Dorian, Chaol, and Celaena
And itâs hitting me again how differently Chaol and Dorian see Celaena. People give Chaol a lot of crap about how he views her and he does describe her as dangerous many times, but whatâs funny is how little people scrutinize Dorianâs assessments of her. Chaol and Dorian both see halves of Celaena, neither one of them incorrect. Dorian sees her beauty, her charm, her love or books and music and he often dismisses her years as an assassin.
Here are the passages each man uses to describe Celaena upon finding her asleep in her chambers.
âSome assassin. She hadnât even bothered to stir. But there was nothing of the assassin in her face. Not a trace of aggression or bloodlust lay written across her features.â (ToG, page 179)
Dorian sees Celaena in an extremely jaded view, with rose colored glasses if you will.
Not more than a page later, Chaol describes the same scene.
âShe was still in her clothes, and while she looked beautiful, that did nothing to mask the killing potential the lay beneath.â (ToG, page 180).
This is an intentional parallel, one that at first glance can be read two ways. You can see Dorian as understanding Celaena and seeing her softer side, therefore making him the stronger love interest or you can read it as Chaol seeing the darker, but no less true, side of Celaena and loving her anyway.
But, knowing what I know now, itâs easier to understand that BOTH men are seeing parts of Celaena and falling in love with them, but neither see the entirety of the package.
In Heir of Fire, Dorian scolds Chaol and tells him he âcannot pick and choose what parts of her he lovesââ if Dorian had said something like this is ToG, it would have been entirely hypocritical. Dorian loves Celaenaâs love of books, her cleverness, her beautyâ but he dismisses and sometimes outright refuses to explore the depth of her darker side. By the time he says this line to Chaol, it is because he now understands her in a nonromatic sense. Dorian was guilty of picking and choosing what parts he loved of her, the difference is, their relationship ended before it truly began and Dorian was forced to be introspective of himself which helped him understand Celaena.
I was the reader who was at first very taken with Chaolâs ability to recognize the danger Celaena presented while still falling in love still herâ but Sarah J Maas presents a deeper love that loving people in spite of their flaws. That was always her intent, and the reason why Celaena never truly could give herself fully to Dorian or Chaol.
Instead of loving âin SPITE ofâ flaws and ambiguities, Rowan loves Aelin for her flaws. He loves her for her brokenness, for her wickednessâ he loves her for her cleverness and kindness too. Because he recognizes them from inside his own heart.
Now, I think Rowan and Aelin (switching over now) still have kinks they need to work out. I think sometimes they are too willing to let their dark sides dictate their actions and that they should encourage each other to strive for better instead of agreeing with one another just because they are âperfectly in synchâ. It is something we are beginning to see with Rowan and something I think Aelin will develop more over time. (Itâs easy to forget sometimes that she is only nineteen and still very, very young in some ways.)
All that being said, I also think itâs important to explore the fact that all the characters are growing and changing.
I see a lot of people expressing their anger at Chaol for asking Celaena what she did to deserve her whipping from Endovierâ and a lot of comparison between Rowanâs reaction and his.
While I think it is an important distinction for Celaena, I wouldnât compare the characters merit off of it.
If youâll recall, Dorian upon first meeting Celaena asks to see her back so he can see her scars and then muses that they can find dresses to âcover most of themâ. No one seems to bring Dorian under the microscope for treating a woman like a prize show pony.
Mind you, Iâm not ragging on Dorian. I love his character, especially now that he is growing and evolving, but in the first book heâs very much a spoiled prince.
Chaolâs reaction is equally shittyâ asking what someone did to deserve being whipped. Mind you, Celaena IS a mass murdererâ one Chaol is getting friendly with and often tries to emotionally distance himself from because of his moral standings. Whipping a human is wrong and inhumane, but so is murdering people for money. Something Chaol often struggles with Celaena in the first book, this morally gray ground between knowing what she has done and beginning to understand why she has done it. That being said, they finish the conversation about Endovier with Chaol being sympathetic of her, much to her surprise.
The first two books show Chaol, Dorian and Celaena as only the base of what they will become. They are all more selfish, more childish and immature than they will be in later books. Chaol and Dorian have experienced little of the darker aspects of life and Celaena has experienced too little of the brighter aspects.
I think thatâs what makes them so much more suitable for the love interest they find later in the books.
Rowan would find Celaena in the first book to be utterly frivolousâ bratty, vain, and selfish. Instead, he meets the girl whose soul has been broken one too many times, who might still be vain and selfish but who is also struggling to breathe, to find courage in herself to live her life for others.
Manon would find the Dorian to be completely unworthy of her timeâ and Dorian would probably be terrified of Manon. Dorianâs lack of fear of her is probably one of his most attractive features to Manonâ his ability to be ruthless and cold while still being passionate and brave. The Dorian in ToG is completely different from the one we see in EoS. The prince who longs for love and adventure has been replaced by the king who is bathed in tragedy and is struggling to save his people.
And Yrene would have much less interest in the holier-than-thou, stern Captain of the Guard than she does in the broken and struggling Hand of the King.
I think the development of these characters is so beautifully written, so utterly well-formed. I loved Chaol, Celaena and Dorian in the first book but I love them more with each struggle that brings them closer to finding themselves. I love watching them break and be reforged stronger and better than before. I canât wait to see Dorianâs evolution, and I really think the next book will show his rise from the darkness like HoF and ToD did for Celaena and Chaol respectively.
My only hope is that we get to see more of the three of them together, showing the bonds they forged and that we first fell in love with but now with each of them having grown into themselves.
