Vic

"Yeah, well...double lives are hard," Alvar mumbled. "You know the truth will come out eventually. But you also know it's going to be a mess. So you do whatever you can to avoid it as long as possible." -Unraveled, pg. 233.

From inside the circle of evangelicalism, the process of religious deconstruction gains an inaccurate black-and-white lens of extremes. You’ve heard the story before: a lifetime believer violently swings from unconditionally devout to hatefully irreligious in a short span, and that is where they remain, most usually, until they die. There’s exceptions to the rule, of course—God’s Not Dead unfortunately exists. But the reality is that the process of deconstructing a set of socially engrained beliefs is a lot more complicated than people often think and very hard to understand unless you’ve lived through it yourself. Alvar is one of the only fictional characters I’ve come across that I think touches on the entire process, in almost every aspect, all while highlighting the naivety of black-and-white religious thinking. He is faced with a devastating crisis in identity: one where his learned beliefs about what it means to be a Vacker don’t align with how his family actively exercises their power over others. Not everyone’s deconstruction is the same, but there’s a truth, through all of it, universal: it’s fucking hard. And as Alvar’s relationship with Elvin society dips and swells, we can see how through his own deconstruction he comes to a certain sort of peace, however deserved or ill-deserved, in himself.

[I’m not going to discuss all the aspects of religious deconstruction present in Alvar’s character right now because it’s a really complex and individualized subject, I mostly want to focus on his “living a double life,” as he talks about in the quote above (we’d be here for a very long time if I discussed everything and, lord knows, this post is long enough already). But perhaps I can do more parts in the future if anyone would be curious to hear more! Please enjoy this small look into my thought process!]

From the moment he’s introduced into the story, it’s obvious that Alvar is the black sheep of the Vacker family. This is one of the first things Sophie notices about him, pointing out how Alvar does not possess the effortless perfection worn by the rest of his family so naturally. He's ridiculously good looking, but clearly works hard to look that good. He is not the son people talk about, not the daughter people place their expectations in. In fact, Sophie is completely unaware of the existence of another Vacker kid until he shows up. There's a degree of separation between him and his siblings, a visible one, and he suffers because of it. From the outside, he's a key player in the perpetuation of the elusive "Vacker legacy" (jury's still out on what that fully means), a dutiful son, a passionate protector of the sanctity of Elvin tradition, even so far as pushing back against Alden's theories about rebel organizations like the Black Swan. But his active work to create this perfect image of himself is flawed; Sophie notices his otherness within the first few seconds of meeting him. And if she can see it, it's not a stretch to assume that everyone else can see it too.

Despite his differences, Alvar occupies a world of uniform ideology, where rebellion is not only (supposedly) nonexistent, but virtually unheard of. Similarly, growing up evangelical, there's little room for variety in belief. The foundation of faith is its supreme truth and the foundation of devotion is the protection and globalization of the gospel. I think that's an important distinction here, especially since Sophie comes into contact with a lot of Elvin ethnocentrism in the Lost Cities. Elves feel superior to other races (specifically humans, but I think you could make the same argument for ogres and trolls, DON'T GET ME STARTED) because of their beliefs about morality, life, death, economy, class, government, marriage, family, power, etc. Even though elves don't have an express religion, all of these things are deeply influenced by and connected to the practice of religion, which is why I think Elvin society more broadly (at least as we know of it before Sophie enters the picture) acts as the "religion" that Alvar is leaving in this analogy.

The thing about religious deconstruction is that it begins in seeds, and cracks form, pushing up and out against the concrete of what is thought to be known, until there's no ignoring the growth of it any longer. The difference between Alvar and the rest of his family is knowledge, perspective, ideology, and action. The things he knows about his family's unethical uses of power, how that shifts his view on his upbringing, how that newly informs his thoughts about Elvin society/tradition, and his ways of going about changing that. I think Christian deconstruction follows the same kind of path: reasonable doubts that change how you think, feel, and interact with yourself, the world around you, and the people that occupy it. Deconstruction comes with the complete and total loss of identity, the attempt to salvage it somehow in religion, the inevitable failure in the attempt. The reflection of this process in Alvar was really what solidified for me that he’s not so much lost as an elf or a Vacker, but as a believer. 

I have a lot of headcanons about how Alvar learned about and joined the Neverseen (and am actively writing a fic about it, who want the link fr), but I think everyone can agree that it probably wasn’t a one and done deal. In finding out pieces of the "real" Vacker legacy, his world is flipped upside down. The foundation of his identity falls out from under him. If the Vacker family is supposed to be eternally just, altruistic, and peaceful, then what does the world look like, what does a Vacker son look like, when they're not? Alvar wades in the rubble of that question, much how an ex-believer is forced to wade in the rubble of a belief no longer infallible. In the betrayal he feels, he moves from one extreme to the other; he joins an organization that wishes to defy Elvin tradition and radically change the ways Elvin society operates—the believer swinging violently from devotion to staunch irreligiosity. 

But Alvar’s story doesn’t end there. While in the Neverseen, he continues to participate in the Elvin religion. There’s an obvious secrecy he has to possess surrounding his role in the Neverseen, but his actions stem beyond this. He works for the Council. He acts as a link between the elves and the ogres. He deliberately tries to convince Alden that rebellion does not exist, in any form, in the Lost Cities. Thus, the double life is created from the rib of his desire to belong. He doubts and questions, he pulls back the layers of his family history, all the while still occupying the space of the belief he’s actively working to deconstruct. He is the believer attempting to salvage the identity—to contort himself into the mold that will not take his shape, to keep that sense of community he knows he’ll lose. Because that’s the thing about double lives: you know the truth will come out eventually, you try to bade back the mess of it for as long as possible. He goes through the motions of belief to keep the perfect image of the Vacker family alive, because any deviation from that image would be seen as defiance, betrayal. 

I view his struggle in the beginning of the series between being loyal to his family and being loyal to the Neverseen as a mirror to the same struggle a believer goes through when questioning everything they once thought they knew while religious. He occupies the space of two radically different, opposed belief systems intimately; a believer scrounging for belief. Alvar eventually reaches the final stage of deconstruction in Flashback—reconstruction—and it's a messy process but he finds contentment in himself and the human community in the end. He’s not connected to an organized belief system anymore. He’s successfully left the faith, he’s better for it, but it took him a long time (and a ton of mistakes) to get there. Idk, I just feel like Alvar is a really compelling character (in my head) and I wish we got to see more of his thought-process behind his choice to join the Neverseen than what we got in Flashback. But that’s pretty much the general gist of it.

[My big fear in posting this is that I’ve somehow skewed Alvar’s character in some way that doesn’t align with what’s actually presented in the books. I’m a long time Keeper fan (I started reading when Everblaze came out) and I’ve been theorizing about and writing fanfics in the world of Keeper pretty much since then, so sometimes I forget what’s actually canon and what I’ve made up myself (does this happen to anyone else), so if you disagree with my characterization of Alvar, I’d love to hear why! But, yeah, that’s the bare bones of it.]

Thanks for reading if you got this far!