with false promises of love, but when the King arranges for him to marry Violetta's older sister and promises them an estate, he comes up with a new plot: His men try to kill every member of both Houses Chendlar and Raeylen [[WeddingSmashers at his wedding feast]] except for himself and Violetta, so that when he marries her, he'll hold three estates instead of one. Brand succeeds in [[{{Patricide}} killing his father]], and when apprehended, he calls Violetta "a pair of legs and an empty head", and admits that he planned to manipulate Violetta during their marriage so that he could use his new wealth to purchase the services of a HighClassCallGirl.
15* DesignatedHero: Increasingly common in the later series, but there are suggestions early on, too. Tarma resents her partner Kethry being compelled to help women in danger because it's inconvenient and many women don't 'deserve' help, an attitude passed on to Kerowyn. In one story, after a city girl is raped and cast out Tarma and Kethry take her with them and are hugely condescending to her, passing her off to a farmer with StayInTheKitchen views while literally calling her a "pet" for him to take in. Not only that, but her rapist has an [[StandardHeroReward arranged marriage]] with a wealthy girl who looked [[RealWomenDontWearDresses vain and stuck-up]] when the pair saw her in passing. Tarma and Kethry blithely say that these two deserve each other.
16** In ''Intrigues'', Bear (an aspiring Healer who is supposedly the protagonist's best friend) baselessly accuses Mags of murder and threatens to beat him to death. Mags is a ''14-year-old child''. And despite the fact that Bear's abuse almost drove him to suicide, they're buddies again in the end of the book, with no apology or effort on Bear's part.
17** In ''Storm Breaking'', Elspeth takes sadistic joy in the suffering Tremane inflicts on himself so he can protect his countrymen. Mind that Elspeth is literally marked out by the powers that be as a Good Person. There's also the fact that Elspeth, Solaris and Darkwind take an entire book to forgive him for his assassination of Ulrich. (In the meantime, they take passive aggressive potshots, withhold information out of spite and Solaris already punished him by cursing him.) ''They've'' assassinated people before, and Tremane thought he had a good reason, utterly regretted the act and made clear he wouldn't do something similar again. It's also bizarre how Tremane hasn't kicked them out for being horrible ambassadors and advisors (regardless of how they personally feel about Tremane, they should have put aside those feelings or Selenay should have sent someone with less personal stakes). The entire thing smacks of MoralMyopia.
18** The short story ''Trust Your Instincts'' in the anthology novel ''Pathways'' makes the king-choosing Sword That Sings into at ''best'' a really callous CreepyGood entity. Predicting that a tyrant would destroy it, it plants a strong compulsion in a minor noble, making him utterly obsessed with it first using soothing and pleasant emotions, then when Fayne finally touches it switching to torturous visions until he realizes it wants him to take it to safety. He steals it and travels with a friend who eventually has enough of Fayne deferring to the sword and leaves, climbing a mountain pass and then realizing his friend was right, the Sword That Sings wants him to die here. Suffused with the sword's pleasant emotions again, Fayne sees this as a HeroicSacrifice and is happy.
19--> "I'm sick of listening to your damned sword! It doesn't talk, but still you know what it's saying and that it wants us to kill ourselves in these hills. There's not enough food for the horse. We're here just before winter without food. If that sword's even saying anything, it's been giving you the worst advice it possibly could!"
20* EnsembleDarkhorse: Mercedes Lackey's Kickstarter produced merchandise of characters and groups especially beloved by a polled group of fans. Some of this merchandise is of Natoli and the other Artificers, who are only prominent in two books, ''Storm Warning'' and ''Storm Rising''.
21* HarsherInHindsight: The broad strokes of how ''The Oathbreakers'' (1989) and the Golden Age arc of {{Manga/Berserk}} (1996) end have enough similarities to take note of. A UniversallyBelovedLeader (Idra, Griffith) who has particular ideas about ruling and captains a wildly successful mercenary company (the Sunhawks, the Band of the Hawk) made a poor choice that was met with DisproportionateRetribution. Evil kings imprisoned them in their dungeons and terribly abused them, completely incapacitating them (DrivenToSuicide, tongueless and maimed). Their second in command leads the remainder of the mercenaries while the most extraordinary of the company (Tarma and Kethry, Guts) are off on their own. On discovering what's happened and reuniting with the wanderers the mercenaries rally and perform a daring maneuver in their captain's name (attacking the king, rescuing Griffith from the dungeon) supported by common people. In the process the barriers between worlds are torn asunder in a dramatic ritual moment and the captain returns to better-than-human health and vitality and turns someone (the king, almost the entire Band of the Hawk) into unrecognizable bloody pulp. Of course, if you know what happens in both, you understand that how the Golden Age ends is much, much, ''much'' DarkerAndEdgier. When the captain of the Sunhawks rode out from the kingdom of Death her mercenaries were briefly afraid but understood that their beloved Captain Idra meant them well, and she returned to the afterlife peacefully after mulching her brother.
