Darren's abandoned/incomplete/derailed (?) character arc and where it could have gone.
- Darren's character arc — from human to vampire, from his hometown, through the Cirque and Larten and Debbie's city, to Vampire Mountain in the first half, and back the other way in the second half — is unfulfilling because he doesn't act, he reacts, he lets others tell him where to go. It's unsatisfying to see in a protagonist, but especially one who's supposed to be a leader. That the end essentially lets him "go home", and prioritize his ties from when he was a human over his leadership of the vampires, doesn't work for this story.
- A more fulfilling character arc could come from the unsettled questions and tensions left at the end of book 6.
After the battle in book 6, Darren has a conversation with Seba in the blood-soaked tunnels, where he asks these questions, and Seba essentially responds that he shouldn't ask such things, he should just accept and throw himself into the fighting. Eventually, Seba recognizes that his view might be flawed, but he remarks that Kurda is the only one who could "lead us out of the darkness of the past... but now that he has shamed himself, who will dare speak up for this new world and its ways?"Darren answers, "I don't know. But somebody should."
The conversation ends there, and any genre savvy reader would be able to fill in an answer to that question, an answer that seems to be all but confirmed by the ending of the book — A Protagonist Shall Lead Them. Darren is given the throne that was meant for Kurda. That "somebody" has to be Darren himself.
Right?
There's really so much to go into in that Lake of Souls interlude in book 12.
Here's the issue — his thoughts about what he wanted to do as a vampire, and as a Prince, that expectation placed on Darren at the end of book 6, both his literal enthronement and his more symbolic taking on of Kurda's role of forward-thinking peacemaker — the fact that he fails in that respect. He forgets that responsibility and flubs it, and the question is, why?
And maybe, the rest of the Lake of Souls Interlude gives us the answer.
Darren spends most of the rest of it talking about how he keeps imagining that he's a child again, going back to the time before he became a vampire. Remembering being a normal, undisturbed kid, with his parents and sister, and his friends, including Steve.
Maybe he fails at his responsibility because he just doesn't want to be involved at all.
But here's the thing — I don't think he really always felt that way.
Because two things happened extremely close to each other — Steve re-enters his life, as an enemy, and Larten dies.
These two things — this one episode — knocks Darren off of his path to becoming a true vampire, and make him sink back into the feelings he expressed in book 1 — that becoming a vampire was the worst thing that's ever happened to him, that he wishes he could go back to being human and forget all about it.
In books 4-7, he no longer felt that way. When he, Larten, and Harkat reach a human town for the first time after 6 years in Vampire Mountain, Darren views the humans the same way Larten does, as noisy and frantic and not like him.
So then, why? What changed?
Well, Larten died.
Mika had left Vampire Mountain only a year after Darren arrived, and returned only days before Darren left. It isn't clear when Arrow left, but it is unlikely that Darren had formed any close bonds with him. Paris has died. Vancha was never a part of Darren's life in the mountain, and in the time since they've met, they've spent less than 30 nights together. They don't really know each other. And even after finding out the truth in book 10, Darren never really fully understands, or comprehends, that Harkat is Kurda, a vampire. There's still Seba and Vanez, true, and likely others, many of whom (as Darren remarks in book 7) have died in the war, but some friends likely still survive... but even so...
Even though Darren is a Prince, even though he's said he's given up thinking of himself as a human, wanting to be a human... when Larten dies, it seems that Darren's connection to being a vampire dies with him.
Six months pass between Larten's death and Darren and Harkat's leaving to find out Harkat's true identity. They spend three months in the future, and after they return, two years pass before the Cirque goes to Darren's hometown, and Darren witnesses the stadium attack, and gets attacked by Steve et. al.
During that time with the Cirque, Harkat had tried to get Darren to rejoin the quest. Darren says they'd had "heated arguments" about it. But even Harkat, his closest friend, who has been by his side all along, doesn't convince him.
