I was thinking about the scene in Prince’s Gambit where Laurent goes off on Aimeric; how you, as the reader, come to understand that his verbal lashing at Aimeric’s naivety re: the Regent is more or less self-flagellation.
We know that Aimeric and Nicaise are mirrors of Laurent. I vaguely recall Pacat herself stating they’re essentially alternate version of him, set on different paths he himself might have taken.
I don’t think that’s strictly accurate, though. I can’t imagine a version of Laurent that didn’t outgrow the Regent, because in no world would the Regent not have discarded him, in vying for the throne.
Aimeric is only a version of Laurent in the sense that, he represents that green boy who is yet to grow up; he is young Laurent in stasis. Their disparity is ridiculously emphasized by Jord’s intervening defense: “He’s just a boy.”
Conversely, Nicaise, who IS actually a boy, is more of an equal to Laurent. In book one he’s outsmarted due to his inexperience in court politics and mind games, but he’s a lot worldlier than Laurent could have ever been at his age.
Nicaise knew that he was running out of time, that the Regent didn’t love him. “He always was smarter than the others,” Laurent says, and I think he counts himself among those others.
Nicaise is in Laurent’s past situation, but shares Lauren’t present sensibilities. I might even assert that in some ways, Nicaise is the boy Laurent wishes he could have been, someone who didn’t blindly trust in the Regent’s love –only a hair’s breadth away from breaking off his influence.
That’s why he invests in him so personally, a possible element of wish-fulfillment: You’re smarter than I was, you can get yourself out of this.
Aimeric and Nicaise are, then, exact inverses of each other: a childish adult vs. an adult-like child. Both recall Laurent’s past, but Aimeric is a ghost, stagnant, while Nicaise is a window to re-writing the narrative, putting things to right.
yousharknotpass
stormborns
titsay
gamechangershow
germansingergirl
snowghoul