22* HoYay: Both in-universe and among fans, naturally. In universe, certain areas are quite prejudiced against homosexuality and the suggestion of it must be avoided by those wishing to remain un-lynched. The first book has a bit of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness in that even many of the Heralds are somewhat homophobic and don't associate closely with known gay Heralds, which is at odds with later depictions of them - then again, that book was published in 1987.
23* NightmareFuel
24** Not that it gets [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness brought up again]], but there's something so grim about Heraldic arrow-code including a standard signal for "complete disaster, situation hopeless, do not attempt rescue." Just the thought of a Herald having enough time before death to mark and break an arrow and send it with their Companion or some other ally, knowing they can't be saved and hoping only to warn others...
25* {{Squick}}: Young Talia being forced to experience Companion Rolan's sexual encounters through their empathic bond. She is noted repeatedly to be unable to block him out, implying that she really doesn't want to be party to his fun, knows what's happening in enough detail to be able to identify the other Companions and their general attitudes, and ends up resignedly considering this "an education". Rolan ''knows'' his teenaged Chosen is sharing his sex life and makes no attempt to draw a veil over it, or even to refrain on nights when she really needs to get some sleep. Talia's also forced to experience her next-door neighbor's trysts with virtually every male Herald or Herald-Trainee - even though she eventually learns to block out her Empathic awareness, her neighbor is ''loud''.
26** ''Beyond'' opens with several fart jokes and an exhaustive description of a foal's breech birth, complete with the detail, "her vaginal muscles clamped down on his arm". While personally attending to a difficult foaling is indicative of Duke Kordas Valdemar's [[EstablishingCharacterMoment lack of pretention and hands-on attitude toward his duties]] the description is, again, ''[[TooMuchInformation detailed]]''.
27* InformedWrongness: In ''Brightly Burning'', a bully is burned to death after [[CorneredRattlesnake targeting]] [[TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening the wrong]] [[PlayingWithFire kid]]. This is hushed up when the kid in question is Chosen and whisked off to the Collegium. The bully's mother, Jisette Jelnack, mourns her child and questions the circumstances of his death. While she does go too far in questioning the Companions' OmniscientMoralityLicense and trying to kill a Herald Trainee, even before then she gets NoSympathy for her grief - Herald Pol thinks it's in bad taste for her to mourn her son or want answers, because he was a bully. This may be in line with how across much of Creator/MercedesLackey's work there is a general rejection of EvenEvilHasLovedOnes - if evil people can't love, then no one should love them, either.
28* LoveToHate: In ''The Valdemar Companion'' Mercedes Lackey waxes lyrical about how much she enjoys writing from the POV of vile characters like Falconsbane and Ancar, which can come through and make them fun to read as well. Her villains can be ''so'' over the top.
29* RonTheDeathEater: ''Choices'', one of the anthologies, features ''Weight of a Hundred Eyes'', a short story by Dylan Birtolo about a girl coming into her Gift and using it to help in emergencies, and then has a life-changing encounter with a Companion. Unfortunately for Paxia, she has the Mage-Gift and was born after [[Literature/LastHeraldMageTrilogy Vanyel]] worked spells that made vrondi [[BeingWatched watch all mages]] and [[BrainwashingForTheGreaterGood kept Valdemarans from being able to think about magic]] - so she's increasingly deranged by the painful sensation of constantly being stared at. It gets worse around Companions, who pause to stare at her. One finally has a Herald escort her out of the country. Free of those two spells, Paxia feels she has been tortured for years and is now exiled from her home and immediately attacks him. Herald and Companion retreat and Paxia swears {{revenge}} on Valdemar, furious at the thought that the Heralds have allowed people like her to suffer from [[BeingWatched "the eyes"]]. She wouldn't know, but the Heralds themselves, and Valdemar in general, are completely innocent, subject to the same inability to think about magic. If they weren't they would likely be prompt in helping young mages leave Valdemar. The ''Companions'' know and took their time in helping her. The real architect of Paxia's misery is Vanyel, though.
30* TearJerker: In ''Arrow's Fall'', Rolan arrives with the broken arrow -- "all hope lost, do not attempt rescue" -- a signal one hopes to '''never''' see. When Elspeth sees for the first time what has happened to Talia, she gets nauseated and horrified. The second time she sees: "I think she's dying!" She also feels guilty over her major dispute with Talia, just before Talia departed.
31* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: Mercedes Lackey likes to populate her books with large numbers of named characters given a few interesting traits but who are generally quite OutOfFocus and don't end up participating much in the main plot. This certainly fleshes the setting out and makes it more populated, but it can lead to some frustration too as sometimes they come associated with distinct plot hooks.
