An Unfound Door, Chapter Seven
Oct. 8th, 2022 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingFhiad leaves the court and walks through the halls of the castle as he reflects on the circumstances that have brought him to Faloren. Guerig, the king’s secretary and acting regent, enthusiastically granted Fhiad permission not only to study the castle, but also to live there while doing his supposed research on the building’s architecture. Fhiad curses himself for being drawn into a complicated situation, but he also admits that he has few resources and fewer choices. As he wanders, Fhiad’s thoughts reveal that he did indeed once study architecture, and that Faloren Castle is an architectural monstrosity whose creation and continued existence almost certainly rely on powerful magic.
.
This story is written in limited third-person perspective, and this is the first chapter that focuses on Fhiad. As the B Story character, Fhiad represents the “upside-down world” of Act Two, which begins when the main character’s status quo world is disrupted. Fhiad is the catalyst for this disruption, but his story is also a mirror of Agnes’s own character development. Fhiad and Agnes want the same thing – the power to change Faloren – but their motivations and goals are drastically different.
This chapter doesn’t provide much insight into why Fhiad intends to destroy Faloren aside from what he’s already told Agnes: He holds Faloren responsible for annihilating Erdbhein, and he wants revenge.
Although he doesn’t yet acknowledge this, what Fhiad really wants is to understand what happened to him. The world he knew has been destroyed, and he has nowhere else to go. He’s suffering from severe trauma that he hasn’t been able to process, and he alternates between distraction and intense anger. His attempts to distract himself from his grief coalesce into the form of tasking himself with a quest, while his anger has no outlet save for Agnes, who has become his target simply because she’s the only living person he knows. This is clearly unhealthy, but the reader doesn’t yet understand the full extent of what Fhiad has experienced. He’s unbalanced, but he’s also doing his best to survive.
More than anything, this chapter establishes how and why Fhiad is now living in Faloren Castle. It also provides a second perspective on the setting. What the reader is able to see through Fhiad’s eyes are two things Agnes takes for granted. First, Agnes is subtly shunned by the members of her court; and second, Faloren Castle is impossibly large and labyrinthine. These two observations help justify the “fun and games” portion of Act Two, which will involve Agnes and Fhiad hunting for a hidden relic. Agnes is free to search the castle because she doesn’t have social obligations, and this search is going to be interesting because it isn’t going to be easy.
For the record, I’d like to go ahead and say that Guerig isn’t a secret villain. Almost everyone in this story is hiding something, and Guerig is no exception. He is nevertheless a genuinely good person, and he serves the king out of a sincere sense of duty and fondness. He invited Fhiad to lodge in the castle because he hoped to introduce him to Agnes, as he feels that she needs friends her own age. Regents in fantasy stories are generally up to all manner of shady business, perhaps because this is what real-life regents are famous for. Still, I tend to prefer the idea of the regent being in love with the king.
I’ve been calling An Unfound Door a “gothic fantasy mystery,” but it’s also a romance, and I think it’s important to create echoes of the main theme of small individual love stories ultimately being more powerful than the grand narratives of history.
.
This story is written in limited third-person perspective, and this is the first chapter that focuses on Fhiad. As the B Story character, Fhiad represents the “upside-down world” of Act Two, which begins when the main character’s status quo world is disrupted. Fhiad is the catalyst for this disruption, but his story is also a mirror of Agnes’s own character development. Fhiad and Agnes want the same thing – the power to change Faloren – but their motivations and goals are drastically different.
This chapter doesn’t provide much insight into why Fhiad intends to destroy Faloren aside from what he’s already told Agnes: He holds Faloren responsible for annihilating Erdbhein, and he wants revenge.
Although he doesn’t yet acknowledge this, what Fhiad really wants is to understand what happened to him. The world he knew has been destroyed, and he has nowhere else to go. He’s suffering from severe trauma that he hasn’t been able to process, and he alternates between distraction and intense anger. His attempts to distract himself from his grief coalesce into the form of tasking himself with a quest, while his anger has no outlet save for Agnes, who has become his target simply because she’s the only living person he knows. This is clearly unhealthy, but the reader doesn’t yet understand the full extent of what Fhiad has experienced. He’s unbalanced, but he’s also doing his best to survive.
More than anything, this chapter establishes how and why Fhiad is now living in Faloren Castle. It also provides a second perspective on the setting. What the reader is able to see through Fhiad’s eyes are two things Agnes takes for granted. First, Agnes is subtly shunned by the members of her court; and second, Faloren Castle is impossibly large and labyrinthine. These two observations help justify the “fun and games” portion of Act Two, which will involve Agnes and Fhiad hunting for a hidden relic. Agnes is free to search the castle because she doesn’t have social obligations, and this search is going to be interesting because it isn’t going to be easy.
For the record, I’d like to go ahead and say that Guerig isn’t a secret villain. Almost everyone in this story is hiding something, and Guerig is no exception. He is nevertheless a genuinely good person, and he serves the king out of a sincere sense of duty and fondness. He invited Fhiad to lodge in the castle because he hoped to introduce him to Agnes, as he feels that she needs friends her own age. Regents in fantasy stories are generally up to all manner of shady business, perhaps because this is what real-life regents are famous for. Still, I tend to prefer the idea of the regent being in love with the king.
I’ve been calling An Unfound Door a “gothic fantasy mystery,” but it’s also a romance, and I think it’s important to create echoes of the main theme of small individual love stories ultimately being more powerful than the grand narratives of history.
