yes absolutely. story and fate and personal placement in the narrative are so interesting in these books
blue knows the end of her plot and says âsee, fate? iâm choosing this one!â but in the end fate winsâ but the interest comes in whatâs left, the strange constellation all the players make, the way she fits in to the greater tale. she finds her niche within it, comes into herself and her power as a piece in a sprawling play. the world is bigger than blue and she finds her place in it beyond the diktats of fate.
gansey also knows the end of his plot but he doesnât think thereâs a way around it: this is a story where he dies at the end. he wants his legacy to linger where he canât. he wants to show as much love as he can now because he wonât be there to show it later. he is a king, he is dead from the beginning. a boy to be cast in bronze. gansey sees himself as a finite story and acts accordingly. fate has a greater hold on him than any other character, and itâs only the others who can stand against it for him.
adam knows heâs in a story, and uses that to his advantage, chooses his ending himself, writes it himself, no bowing to fateâ but he writes himself into a corner, into an ending he isnât even sure he ever really wanted, once he gets there. realizes too late that narratives donât have to last your whole life, that youâre not bound to who you thought you wanted to be. adamâs final struggle with narrative, a thing he wields so expertly early on, is to allow himself to write and rewriteďżźďżź, to understand that just because youâve written yourself a story doesnât mean you have to see it through. for adam, the world is only as big as he lets it be, he is only as powerful as he decides he is, and too often he thinks he is bound by where he previously set those limits.
ronan applies story to the world around him and the rules for interacting with it more than he applies it to his own plotline. ronan is used to fey rules, geis/geasa, stories as metaphor and lesson. ronan does not see his role in the story from the outside, like the others doâ he does not call himself a mirror, a king, a magician. fate doesnât play a role with him either. heâs something else, trying to figure out how and who he is allowed to be within the confines of the narrative, the nightwash, ganseyâs quest, adamâs college experience. even as he tries to find where he fits in these confines, he carves out space for himself unknowingly. his gravity impacts the curve of all plots. the story exists because it is how he witnesses it. he does not label his role, or he finds that the label is too small, or something else happens. no matter how you look at him he finds a way to not quite fit. this is of course true of all the characters, because they all have different angles and shift in the light, but I think ronan does it more than the others. he is part of the story but does not fit wholly inside of it, even when itâs his story. ronan is half in the world, half outâ heâs aware on some level that the story isnât all there is.
