The Captive Prince
Jan. 28th, 2018 01:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
type_wildI have absolutely no idea where I caught wind of The Captive Prince, but it must've been online and it was probably fandom. This is very fitting, of course, since you won't have to search long to discover that this trilogy began on LJ, and I'm 80% certain the author has a background in fandom. Remove the context of paper, ink, blurbs and the author's full name, and you might as well be left with the AO3 tag set of Damen/Laurent fantasy au, slow burn, slavery kink, enemies to lovers. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but it reads incredibly fanfic-y.
Which means it went down in like three or four days, of course.
Summary: Prince Damiaclos of fantasy!Greece is overthrown by his evil half-brother. Then, he is enslaved and shipped off as a token of goodwill to their arch-enemy, fantasy!France. He ends up in the personal household of Laurent, the massively disagreeable crown prince who probably won't be any nicer if he is to discover that his royal gift is the man who six years ago killed his older brother in battle.
Blah blah blah watch Damen win back his country, but of course we're all here from fandom and know that the real question is "so when is the buttsex happening".
Kudos to The Captive Prince: the buttsex never comes across as the core of the plot. The plot, of course, being how Damen is going to get out of captivity and kill his bitch of a brother, until it slowly becomes apparent that beneath Laurent's assholitude lies things more complicated than a maliciously spoiled nobleman. Of course it's standard fantasy fare of the heroic underdog saving the country from the claws of an evil despot, but the players we're watching makes for a fantastically enteratining read. Damen comes from the place where you send out a message three days ahead to let everyone know that you're out to kill someone for having wronged you. He is brought into a byzanthine court where you get by by verbal warfare and gossipmongering, and the first novel spends a lot of time lingering on the culture shock - not only what Damen needs to master in order to escape, but on that of the reader thrown into a world where sex slaves are par of the course.
Yeah these books are oozing with "problematic" as the word is defined in the current climate over at tumblr. Slavery has a central place in the story, and while it seems the author wanted to make a point about the oppressor learning the plight of the oppressed and coming to understand that slavery isn't so cool, that's a point of the third book that remains unconvincing in the light of the tiltilating portrayal of the happily submissive slaves of particularly the first novel. This is a huge question that needs a huge discussion, but instead comes across as perfunctory because she doesn't have the time to delve into the question, since her focus wisely lies elsewhere. But of course, she's writing a genre where the internet crazies would rip her apart if she didn't make her moral stance clear ("would", as if I haven't already picked up that they long since did). In the end, I expect everyone is happy; the people with the slavery kink get their fill, the people who find it hella uncomfortable get their redemption, the people out on moral crusades got their problematic-of-the-week.
But even if the content is flat-out kink-pandering and has a reek of pulpy romance among the par-for-the-course fantasy plot, I can isolate two elements that made me sit down and read like I haven't in years. First and foremost, these books keep a tension running, constantly. I really want to know what's going to happen next, always. I'm not clever enough at literature to sufficiently explain what it was the author is doing right there, but it's something, for sure.
More importantly: Laurent is a ridiculously entertaining character. I won't go into the hows and whys here, but he pretty much singlehandedly made this story be what it is, and that's lucky for us, since our hero Damen felt very, very generic. By which I mean that yes, Damen's existence felt interesting solely as a plot device: His is the politics running the main plot, and he ends up in the position of being the only person who can truly unravel the mystery of what Laurent is beneath the necessary part he plays in court. If we remove Laurent from Damen's life, I certainly didn't feel that there was anything memorable left, so I guess it's lucky for us that Damen in the end does play a sentral part of Laurent's development. I've been re-reading Kaze to Ki no Uta, and Damen and Laurent remind me a lot about Serge and Gilbert, in that at the very foundations of the story lies the tension of an innocent outsider bit by bit unravelling the past trauma that shaped his enigmatic lover. But Serge is noble and admirable and, you know, likeable. Damen is just... ehhh.
I have some other minor quibbles, such as the abscence of ladies. Jokaste is the only named woman I remember after the books; there was also the Lady Ambassador (I think???? is not that she ever did something that made her worth remembering), and I know that Guion's wife's name was mentioned but oh my god NO, not two pages before disappearing completely, not after a full book's worth of being mentioned only in some variety of the sentence "Guion and his wife". There's also how the full and complete deal between Laurent and his uncle is pretty goddamn obvious from pretty goddamn early on, and it is not convincing that our limited third person focaliser (that's the technical term for Damen's narrative job in these books, in case you ever wondered) repeatedly fails to catch on to what the reader long since did.
