YMMV / Airman

• Complete Monster: Sir Hugo Bonvilain is the Marshall of the Little Saltees who conspired to overthrow the king. A power-hungry megalomaniac, concerned about no one about himself, Bonvilain has killed, deceived, and manipulated his way to power. His first act was to assassinate both King Nick and Vigny, while making it appear they killed each other. However, when his ruse is discovered by Conor Broekhart, Bonvilain has Conor take the fall for Bonvilain's crimes and thrown in prison. Pulling a double deception, Bonvilain has Conor believe his family thinks of him as a criminal, while his family believes Conor to be dead and the young man in prison to be one of the traitors whose actions led to his death. While Conor spends the next few years in prison, Bonvilain takes the King's daughter under his wing as a "puppet queen". After his hold over Queen Isabella and Conor's family wanes, Bonvilain plans to murder this generation of the royal family and her followers too, aiming to poison them, while he partakes in a Self-Poisoning Gambit to stave off suspicion.
• Magnificent Bastard: Conor Broekhart is a bright young inventor whose life is ruined when he gets framed for the murder of King Nick and his mentor Victor Vigny by the vile Hugo Bonvilain. Incarcerated at the Little Saltee prison mines and given the new identity of Conor Finn, Conor uses his cunning and wits to survive against the corrupt guards and dangerous inmates. He fends off and defeats Otto Malarkey using a mining tool as a makeshift blade, which wins Malarkey's respect, turning him into an ally. Conor also gets into the good graces of a guard named Arthur Billtoe, providing him invention designs in exchange for favors that Conor uses to make equipment for his own escape. Conor masterminds a Great Escape: building a parachute, hiding in a blind spot, then — disguised as a chef — faking getting dragged away by a coronation balloon he designed. Conor later uses his mentor's old laboratory to construct a hang glider and adopts the persona of the Airman, a flying French thief, to fly back to Little Saltee, steal diamonds he buried, and terrorize guards like Billtoe, before helping his old allies defeat Bonvilain.
• Too Cool to Live: King Nick and Vigny.

---