What's interesting is that Darren was going to get back involved, he was going to help Debbie and Alice get to Vampire Mountain. When he doesn't, it isn't because he's afraid of going back to Vampire Mountain, it's because he chooses Harkat not over the vampires, but over Debbie. It's because his bond with Harkat is stronger than that with Debbie. (Which is okay, because Debbie has Alice.)
But you have to wonder what would have happened if he'd gone?What would have happened if Darren and Harkat had left for Vampire Mountain right after they'd returned from the future?Why didn't they? Because no one was asking them to. No one was standing there saying "take us to Vampire Mountain". What if Debbie and Alice had come a month or two later, missed Darren and Harkat, and stayed with the Cirque until Darren and Harkat returned?
I mean, there's a reason why it wasn't meant to be — the trajectory of the series, of the 12 books that are here — is that the first half takes Darren from his hometown to Vampire Mountain, along with the Cirque through Debbie and Larten's city, and the second half takes him the other way along that same route, back to where he came from, to his grave in his hometown, longing for the human life he could never have.
Which leads us to the time-travel ending.
I feel like the fact of this ending, what actually happens, is unclear to most people. Everything that's said is kind of unclear, and I honestly don't think even the author thought it through that much. It also contradicts other things that have been said — if there are no branching timelines, how did Tiny go into "a possible future" and take Kurda's soul to make Harkat — what happens if that "possible" future doesn't come to pass? If Darren's soul is taken from the Lake in "a possible future", and that future doesn't come to pass, what does that mean? If there is only one fixed past and no branching timelines.... there's so much that doesn't make sense.
But even putting that aside.
Darren became a vampire. That can't be undone, any more than any of the series' unfair deaths (or "fair" deaths, whatever that would mean) could be. Not only did he become a vampire, he became a Prince, and he had responsibilities. Even if his unknown birth father mentally manipulated Larten, Arrow, and others (including Darren himself) to get him there, he's there and he can't just turn around.
But during his time with the Cirque after Larten dies, he seems to forget this, not on the surface, but on a deeper level. The world of the vampires becomes like a dream to him, a nightmare he acts as if he's woken up from and just wants to forget.By giving Darren a way out, it legitimizes that feeling. The story essentially says that the conflict almost wasn't real, like it happened through a looking glass.
In the books, it is also said to let Darren purge the "sin" of the events of the series from himself and go to Paradise — though if Larten could go to "Paradise" after killing all those people on the ship, if he'd atoned... how? By raising Darren to act in a way that locks him out of Paradise?The more I think of it, the more unfair it feels. It's just protagonist-centered morality.
Yes, the readers want to see what happens to the war after Darren and Steve both die so that neither could become the Lord of the Shadows. So have a scene where Evanna takes Darren out of the Lake, tells him she's had two children, and lets him see Vancha and Gannen, with Harkat, working for peace. And then Evanna could give him some sort of magic device that allows him to shout his regrets and apologies or whatever into it that would let him out and let him go to Paradise. You could even have her say she'll take his diaries into an alternate world without vampires and give them to the version of himself there, and preserve that aspect of it.
Another way that the changing the past thing has just confused people is that it's made people think that things will happen differently in the new timeline, that the peace-babies future is essentially irrelevant, or non-existent. And then the manga has all the characters looking up into the sky and being happy as if they're not all going to suffer and die the same ways in 10-18 years. "Ahh yes... but this time it will be a different random kid. This time it will be one who has no free will, just following the exact path through time pre-carved by the one who cheated himself out of it."(That's what canon says, but I have my own ideas about whether or not the Coffin of Fire could actually respond to someone who isn't Steve... and what then? Steve' gets fried by the Coffin, and everyone goes through the next 10 years acting like the Lord of the Vampaneze is there when really there's no one?)
So, we have this completed 12-book series where, in the last three books, the main character goes back to trying to refuse the call, and, in the end, is allowed to.
He didn't complete his quest and return home a wiser and come-of-age person.
He just up and quit after his mentor died.
