Hello, friend! Welcome to another post in The Creator’s Roulette. Today, I am have the honor to work with author David Dalglish. David has written the Half-Orc Series, the Shadowdance Series, The Paladins, the Breaking World Trilogy, the Seraphim Trilogy, the Keepers Trilogy, and the Vagrant Gods Trilogy. His latest book, The Bladed Faith, first in the Vagrant Gods trilogy, is being published by Orbit next week. Assassins play a prominent part in the book and I am excited to host David to learn about assassins in general, likeable ones specifically. I haven’t read many books about them though movies and video games often feature them. Let’s welcome him and learn from him!
Likeable Assassins
A guest post by David Dalglish
If we go by values most people possess, we shouldn’t like assassins. They specialize in death. They act without honor. They murder unsuspecting targets using underhanded means such as poisoning meals or killing from afar. Assassins are hardly beloved in history, either. Only the absolute worst among us idolize Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth, James Earl Ray, or Gavrilo Princip. The movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford puts it pretty clear how actual assassins are to be viewed by title alone. Robert Ford expected to be a beloved hero, yet the public turned against him. Even though he killed an outlaw and a villain, he was viewed as even worse.
And yet step into the realm of fiction and assassins are incredibly popular. Why? Well, we writers get to be fully in charge of the narrative. The first big change is the targets. Someone like Booth may have viewed himself as a hero, but he was really just an awful fucking racist. But if I’m writing the story, and I want to keep the reader on my side, I just make the targets, well, people like Booth. And that’s if they’re even going after singular targets. So often assassins are portrayed as the underdogs, acting in opposition to (oftentimes tyrannical) governments and organizations.
In The Bladed Faith, the main character, Cyrus, is the sole survivor of a royal family whose island was conquered by an invading empire. The overwhelming size of his foe, being this continent-spanning empire, makes any traditional war hopeless. But what if he wasn’t a soldier on a battlefield, but a rumored assassin? What if he focused on eliminating leaders and nobles instead of soldiers who might not have any choice but to fight? Suddenly the goals seem attainable. The incredible skill of an assassin becomes necessary. Stealth and trickery are acceptable when we the audience understand that the slightest error means death for the protagonists.
Even if they’re not underdogs, these heroes and anti-heroes are often portrayed as taking part in secret battles unknown to the normal folk. A prime example of this would be Ezio from Assassin’s Creed. When his family is killed, he’s forced to flee his home, and ends up officially joining the Assassins. This means you also get another time-honored setup of a new, young member joining an ancient organization and learning their history, their traditions, and their secret war against the Knights Templar. Sure, it’s a trope, but people love it for a reason. And now when Ezio is running about, being awesome and stabbing people with wrist blades, he’s not some underhanded coward. He’s a combatant in a war whose foes are so wealthy and powerful that only the most desperate measures will suffice.
I also think we like to read about and watch people who are really, really good at what they do. I can watch the chefs on the Great British Bake Off do what I definitely cannot. The same goes for athletes, artists, and musicians. It can even be something that most might consider mundane. A quick jaunt to Youtube, and you can find millions of videos of people doing factory work, chopping onions, setting tables, or laying bricks at incredible speed and precision.
With assassins, it is no different. And let’s face it—a lot of times it’s fun to just… watch them be awesome (such as the many brilliantly written duels between Artemis Entreri and Drizzt Do’Urden in R.A. Salvatore’s D&D novels). Even better is when we get to witness these assassins become masters of their craft, such as with Kylar Stern in Brent Weeks’s Night Angel Trilogy.
I know that as a writer it can be scary to use obvious cliches, but I can assure you, people love a good training montage. It is character growth on a very fundamental level, and grants time to bond with the trainee in preparation for the hopefully badass moments to come.
David
In this way, a lot of fantasy assassins share similarities with Jason Bourne. The hero is incredibly skilled, and their past is hazy. There’s almost always some sort of underground association, guild, or organization responsible for crafting them and odds are pretty good the hero or anti-hero won’t be a part of that organization for long. Now you’ve got assassins killing assassins, and it’s a lot easier to root for the person attempting to leave that life. This idea pretty much framed the entire series for the main hero of my Shadowdance series, Haern the Watcher.
In truth, Haern is really Aaron Felhorn, the believed-dead son of the most ruthless leader of all the thief guilds. He hides his identity so it cannot be used against him and his friends, nor does he wish to reveal his survival to his father, further complicating an already complicated emotional situation. He labors to protect the innocent from the acts of the guilds, this former heir of crime now protecting the defenseless. He’s got more in common with Batman than John Wilkes Booth, and that’s kind of the point.
The funny thing is, Haern was originally a character from my Half-Orcs series. I added him in to be a badass fighter with a bit of mystery to his background. I was only twenty-three or so at the time, and there’s a looot of Drizzt in him, too. The reason he got a spinoff? He was popular. Readers wanted more. Grant a character a bit of mystique, and the sense they are incredibly dangerous, and you can go far.
So with all these popular and generally beloved assassins, they aren’t lone, untrained, and acting spur of the moment. They’re proficient. They’re clever. Even if they were questionable in the whole morals department, that tends to be the starting point, not the end.
This is a long way of saying the best assassin portrayals are like John Wick. They’re damaged, they have dark pasts, and they are skilled in a way that borders on the superhuman. When they’re spurred into action, it’s due to a reason that, while not necessarily good, is at least one that the reader can sympathize with in some manner. And the foes? Fellow assassins, powerful organizations, corrupt politicians, and the like. Our assassin heroes and anti-heroes are underdogs—outmanned, outgunned, but through sheer skill and force of will, they find victory.
Give him some swords instead of guns, maybe a magical gift or two, and I’ll read that any day.
Are there any stories that you love that feature assassins?
Tell us in the comments below!
Thank you so much for hanging out with us today! Connect with David on Facebook, Twitter and his website.
The Bladed Faith, out April 5th, is an epic fantasy that follows a usurped prince preparing to “take up the mantel of a deadly assassin and reclaim his kingdom, his people, and his slain gods”. Check out the full synopsis and advanced reviews on Goodreads. I am excited to dive into it! What about you?
Photo on Unsplash
This title “On Likeable Assassins”is very internetable 🙂