I love the sword fight between Laurent and Damen because it’s such an important turning point for Laurent and in extension the audience when he realizes Damen did not murder his brother.
He killed Auguste certainly, but in an honorable fight on the field of battle that they both agreed to.
Damen has proven himself honorable over and over and it infuriates Laurent because he can’t reconcile the idea that Damen could have killed auguste hoborably. He has to believe his perfect brother could only be killed by trickery, which means Damen has to be the kind of man who kills unfairly.
And in the fights we’ve seen Damen in up to now he needs laurents help to win which makes the audience believe the same thing. But of course him and Auguste were one on one where Damen has needed help when the entire palace guard is after him, or all of a villages warriors.
When Laurent fights Damen he’s on the tipping point of letting himself fall and the one thing holding him back is the unknown of whether or not Damen killed Auguste fairly. And then they fight and it becomes clear Damen is not your average fighter, he’s amazing, and you realize the other fights weren’t Laurent helping him win as him taking half the people on while Laurent takes the other half.
And when Laurent realizes he’s losing he throws sand in Damens eyes, less to win and more to make Damen cheat back so he could tell himself Damen cheats and that’s how he killed Auguste. But Damen refuses and even with Laurent throwing everything he has, clean and dirty, Damen still wins.
And it forces Laurent and us to finally see that there was no murder, nothing sneaky, no tricks. Auguste and Damen knew one of them would die and it happened to be Auguste.
And Damen goes even further to showing his honor by putting the knife to himself and giving Laurent permission to kill him, letting Laurent have his vengeance.
And it’s after this that Laurent starts to soften to Damen and say Auguste would have liked him, because he sees Auguste understood his death and accepted it as fair and how could Laurent disagree with Auguste? So he finally lets himself love Damen fully after that when he’s freed from a sense that Auguste would want vengeance and instead sees Auguste would want his happiness.
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