Maybe Lucivar’s social skills were rough compared to a slick Hayllian, but that wasn’t saying much. She’d rather have rough and honest than slick any day.
– Marian, “The Prince of Ebon Rih”

Both men have been outcast and enslaved. Both men have survived adversity. Both men were taught to believe in honor and to cow their nature to no one. But for all that they were raised on similar battlegrounds and fought a common enemy, the gap between Daemon and Lucivar morally can be as wide as between the power of the Black and the White.

Sleek and seductive versus rough and blunt; malevolent versus brutal; fire versus ice. Anne uses a myriad of contrasting words in her descriptions of the brothers. We know they can be friends as easily as they can enemies; that they understand each other some days and clash on others. More importantly, their strengths complement each other to make them, when working together, a powerful team. However, at the very core of who they are – dark-Jeweled Warlord Princes and strong, sensitive men – there is a single detail which makes all of the difference: which of them is willing to break his own heart rather than his honor.

Let’s be honest: Daemon Sadi is – as many of you Sherlockians will recognize the term – a high-functioning sociopath. He’s the man you dance with at a glamorous party whom you cannot quite get a handle on… and it’s not because he isn’t a charming conversationalist or a witty companion but because even at his most social you are unable to shake the feeling that part of what you see is a facade. Daemon almost never allows someone to catch a glimpse of who he really is; he considers the man beneath the armor to be too vulnerable. He’s more apt to offer a genuine emotion to the people he trusts implicitly (which is a small group indeed, at times only consisting of his Queen and wife). He has also shown us he can turn on a dime into a cold, callous stranger, someone called the Sadist.

That is not to say Daemon has no understanding or use for kindness or empathy, only that by presenting himself as ‘separate’ from society in order to protect what humanity he has left Daemon has actually separated himself to a degree that he no longer fills obliged to anyone other than his Queen. He is the Queen’s weapon. More than that, he is High Lord’s heir. In the end, he will destroy lives and feel little to no remorse over his actions.

If you told Lucivar, who grew up as a child of two races and never fully a part of either, that he was different he would look at you and say, “I am what I am – and if you think I’m different than you because of what I am, then that’s your problem.”

Daemon wouldn’t bother to argue the point because he truly sees himself as an outsider among the Blood. Anne drives this home in her last book, Twilight’s Dawn, that Daemon will never feel connected to most people or at times consider himself to be an average man the way his brother does. If there isn’t someone in his life to act as the “connection” for him, he will become untouchable to the point of becoming myth-like, as happened with Saetan, whose name no one dared speak aloud for fear it would conjure him like a great evil. So in no sense of the word is Daemon ever meant to be “down to earth” or someone we can readily relate to, except in the moments when he is made ordinary by his love for Jaenelle.

Lucivar, on the other hand, is plain by comparison – and that actually makes him extraordinary in ways Daemon is not. As Andulvar was for Saetan, Lucivar plays the role of anchor for his brother. He understands Daemon’s predicament as a loner (and an unloved one at that), having been pushed into this role by his half-breed status growing up among the Eyriens; but contrary to the way he was forced to live, Lucivar is no loner. In fact, by the end of the second book we see that Lucivar thrives among friends. Once given the chance, he knows how to accept people into his heart with an ease that makes his brother jealous. Naturally, then, it is Lucivar who helps Daemon adjust to Kaeleer through friendly encouragement and his characteristic prick-ass behavior. He sets the example for Daemon, demonstrating that a man can be himself and still expect people to accept him for who he is. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that if Lucivar can do something, Daemon is damned well going to do it too. Brotherly rivalry knows no bounds.

As hinted at previously, Lucivar is apt to treat differences in gender, rank, and lineage as superficial. For example, he is more comfortable living a common lifestyle rather than as an aristo. He does not believe in the tradition that women should not learn to use weapons. He considers it an honor to be a husband to his wife, although she is a Purple Dusk-Jeweled hearthwitch and he is an Ebon Gray-Jeweled Warlord Prince. That is to say, you are worth something to Lucivar Yaslana if you act with heart and honor; there are no other qualifications. This approach goes a long way towards how people view him as a ruler. They know he doesn’t see shades in a lot of things (least of all the aforementioned honor), which makes him trustworthy and someone who can be counted on to draw a line and defend it without personal bias. Perhaps the one flaw Lucivar has in this regard is that he distinguishes between what is “right” and what is “lawful”, and at times acting on this difference causes him difficulty (as in the case of Roxie and her exile, or not releasing the Eyriens from their contracts right away). It is safe to say, however, that at the end of the day Lucivar is satisfied with his good decisions and learns quickly from his bad ones. After all, because honor is at the heart of every decision he makes, even the bad ones are never too bad.

What is honor to Daemon Sadi? The answer is rather simple: it is a tool. While it can be argued he acts with honor as often as Lucivar does, it should be noted there are times when this particular tool is too cumbersome for Daemon or, frankly, too bothersome. He has told us time and time again that honor will not leash him when his temper is at its coldest. Both he and his brother are capable of performing executions necessitated by their positions as rulers, but in the case of the extreme who balked at the idea of eliminating at an entire race, and who thought yes, I could do that? Like his father, Daemon is the man who would create the death spell. He is truly a law unto himself, because there is no code or moral which would hinder him from delivering such a final punishment. This is why his “connection” to the Blood becomes so critical. The outsider looking in has no emotional investment in the well-being of others. And we know, to Daemon, a stranger is always an enemy first and foremost before he or she can ever be conceived as a friend. Even then, that special facet to Daemon’s personality – the Sadist – will never, ever have or have need of friends.

