The Psychology of an Antagonist

Cena Thawien, a character study

A look at the mind and heart of a character who does the faerie people great evil.

Fleure, the year of The Ducissa, late summer

How I abhor to write those words, to press onto this page the proof of my failure. I, with skills unheard of among my people, with a presence and a power that warrants great influence, yet is ignored. How I planned for it… so carefully, so methodically. Finfaree would be Ducissa, and soon after that, Queen, and I, behind her, would hold control over Fleure. I would have the position that belongs to me. Yes, I would stand behind my daughter, and little would be said of me, little notice made. But I would have that power. I would have control. The world around me would follow the path I laid out for them. Wandrian, with its subtle way of pulling at a faerie, making them lose their logic, their entire being abandoned to something they can never physically see, would lose its hold on the faeries of Fleure. Those who had not the mind skills needed to survive in this world, would be put away, out of sight, doing something useful while those who are better than them carried their own lives, unhindered by the old or the young or the feeble, and those captured by wandrian would be destroyed, for they are lost forever.

There are few who are strong enough, strong in their minds the way I am. They would live in a world of their own. And wandrian, wandrian would be abolished.

What a glorious day that would be!

But… I have failed. How long I thought about this plan! How long I labored over its completion, knowing I should succeed, knowing what was meant to be mine would be mine. But no… Wandrian, oh great enemy of mine, has obstructed my way. It has captured my daughters, one at a time, quickly with Jaaline, capturing her so fully I no longer know her as mine. She is caught, like the rest of faerie, lost forever.

With Finfaree it was slow. I thought she was safe, thought she would be like Eiswin, following my lead, comfortable to do what I wanted, safe under my guidance, serving me all her days. She was doing just what I told her. She was following the path I’d suggested to her. But, it was on that path, oh clever wandrian! The strange, deceiving spirit behind wandrian, he thrust a stone in Finfaree’s path. She carried out her mission, and quenched Jaaline, who stood in her way. But it was in that very quenching, in seeing Jaaline -how innocent wandrian made her look!- nearly dead upon the grass, that the careful shield I was building around Finfaree’s heart was shattered, the pieces spread across the floor of her soul.

In that one moment! So many long days, under the passing of so many slow moons, have I worked to build that wall. And in the falling of one moment, it broke.

I cannot be so frail. My work cannot be so easily broken. I must plan, harder, harder. I will succeed! What is life if I am trampled by my enemies, day in and day out? Wandrian has made the world my enemy.

Fleure, the year of the Ducissa, late summer

I can hardly put pen to paper.

She has banished me.

The queen.

It was Jaaline who told her, because only Jaaline knew, and only Jaaline bears enough wandrian to see. She, filled with the power of my enemy, told the Queen, told her that it was my plan, told her it was I who pushed Finfaree to do what she did.

Jaaline. I shall hate her forever. How easily she laid the shame of my failure before all my enemies. The people of Fleure, assembled, hearing my plans, seeing my wrath, watching me banished from their land.

I shall not stand for this.

I shall not.

.

But she was weakening. She was afraid. No matter how hard she pushed herself away from it. She was still afraid. Wandrian was a formidable enemy, one she could not easily defeat. One who stood in her way time and time again.

And, somehow, in the back of her mind, the memories of her childhood returned, the memories of her own searching, of her heart that pushed for something she was afraid to reach. And there, in the memory, was the remembrance of a peace, an exploding peace, that had filled her up so fully she felt she could not live without it.

She pushed the memories away. She knew they were only the lies of wandrian. She would push them away all of her life. They would ever crowd her, as they crowded the rest of the world, but she would fight them. If no one else did, she would, and she would be strong, while the rest of the world moved, captured and abandoned to something they would never be able to define. She knew. She had been caught, wrapped up in the deceptive joy of it, until death had struck close to her, too close, and she had dropped her joy. Wandrian had deceived her, had kept her away, had clouded her mind. She could of been there. She could have been standing beside him, working beside him. She could have pushed him aside, stopped the boulder that came crashing through the roof of his small home and spilled death over the man she had sewn her heart around.

But she was not there. She was lost in wandrian, planning for the future, watching the sky, entranced by the mountain slopes so few had ever traveled. She would travel there, would touch the sky.

But not now. Those slopes had killed him. Those slopes, that wandrian had made her love… She hated them now. Hated them with a vengeance, and hated the thing that had drawn her to them.

Wandrian.