32** In ''Winds of Fate'', Darkwind muses on and interacts with quite a few other Tayledras in his clan who all seem distinct and interesting but ultimately are background characters. He mentions two mages who like him were shaken by the Heartstone disaster enough to change their names - Moonwing, who became Silence and retreated into a solitary existence, and Starfire who became Nightfire and dedicated every waking moment to studying the Heartstone and trying to discover what went wrong. The Heartstone had been ''sabotaged'', but Nightfire doesn't get to find that out or react to the news. Among the scouts, Darkwind's best and oldest friend is Stormcloud, who had some Mage-Gift but little enough that Starblade had refused to train him, and whose bondbird is a playful crow. He has no dialogue after the scene where he's introduced and Darkwind never considers going to him for help or support.
33** Need is a prominent character in the Mage Winds books and comes BackForTheFinale of ''Storm Breaking'', but for an ancient spirit that seems to be [[AngelUnaware equivalent to a Companion]], a whole lot is left on the table. See below.
34* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: Two of the characters in the Mage Winds trilogy are Need; an ancient mage spirit possessing a sword and advising and acting through people she chooses, choosing new ones as they age out or die; and Falconsbane, an ancient mage spirit possessing men of his bloodline and {{Body Surf}}ing on at their deaths. One is irritable and arrogant but genuinely cares and wants her bearers to get stronger and find happiness, the other is the BigBad who destroys the souls of his hosts on entry. They never speak to each other, there's no sense of whether they've met before in the past two thousand years, and no one ever even compares and contrasts them.
35** Additionally, in ''Storm Rising'' Firesong gets really interested in immortality and specifically Falconsbane's method, though he understands that it's unethical and ponders ways that it could be more acceptable. He doesn't once think of Need, even though they worked together so well in the last trilogy, or contemplate ''her'' method even in passing.
36** Just in general, Need is out of the picture for the whole Storms trilogy until she comes BackForTheFinale, even though she's somewhere, out of focus, in the same set of buildings as the rest of the cast in ''Storm Warning''. She's older than the Mage Wars and in ''Storm Breaking'' is able to reveal how she survived the first Cataclysm - she should have been involved in discovering what the Storms were.
37** During ''Storm Breaking'' Need, the Avatars Dawnfire and Tre'valen, and Vanyel and Tylendel and Yfandes all end up crowding into Urtho's Tower to try to avert the Cataclysm. All of these characters were humans once and now something different, and Need is friends with the Avatars, who've only been spirit beings for a few years at most. But they don't talk to each other on page at all, and they barely talk to the living characters. They get introductions and then it's time for the Final Storm, and none of them say anything at the climax. Vanyel, possibly the most iconic character in the setting, doesn't even get the sendoff in the afterlife that Need and the Avatars do.
38*** The ghost of Vanyel even offers to tell Karal a story about a Karsite Sun-priest he once met who wasn't a despicable bastard, but Karal is far too intimidated (I mean, this is ''Vanyel '''Demonrider''''') to take him up on it, the matter is dropped, and the story goes untold.
39** Still on that streak, Lackey returned to Need more than two decades later with the short story ''Women's Need Calls Me'', where she's been partnered with an aging mage in Urtho's army, chooses a [[SupernaturallyValidatedTransPerson transgender woman]] as her new bearer, and helps her to physically transition. That's great, but in that time Lackey has [[SeriesContinuityError forgotten Need's wide-ranging powerset]] and that she can [[AntiMagic shield a large number of people from even very powerful magical attack]], which would have been invaluable in the ''Mage Wars'' - instead, Mel is essentially a foot soldier and all Need is able to do for her is have her fight like a warrior.
40** The canonicity of many of the short stories in the anthology novels, written mainly by non-Lackey authors, is unknown. ''Sword of Ice'' has the story ''In The Forest Of Sorrows'', where a Vanyel who's been dead and haunting the titular forest for thirty years helps a twelve-year old boy, Treyon, with strong Gifts, who he believes will be Chosen and promises to stay in contact with. The first book of the Collegium Chronicles, ''Foundation'', takes place only fifty years after Vanyel's sacrifice, but Treyon never appears.
41* TooBleakStoppedCaring: The series' habit of giving its protagonists DarkAndTroubledPast[=s=] can get quite wearying at times. The early books especially ''really'' enjoyed using RapeAsBackstory to the point where it's a dominant force in most of the Tarma and Kethry stories.
42* TooCoolToLive: A few characters seem destined to burn very brightly and very briefly.
