poorquentyn:

Adventure stank.

The Refusal of the Call is a near-sacrosanct element of the Hero’s Journey. Luke Skywalker has to draw back fearfully from the adventure embedded in Leia’s message before finding his aunt and uncle dead. It heightens the stakes, establishes internal conflict, and prevents our protagonist from looking like a jerkass eager to abandon the stern-but-loving couple who raised him. Plus, of course, it neatly sets up the rest of the narrative: “There’s nothing for me here now.” But there was something there for Quentyn Martell.

I want to go back to Yronwood and kiss both of your sisters, marry Gwyneth Yronwood, watch her flower into beauty, have a child by her. I want to ride in tourneys, hawk and hunt, visit with my mother in Norvos, read some of those books my father sends me. I want Cletus and Will and Maester Kedry to be alive again.

Maybe it wasn’t the epic, exciting, revolutionary life his father had planned for him, but it was his, and he wanted it, and he died before he could get back to it, died knowing his best friend had given his own life for nothing, died pretending to be somebody (the Dragontamer, referring to Dany as well as her children) he never wanted to be.

So when I say Quent was the wrong man for his mission, I’m not talking about his plain face or his awkward attempts at gallantry. Quent shouldn’t have had to go on his quest because he did not want to, and that is a genuinely radical thing to suggest in fantasy and sci-fi. Some adventures are bloody and brutal and ultimately pointless; some adventures bring you not courage and self-actualization but grief and humiliation; some adventures grind down your soul before they kill you. Some adventures fail, and Quent’s never stood a chance: his ace in the hole was a marriage contract that, as Barristan notes, mentioned neither Quent’s name nor that of his ostensible betrothed. When Barristan can easily unravel your Secret Plan…

At some deep level of cognition, Quent knows all this, but does not allow himself to truly understand until the very end. My favorite character in the series, full stop.

Well damn. I was going to write about Quentyn when I got to ADWD but now it’s all been said.