But all in all, it was a fun and more importantly, engaging read. And also, don't listen to the crazies. This story is completely aware that slavery isn't really sexy.
Which means it went down in like three or four days, of course.
Summary: Prince Damiaclos of fantasy!Greece is overthrown by his evil half-brother. Then, he is enslaved and shipped off as a token of goodwill to their arch-enemy, fantasy!France. He ends up in the personal household of Laurent, the massively disagreeable crown prince who probably won't be any nicer if he is to discover that his royal gift is the man who six years ago killed his older brother in battle.
Blah blah blah watch Damen win back his country, but of course we're all here from fandom and know that the real question is "so when is the buttsex happening".
Kudos to The Captive Prince: the buttsex never comes across as the core of the plot. The plot, of course, being how Damen is going to get out of captivity and kill his bitch of a brother, until it slowly becomes apparent that beneath Laurent's assholitude lies things more complicated than a maliciously spoiled nobleman. Of course it's standard fantasy fare of the heroic underdog saving the country from the claws of an evil despot, but the players we're watching makes for a fantastically enteratining read. Damen comes from the place where you send out a message three days ahead to let everyone know that you're out to kill someone for having wronged you. He is brought into a byzanthine court where you get by by verbal warfare and gossipmongering, and the first novel spends a lot of time lingering on the culture shock - not only what Damen needs to master in order to escape, but on that of the reader thrown into a world where sex slaves are par of the course.
Yeah these books are oozing with "problematic" as the word is defined in the current climate over at tumblr. Slavery has a central place in the story, and while it seems the author wanted to make a point about the oppressor learning the plight of the oppressed and coming to understand that slavery isn't so cool, that's a point of the third book that remains unconvincing in the light of the tiltilating portrayal of the happily submissive slaves of particularly the first novel. This is a huge question that needs a huge discussion, but instead comes across as perfunctory because she doesn't have the time to delve into the question, since her focus wisely lies elsewhere. But of course, she's writing a genre where the internet crazies would rip her apart if she didn't make her moral stance clear ("would", as if I haven't already picked up that they long since did). In the end, I expect everyone is happy; the people with the slavery kink get their fill, the people who find it hella uncomfortable get their redemption, the people out on moral crusades got their problematic-of-the-week.
But even if the content is flat-out kink-pandering and has a reek of pulpy romance among the par-for-the-course fantasy plot, I can isolate two elements that made me sit down and read like I haven't in years. First and foremost, these books keep a tension running, constantly. I really want to know what's going to happen next, always. I'm not clever enough at literature to sufficiently explain what it was the author is doing right there, but it's something, for sure.
More importantly: Laurent is a ridiculously entertaining character. I won't go into the hows and whys here, but he pretty much singlehandedly made this story be what it is, and that's lucky for us, since our hero Damen felt very, very generic. By which I mean that yes, Damen's existence felt interesting solely as a plot device: His is the politics running the main plot, and he ends up in the position of being the only person who can truly unravel the mystery of what Laurent is beneath the necessary part he plays in court. If we remove Laurent from Damen's life, I certainly didn't feel that there was anything memorable left, so I guess it's lucky for us that Damen in the end does play a sentral part of Laurent's development. I've been re-reading Kaze to Ki no Uta, and Damen and Laurent remind me a lot about Serge and Gilbert, in that at the very foundations of the story lies the tension of an innocent outsider bit by bit unravelling the past trauma that shaped his enigmatic lover. But Serge is noble and admirable and, you know, likeable. Damen is just... ehhh.
I have some other minor quibbles, such as the abscence of ladies. Jokaste is the only named woman I remember after the books; there was also the Lady Ambassador (I think???? is not that she ever did something that made her worth remembering), and I know that Guion's wife's name was mentioned but oh my god NO, not two pages before disappearing completely, not after a full book's worth of being mentioned only in some variety of the sentence "Guion and his wife". There's also how the full and complete deal between Laurent and his uncle is pretty goddamn obvious from pretty goddamn early on, and it is not convincing that our limited third person focaliser (that's the technical term for Damen's narrative job in these books, in case you ever wondered) repeatedly fails to catch on to what the reader long since did.
But all in all, it was a fun and more importantly, engaging read. And also, don't listen to the crazies. This story is completely aware that slavery isn't really sexy.
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