He doesn't say he quit — he says he's waiting for "destiny" to call him back to the war. He still fights. He still enters the final battle, he still does what he must— but only when what he "must" do is clearly before him. Rescue this person. Escape from Steve pointing an arrow gun right at him. But that's not action. That's barely even reaction.
There is the fact that the author intended to continue the series for another 6-12 books. He decided while writing 11 and 12 that it would be better to scrap his planned 12, and take the last 1/3 of 11 and combine that with the eventual ending he had planned, and finish the series there. I'm assuming that that "eventual ending" that he mentions having already planned includes a) Darren dying while taking Steve down, before the other characters have settled their war, so that he doesn't get to be part of the dawn of the more peaceful world, and b) the time-travel and replacement twist.
He also doesn't say how far back he was able to go back and tweak once he decided on this, so maybe a lot of these unresolved points would have been resolved if the series had continued as planned, but I don't know if I believe that.
So... the series feels incomplete. It feels like it lost itself somewhere along the line.
Where should it have gone differently? What should it have resolved?
Well, what does Darren say in the Lake of Souls?
- "I wish I'd never become a vampire."
- "I wish I'd thought for myself more after becoming a Prince, and sought peace."
- "I wish I'd never become a vampire."
- "I wish I'd gotten to stay in my happy, human childhood and not become a vampire."
- "I wish I'd gotten to stay with my family and not become a vampire."
Well, one of these things is workable without scrapping the entire series.
And... Harkat is right there.
We know that in the original plan of the series, Evra was supposed to be the one who would die and become Harkat (Harvey). But the author realized that character-wise, that wouldn't make sense for Evra. That Evra wouldn't follow Darren to Vampire Mountain, he'd likely have his own life and interests.In a recent interview (2020 or '21), he said that it was when he wrote book 6, he realized "who it should be, who it needed to be."
But then what happens?
Harkat wants Darren to go back into the war. They'd had "some very heated arguments" about it, and while Harkat "reluctantly" obeyed his Prince, still "his patience was coming to an end" in the weeks before the choice was, essentially, taken out of their hands.
And then what does Harkat do? In the end, when Shancus is taken and Darren has Darius as a hostage, and he wants to hurt Darius to get at Steve, Debbie tries to talk him down from it, and asks Harkat to try to talk him down from it, and Harkat says "I don't think I can."
There are so many other moments when Harkat could have said something, should have said something, was definitely thinking of something — I'm not just saying that because he's Kurda and Kurda is the smart one. He shows on several occasions that his reasoning is just as sharp and independent as it has always been. See the things he notices about Darius when they first meet him in book 11, and how Harkat is the one to solve Evanna's riddle in the end of book 7.
But there are so many other times when it doesn't make sense that he didn't think of something and say so.
It could be because having him give Darren that help, or that push, or that emotional support (which is really what Darren needed in the time between 10 and 11) would have made the planned path of the series impossible. But there are in-universe reasons as well.
It could be that Mr. Tiny so thoroughly controls Harkat's mind that if such a thought came up, Tiny could make him automatically forget it in an instant.
It could be that he's just learned that no one would listen to a Little Person, not if he's saying things they particularly don't want to hear (e.g. if he had suggested they question Steve more in book 8, or test his blood again). Darren would listen, at least during 4-6 and shortly after, but during the 6-7 time-skip, Harkat was off working with Seba and wasn't always by Darren's side. The other vampires working with Seba, and possibly even Seba himself, might have treated him like a lesser being and not listened to him. He might have grown accustomed to that and learned not to try.
He had lived as Harkat for at least 7 years before speaking to Darren on the way to the mountain. Perhaps it's just that he never formed the habit of speaking his mind, especially when breathing is already difficult to him. In Harkat's body, he simply physically would not have been able to manage a three-hour debate with a warmonger like in Palace of the Damned, provided a vampire would give him that attention for so long.
But he was there, by Darren's side, and his bond with Darren was stronger than anyone's.
