Hi! Iām loving your deep dives into the Captive Prince. I only just discovered the books and binged them this month haha. Anyway, I watched an interview Pacat did a couple years ago where she was asked what moment Laurent fell in love with if for Damen it was the chase scene, but she wouldnāt answer. I donāt actually know if I agree with that but when do you think Laurent (and Damen) started to really fall? My guess is when Damen threw his whole ass sword into the mercenaries chest š
Hi, anon! Iām sorry it took me so long to get to thisāitās not something Iād really thought about before, so it took me a lot of reading and thinking to answer! Thank you for the lovely ask and the opportunity to dive into this.
Damen, I think, is relatively easy to gauge. One of my favorite things about him is how genuinely full of love he isāhe just has so much of it to give. I think itās really easy for him to fall in love, but it tends to be very fleeting and surface-levelāmore of an infatuation. I agree with the usual assessment that he starts falling at Nesson. Heās seen a lot of sides to Laurent before then, but theyāve all been very cultivated personasāthe cold, in-control master with Damen; the witty and unattainable prince at court; the calculating leader with his men. Nesson, specifically the rooftop chase, is the first time he gets a peek at Laurentās true self, at how vibrant he can be.
That side of Laurent is playful and vivacious, and still determined and clever. He likes the game, the thrill, the challenge. And I think Damen is drawn to both that brightness, and to the game of trying to draw it out from under all of Laurentās defenses. Thatās when he starts to fall in love, but I think for a long time he treats his love for Laurent more as an infatuation. Itās something intriguing, but with an expiration dateāthe moment that he sheds this persona of Damen, he thinks heās going to shed their relationship as well.
I think that Ravenel is when he realizes this is something different. The closer he gets to freedom, the more he realizes that he cares about what heās been building in Vere, and he cares about Laurent. And the moment that really rises up is a kingdom or thisāthey go through highs and lows afterwards, but once he realizes how impossible that choice feels, I donāt think there was any going back for him. He was going to stay as long as Laurent needed him.
Laurent is a little more complex. A really key moment in my understanding of his side of things is that first POV chapter we get in KR. Even after everything that went down in PG, thereās this distance when he thinks of Damenāhe doesnāt even think of him by name, but just as the Akielon slave. I think heās trying really hard not to think of him as A Person. That displays to me how carefully he has removed himself from all his feelings about Damen and Damianos.
In spite of that careful distance, though, we have all of these incredibly soft moments from PG. I am coming to know you; he would have liked you; the entirety of 19.5. A lot of his partnership with Damen can be rationalizedāDamen had genuinely useful skills, and they were in a position where Laurent was confident that their interests were alignedābut I canāt explain away those specific moments. I think that throughout PG, heās drawn to Damen, and he carefully removes himself from who Damen is to allow that. Because the thing is, as Iāve said before, Damen is unbelievably loveable.
Laurent is s o alone. He has been for a long time, and now itās more true than ever, with his last surviving family member having graduated from just discrediting him to trying to kill him. I think that on a very human level, Laurent is tired. People arenāt designed to be so isolated for so long, especially not under such awful conditions, not even people as strong as he is. And then Damen comes along. And in spite of everything, Damen is safe. Both after the assassination attempt and at Nesson, we see Laurent commenting on how straightforward Damen isāsometimes to a fault. Heās open about his feelings and his intentions, and itās not some front or strategy, itās just his nature. On top of that, heās just so steady. Heās honest, heās brave, heās hardworking. And once he decides to pursue an alliance with Laurent, he commits to it wholeheartedly.
Damen is the first person in so long that Laurent is able to relax around, and I think Laurent is j u s t tired enough that he canāt deny himself the bit of comfort that their relationship brings. And Damen is so genuine that he canāt find a reason to deny it. Itās not so much something he chooses as it is something he needs, and I think that allows him to maintain this separation between himself and Damen even as he is feeling this genuine fondness and trust towards him.
I think a significant part of why Laurent allows it is also that he, like Damen, attaches an expiration date to their relationship. Even after he realizes that Damen loves himāwhich, in my opinion, is what happens in the sword-throwing incidentāhe doesnāt believe that Damen would give up his throne for a crush on a foreign prince. He doesnāt expect that heāll ever have to actually deal with the reality of who Damen is. He just wants to soak up whatever strength he can from Damen in the time that they have together. He wants to give into these handful of moments where he can show his true self, and rely on someone else, and not have to be so On and constrained all the time.
(And someday, Iām going to write a post about how strongly Damen reminds him of Auguste and how comforting that must be in the moments where he allows himself to forget who Damen is)
That is, of course, why heās so awful at the start of KR. Heās punishing himself for falling in love with Damen in spite of who he is, and punishing Damen for being so easy to fall in love with. Most of the start of KR is him waiting for Damianos, this monster he expected him to be, to emerge; and instead heās forced to realize that the monster never did existāthere has only ever been this one Damen, this good and honorable man that he fell in love with. So I donāt think there was necessarily one moment where he fell in love with Damen. It was something that grew slowly, quietly inside him, , until the moment in KR that he finally makes the conscious choice to commit to it.
I think that moment comes at Karthas. We have just been through this slow burn of Damen proving, unintentionally, over and over, how truly good and worthy he is. The sword fight, the tent scene, after the griva. There are so many moments where Damen could respond with anger and cruelty, where he could take advantage of Laurent or hurt him, could prove Laurentās judgements correct, and he never does. He definitely pushes back when Laurent is particularly terrible, but even when he thinks there is no chance Laurent will love him, even when a harsher reaction would be fully justified, he treats him with honour and respect. And then they get to Karthas, this first moment where Damen is vulnerable, when he needs Laurent instead of the other way around, and Laurent finally falls. Finally makes the choice to love him.
And once he makes that choice, he never backs down.
One final point about LaurentāI think that over years of trauma and abuse, heās built up this level of disconnect between his mind, his emotions, and his body. I think thatās part of what we see him trying to heal, especially when he is in bed with Damen and in those few openly emotional moments late in KR. In addition, I have always headcanoned him as demiromantic, though Iām not sure to what extent that is something he was born with and to what extent it was born of trauma. Either way, Iām not convinced that Laurent himself realized how strong his feelings were in PG. Itās not until later KR, when Damen starts really pushing him to recognize who he is, that Laurent was able to realize or understand or acknowledge what it was heād been feeling towards Damen all along.