The fact that Daemon sees a shade of honor where Lucivar does not brings us to further study of the respective territories they rule, how they rule them and why. Remember, Lucivar is connected to the Blood and Daemon is always at risk of not being connected to them. That is not to say one brother rules more justly than the other, only that their differing styles color the light in which they are perceived by those they rule. Consider Ebon Rih which sits in the shadow of Ebon Askavi. Lucivar has ruled there since his Queen asked it of him. (And Anne goes on to say he will be the ruler of all of Askavi when he is ready to acknowledge that responsibility.) The Rihlanders have had a few years to become acclimated to Lucivar’s particular brand of authority – and it is particular! Lucivar is Eyrien: meaning he is straightforward, sometimes tactlessly so, and he doesn’t fear the battlefield, whatever shape it has. He makes himself present and accessible on a nearly daily basis where he rules. It doesn’t matter that there are Rihlander Queens who oversee the villages. He is the ruler who walks the main thoroughfare, who expects you to stop him if you have a question and who will stop you if he has something to say. He wades into the public street brawl, sharpens the kitchen knives of local witches and makes at least one pit-stop at the local tavern each day. In short, where possible he prefers to deal face-to-face with even the youngest person under his rule and he likes to do it without the trappings of ceremony that could be accorded to him if so demanded. This style suits a smaller territory like Ebon Rih, and it is shown more than once that the Rihlanders have become comfortable with approaching Lucivar – or Marian, his wife – in a personal capacity with their troubles.

In contrast, Daemon rules the people of Dhelman by proxy from the seat of SaDiablo Hall. The District Queens answer to the Province Queens who in turn answer to The Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, putting Daemon at a distance from the general public. This is not an unusual method of ruling by any means because Dhemlan is larger than a valley in Askavi, and therefore it is impractical for Daemon to become personally involved in any one portion of the Territory. Accordingly, correspondence and visits with the Province Queens are funneled through or delegated to his second-in-command or secretary.

Daemon remarks that he needs the challenge of ruling Dhelman, and we can assume what applied to Saetan applies here as well: that being the Warlord Prince of Dhelman is equal to the price of the protection a Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince can provide. The only worrying aspect of this arrangement is that Daemon has been placed at the very top of the hierarchy, which is about as high as it can go and that alone would make any one ruler seem unapproachable. But also consider that, by the time he is asked to rule in his father’s stead, Daemon has already made a public demonstration of how ruthless the Sadist can be. Why would the Dhelman Queens choose his protection, hardly knowing him, when it seems they finally have an opportunity to free themselves from obligation to any ruling Prince after Saetan steps down? Is it safe to assume Daemon would look after Dhemlan in the manner that his father did? Had the Queens considered his position as Consort to the Queen of Ebon Askavi the only necessary qualification? Who knows. The true motivation remains a mystery. But one thing is for certain: Dhemlan does take a chance with Sadi. And they continue to take that chance so long as he rules, hoping that they never lose his investment in their well-being, or someone pushes him so far over the edge he destroys their way of life utterly. With Daemon Sadi, what he will do is always at best a guess.

Something else of interest to note here is that Daemon is given a stable Territory comprised of a well-established and prosperous culture of a long-lived race while Lucivar’s less illustrious Ebon Rih is actually the breaking ground for a new race of people. In this regard, his task is the more challenging. The Eyriens immigrating to Kaeleer are not gentle or kind; they are known to be arrogant, prejudice and unforgiving. Ironically Lucivar is an Eyrien himself, only different in that he has spent his life under the boot heel of his people’s derision for being less than full-blooded. So he has learned well the cardinal rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you – making him capable of ruling a race of people completely unlike himself without considering those people to be inferior. Thus it is his task to “open the eyes” of the Eyriens, so to speak, by giving them a chance to experience a way of life which would never be accepted Terreille Askavi. Naturally most of them rail against the change, and Lucivar has to learn that to preserve what makes Eyriens unique cannot come at the cost of the Rihlanders or the other races in Askavi (and ultimately Kaeleer). But we do not see him give up, just merely bide his time and stay content with cultivating a small community of Eyriens who share a similar code of honor to his.

For Lucivar, it will always be a fine line to walk, being Eyrien and not, but he has done it all his life. This must be why Jaenelle asked him to rule Ebon Rih; because she knew that he would be equal to the task of marrying two sets of cultures, two ideologies, so that everyone gains and no one loses. In other words, being the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih is less about the power of Jewels and all about heart – something which Lucivar Yaslana will never lack.

Related Posts:

• A Side-Note to The Confession – from May 21, 2010
• Interesting!! – from April 2, 2012
• blackjewelsfics – from March 20, 2012
• A First Scar – from March 20, 2012
• Black Jewels: Mikal – from March 11, 2012