43** When Tarma and Kethry join the Sunhawks in ''Oathbreakers'', they join under Captain Idra, a princess of Rethwellan who [[AbdicateTheThrone abdicated her hope of succession]] preferring the freedom of being a mercenary, and who rose to become the Sunhawks' UniversallyBelovedLeader. She's barely in the book before she returns to the capital of Rethwellan to help decide which of her brothers will be King, only to stop answering letters and vanish, kicking off the plot of the book as Tarma and Kethry go to discover her fate.
44** Kerowyn's first Captain in the Skybolts, Lerryn Twoblades, is TheAce in multiple skillsets, has the fanatical devotion of the entire Company, and on top of that he's the son of a character from Tarma and Kethry's day. He dies 'off-screen,' opening the path for Kero to eventually take command herself.
45* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: Elspeth is short-tempered, self-absorbed, and has a disturbing LackOfEmpathy for a Herald. She [[ConflictBall scuttles the plan]] to bring new mages to Valdemar in ''Winds of Fate'' just to regain a sense of control (never mind that she liked the idea when she thought she ''was'' in control), about which the narrative tells us that she was right and the others were wrong.
46** Rolan, Talia's Companion, is said to have [[InformedAttribute a very close bond with her]], but he just isn't as supportive of poor Talia during her many difficulties as many other Companions are to their Chosen. Companions are reluctant to put their hooves in and solve the problems of humans for them, but they're usually willing to be a comfort and support in a difficult time. Rolan can't or doesn't usually speak in words to her, but he has other ways to communicate - he will come to Talia's rescue when she's physically at risk but he doesn't so much as nuzzle her when she panics at the entrance to the Collegium in ''Arrows of the Queen'', and he seems to have a ToughLove approach in ''Arrow's Flight''. As Talia's control of her powers, and her self-esteem with them, slip he gives her no reassurance; while addressing a plague he helps her keep control in a way that she interprets as impatient with her failings, and he remains very remote while Kris slowly and painfully teaches her. Combined with forcing Talia to be privy to so much SexByProxy - which she discusses within his hearing as something that she doesn't like - he doesn't seem to care all that much about her emotional well-being. As a Monarch's Own Companion he has had other Heralds and appears in numerous books set before ''Arrows'', and he usually appears to be warmer and more kind in them, even to people he hasn't Chosen! It's likely EarlyInstallmentWeirdness.
47* VillainDecay: Mercedes Lackey's villains tend towards OrcusOnHisThrone and are often somewhat removed until the CosmicDeadline looms, but Mornelithe Falconsbane is quite active in ''Winds of Fate''. He's engineered the situation with k'Treva that has split an entire Tayledras clan and brought it to the brink of dissolution, he allows Nyara to escape so that he can use her to acquire information, he opportunistically pursues Elspeth's party and the gryphons, he captures Dawnfire and feeds her misinformation before allowing her to escape, he's even roaming around the gryphons' territory and comes across the group before they're ready for him.
48** Then in ''Winds of Change'' he's almost entirely passive, sending a magical attack that kills Tre'valen but otherwise staying in his fortress doing not much. The heroes refer to him as being stupid and predictable and when they go after him, it's not that their plan goes off without a hitch, but that the effort is ''easier'' than they expected. It's even more exaggerated in ''Winds of Fury'', though somewhat explained by the events of the second book diminishing his mental capacities. The heroes defeat him easily and then stand around marveling that he'd been so stupid.
49* {{Wangst}}: Talia, partially due to her upbringing is constantly bottling up inner turmoil, only to break down completely at regular intervals; usually over things that could have been solved if she'd simply talked to someone. Her LoveInterest Dirk even moreso. Most of his POV sections are of him wallowing in self pity because he thinks his best friend and the girl he loves are together. Dirk would rather get blackout drunk every night or give himself pneumonia than talk to either of them, and in fact ''avoids'' them when they try to track him down and set the record straight.
50** Talia calls Dirk's admittedly terrible breakup with a woman who just wanted to hurt him "rape of the soul" and worse than what ''she'' just went through at Ancar's hands. He does not contradict her.
51* WhatCouldHaveBeen: According to the Ask Misty section on her official website, in 2005 Lackey intended the Collegium Chronicles to be set after the existing books, including saying readers would "get to see [Talia] as an exasperated mother".
52* WishFulfillment: Being Chosen and taken to Haven is a fantasy both in- and out of universe. Bardic Gifts, Mage Gifts, Healing Gifts, or just a bond creature would be nice too. Talia is one twice over, first as a teenage girl getting to be one of the heroes she read about and as an abuse victim getting to escape her situation and find a healthy and loving environment. Many books in the series feature misunderstood and unhappy kids finding themselves in new and more supportive environments where they're treasured, but it's most explicit with Talia.
53* TheWoobie: A lot of the major characters start out this way, Vanyel and Talia being the most {{Anvilicious}} of the lot. (Vanyel never stops being one.)

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