. ethan

(Author Art: Lillapllas]___[app: Telegram)

Maybe I just have an excess of compassion, but if you ask me, one of the most tragic stories in The Foxhole Court is Riko Moriyama’s.

That’s not an attempt to excuse the magnitude of his actions. Riko is 100% unapologetically the villain of this series (or one of them, honestly), and there’s no real way to justify his behavior or make it OK. But what got me thinking about this was the fact that other Ravens have gotten away.

Kevin managed to escape after his injury and find a new home with the Foxes. Jean, too, was given a way out; if the conversation Kevin has with Jeremy in The King’s Men is any indication, he’ll have a new team and a potentially happier life in his future as well. Even Neil was, at one point, mere days away from a fate of being groomed for the Ravens, and thanks to his mother’s decision to run, narrowly escaped their grasp.

But Riko is the embodiment of what the Moriyamas created with the Ravens. His cold-blooded, remorseless, single-minded personality may come naturally to him, but it has also undoubtedly been brainwashed into him from an early age. Riko could never escape- even if he wasn’t so much of a liability to those who’d groomed him to be the best from childhood, and even if he could somehow learn to interact with others without being a danger to them, he could never get that redemption arc. Because if he ever got anything close to a conscience, the remorse he’d feel for his previous soullessness would kill him for sure.

Riko never stood a chance.

Riko is not a character who is written in such a way that we are meant to feel compassion for him. But his death scene is, to some extent, designed that way.

When a character is cut down at the height of their villainous glory, those are characters whose deaths the narrative is cueing you to celebrate. When they’re about to realize their master plan and all is lost for the hero until they stand up and go “Not today, motherfucker” and kill the villain, that’s when you’re supposed to pump your fist in the air and feel glee at the antagonist’s demise.

Riko’s death isn’t presented that way. Riko’s death comes at the end of what is ostensibly the worst day of Riko’s life. 

His team has been hanging on to their spot at the top by a thread for months now- losing first Kevin, then Jean to other teams, and being on the wrong side of public opinion since the Foxes started to gain ground. On this last day, Riko has just lost the biggest game of the year- maybe the biggest game of his career- and lost it to the team that would make the loss hurt the most. Then he lashes out, and injures his arm- an injury that, had he lived, would have kept him from playing for a while. (That one show of anger only compounds his downfall. Again, this is a hallmark of tragedy.) And finally, after all that defeat, he’s brought up to the tower and his brother- whose attention he has craved for so long- acknowledges him for the first time. He’s been brought low, and gets a tiny glimpse of the only thing he’s wanted besides Exy in his life.

And that’s when he dies.