Even Larten — Larten and Darren had a strong bond, but it was a mentor-student bond, or even a parent-child bond. Harkat was always on a more equal level with Darren, age-wise at least.By the time Harkat gets his memory back and remembers what it's like to not be seen as a Little Person, Darren is old enough that, even though he still looks 16 or 17, he's fully an adult, so much that the author felt he couldn't continue a kids/teens series with such an adult protagonist. More than Steve, more than Evra or Debbie, Harkat is the friend who Darren "grew up with".
So during those 2 years after their trip to the future — and during those few months before they left, after Darren had cried in Truska's tent and regained himself from his abyss of grief — why didn't they connect more and talk about it?
There's also the fact that Evanna told Darren that he couldn't tell anyone that the Lord of the Shadows could be him as easily as it could be Steve. He was also embarrassed and ashamed and scared of that possibility.
But still.
Books 4-6 set up a tension, a question, an expectation, and then the rest of the series goes on to forget it. Even though Kurda is brought back, nothing comes of it.
A more fulfilling ending to the series could have had Harkat reminding Darren of that goal, and helping him become that sort of leader for the vampires.
(Making Steve a Complete Monster also helps derail it, e.g. "how can you talk about peace and negotiation with that?")
Harkat is Kurda
- Not a reincarnation, not a separate being created from Kurda's remains, he is exactly as he says he is — Kurda brought back from the dead.
Process:
- Kurda dies
- His soul remains on Earth, in the "Lake of Souls" (this is less like hell and more like being a ghost, but it sort of functions like a purgatory for those who end up becoming Little People.) He is brought out briefly some 100-200 years later so that Harkat can regain his memory, then he returns to the Lake.
- At some unrevealed point in the future (the "hundreds of thousands of years later" point from which Evanna takes Darren's soul in book 12?), Tiny takes Kurda's soul from the Lake and puts that soul in the Harkat body that he created from Kurda's original body.
- Tiny erases Harkat's memory and sends him back in time to at least before book 2, which is when Darren first sees him.
Dying and becoming a ghost doesn't make you a different person. Losing your memory and regaining it doesn't make you a different person.
People who believe they should be treated as different characters have referred to Harkat as a "reincarnation". He isn't. "Reincarnations" are born as separate beings, not created from the corpse of their past life. And when have you ever heard of someone being plagued with nightmares because they need to get their past life's memories back? "Reincarnation" would imply that it happens to everyone — and of course, the prior life of the reincarnated person was also reincarnated from someone. The reincarnation and the past life are equally normal people. To use the label "reincarnation" is to completely misunderstand this "little person" concept.
Some have also said that Harkat's personality is too different from Kurda's. Example please? There are plenty of similarities between them. They are both smart and clever. Harkat is the one to solve Evanna's riddle in the end of book 7, and he notices things about Darius when they first meet him in book 11 that Darren doesn't and points them out. He also makes witty remarks at several points that are similar to how he spoke as Kurda, e.g. with Vancha in book 7.
When Darren becomes a Little Person in the end, do you consider him a new character, separate from Darren?
Harkat says "Kurda is who I was, Harkat is who I am now." That's not proof that he's any more distinct from Kurda than anyone else who has changed their name... or, you know, gone through 100,000 years in the Lake of Souls, then lived for 16+ years under a different name with no memories. And he's still in the body associated with the latter name. And the former name is thoroughly disgraced to the point where vampires aren't even allowed to say his name.Even with his appearance and name still as Harkat, they talk about how divisive and dangerous it would be for that information to get out. Is it any wonder that he wouldn't go around asserting himself as Kurda?
It is said that after Darren and Steve die, Harkat works for peace "as he did when he was Kurda". Maybe Vancha gets him to find that courage to acknowledge and accept his past. Maybe with Darren and Steve dead and all the prophecies upended, people might come to accept that they shouldn't demonize him that way.
It isn't easy to make yourself see Harkat and Kurda as one character. After all, Darren himself really never fully understands or internalizes it. But canon-wise, it's the truth. It doesn't seem sensible to take the first-person narrator's impressions over what people who know more say about the worldbuilding.
