King William of Tallus

King William of Tallus I had a pretty low opinion of William when Sela and the others reached Tallus, and I don't think that's an unfair way to read him. They have just helped refugees survive an attack outside his city. They come in offering help against Orcus. William ends up ordering Sela handed over to the enemy and her companions killed. That's a hell of a response to people who were trying to help you. What makes him worth talking about is that the story lets us see how he gets to that decision. It doesn't make him a secret mastermind, and it doesn't make the decision acceptable. He's a frightened man who inherited a responsibility he never prepared himself to carry. He wants somebody else to tell him how to survive it. We get a glimpse of him before all this, enjoying the privileges of being the king's son while his father tries to get him to think about the responsibilities coming with the title. William isn't interested. The dangers his father talks about seem far enough away that he can dismiss them. He knows the comfortable version of the kingdom, so he acts like that's the only version he will ever have to deal with. Then his father is gone, Orcus is outside the walls, and William is standing in front of a statue asking for help. That scene stood out to me because of how honest he is when nobody else is there. He admits he isn't equipped for this. He understands his own limitations better than you might expect from the way he carries himself in front of everyone else. The problem is that admitting he isn't ready doesn't give him a plan, and the people in Tallus can't wait for him to become a different person. Orcus takes advantage of exactly that fear. He offers to spare the children if the city delivers Sela and kills her companions. It's a brutal bargain, especially when some of the people turning against Sela are people she has just helped. William lets the three be detained while he considers what to do. Druanna argues that they're throwing away their chance of surviving, but even she can't simply promise to fix everything. Her own power is limited. William is surrounded by people who need an answer, and the answer he wants doesn't exist. He can't guarantee that fighting will save the city. He can't guarantee that surrendering Sela will save it either. Orcus is asking him to trust the mercy of the person threatening to slaughter everyone. There's another detail that makes William's eventual choice worse for me. When he goes back to his father's statue, he hears a voice telling him what he wants to hear. It seems to be his father advising him that surrendering Sela might save the children. But William catches the deception. He knows his father wouldn't have surrendered that way. The scene reveals a speaking rat near the statue, so this isn't actually the father reaching out to guide him. William recognizes the lie, then goes ahead with the surrender anyway. That means I can't write him off as someone who was simply tricked into believing he was following his father's advice. He has enough judgment to notice the deception. He still chooses to sacrifice the people who came to help. When Gaia breaks them out, he even orders his guards to kill her. She has to overpower the situation and get them away. The more interesting part comes afterward, because Tallus still has to be defended. Blake and Bolder haven't forgotten what William did. They help anyway. William asks for their help and returns their weapons, and now he has to work alongside people he was willing to execute a short time earlier. I like that the story doesn't need to erase that history for them to understand the city is full of people who still need saving. By the time the Shadow Dragon attacks, there isn't a simple military solution left. William says he has no army and no more sentinels. Bolder tells him that he needs to buy them time while they go for a weapon that might work. William asks how he's supposed to do that. The answer is basically that he's the king and he needs to figure it out. Earlier, that pressure sent him back to the statue looking for somebody else's instructions. This time he goes into the street. The people there want him to lead them away. He asks them to make a stand for Tallus. They point out that they're ordinary people, not soldiers. And William finally gives them something more than a command from a safe distance: he'll be at the front. He'll draw his sword first. If someone has to die, he's willing to be first there too. He actually follows through. He leads the attack against the dragon, giving Sela a chance when she's in danger. It doesn't magically make him stronger than the creature. The dragon knocks them aside. But there's a real difference between telling other people to pay the price of saving the kingdom and physically putting himself in the way with them. And he doesn't disappear from the story once that moment is over. When the dragon falls, Bolder makes a pocket in the earth to keep them from being crushed, and William helps cut them out. After the battle, William starts dealing with what the city actually needs. There are people without homes. He takes responsibility for sheltering them. We finally see him acting like someone who understands that the kingdom is made up of people he has to care for, rather than a position that exists to keep him comfortable. Then Orcus kills him. After everything it took to reach that point, William is struck in the chest by an arrow Orcus has enchanted with his own aide's blood. He dies in Gaia's arms. His final words recognize that he was truly a king for only a day. That's a rough ending, because we have just started seeing what he might have become if he'd had more time. I still wouldn't excuse what William did to Sela, Blake, and Bolder. Those were his decisions, and the story gives us plenty of reason to remember them. But I don't think his death makes the change meaningless either. He helped save people he had been willing to sacrifice. He stood in front of the danger instead of sending someone else into it. And he started taking care of the survivors while he had the chance. That's why I ended up having more interest in him than I expected. He doesn't get a long, comfortable redemption where everyone can gradually forget the worst thing he did. He has to make those better decisions in the same crisis where he made the terrible ones, with the same people watching him. For a brief stretch, they finally get the king his father had wanted him to be. Then they lose him.