Sometimes I have a character epiphany moment. Sometimes I reflect on aspects of my characters I already know and feel a drive to sketch them out in writing. Over time, these sketches accumulate in the nooks and crannies of my file folder.

And so, for anybody who cares, I present to you my character reflections.

Spoilers:

1st - none

2nd & 3rd - inconsequential

4th & 5th - significant

Dated by year. Some of these are older and don't express my full current knowledge of the character.

Jedediah Crayes (2018; probably written during the first draft of The War)

Jedediah Crayes is, more than anything, a "just so" character. He's an anachronism in his own world; he uses colloquialisms and borders on modern terminology more than anyone in Legea; he ages slower than anyone else around him does, although he does age — so he's not a legaeësse. He has an incredible level of agility and capability, and holds the record for most sarcastic, acerbic character imaginable. He is easily the most famous man in Legea, and his name inspires terror to his enemies (the smart ones anyway). He solves problems that most would balk at with flashes of blinding insight or intelligence, and makes them look easy. And he just "is" all of this — there is very little explanation as to who or what he is. I could easily invent backstory for him, but I don't want to. The lack of explanation itself is part of who he is.

Jedediah Crayes is not perfect. He's about as far as you can get from perfect and still be likeable, and to most people he's not even that. He has an excessive degree of irritability and bewildering mood swings. He can't stand to have anyone telling him what to do, and he is (surprisingly, right?) NOT invulnerable. He doesn't often make stupid decisions, but if he does they're bound to be really bad. He's ridiculously vain and talks about it, too. He cannot bear to admit his affection for anyone as a rule, and he enjoys being as rude and undiplomatic as possible.

So what even makes him likeable at all?

He does like people. His facade he puts on for everyone, a belief that everyone is a potential criminal and not worth befriending, is just that: a facade: and for his few friends he has an undying loyalty and an almost absurd protective, supportive streak. Which makes him rather adorable when he's trying to pretend he doesn't like them.

He has a surprising sense of absolute morals and justice (that's why criminals fear his name all Legea over) and if you are learned and intelligent enough, and good-tempered enough to get past his snark barrier, you can have conversations of real worth and interest with him.

He is honest. Yes, undiplomatic, but the other side of that is he's not a sugar-coater to anyone. He is honest with and about himself as well: although he has a ridiculous ego, which he puffs up verbally often enough, he dislikes it more when people have false impressions of him. He is quick to say — in that darkly sarcastic way — "You know, I'm not actually invincible."

Mordred after The Claw (2018; written during the first draft of The War)

Mordred's ordeal does not leave him unchanged. Returning to him in The War, we find him the same Mordred, but still altered. He is, in Laufeia's words, "more gentle — especially to Fenris"; he has learned self-control to a certain degree, he knows to rein in his temper; he is, very notably, more docile and willing to heed authority. The crucible of suffering tried him and tempered him, and he is more a man than he was before.

But not all changes are for the better. In a sense, it seems, his softening in other ways has come about because of his hardness to Inspector Dickson. He hates him with a relentless hatred that has gone even beyond reason — a hate all out of proportion to what Inspector Dickson actually did. Again and again we catch him subconsciously referencing Inspector Dickson, and simultaneously shrinking from the memory, his anger consuming him day after day. The anger is so hot that all other angers and grudges fade before it; they mean nothing to Mordred anymore. Thus, his new softness is also an emptiness.

Mordred justifies the anger to himself because of the pain. It would be a mistake to ignore the inner pain that Mordred suffers; his was a gravely deep hurt, a hurt that Laufeia can see. "He never laughs," she tells Fiona. Mordred's emptiness, his lack of brightness, comes from the wounds that he is struggling to bury beneath the surface, and he nurses his anger because it counterbalances the pain.

Surprisingly, Mordred begins to heal in a way that has nothing to do with Inspector Dickson. And this healing comes in the form of Jedediah Crayes. From their first moment of contact, we see an astonishing thing with Jedediah Crayes: he can make Mordred laugh. He is something strange, amusing, something anachronistic, a fascinating, stimulating puzzle that Mordred's quick, curious mind is delighted by and with whom he can actually find joy in life.

Jedediah Crayes, of course, has no idea that he is a therapeutic instrument; that is all the better, for if he did he would dry up and ruin everything at once.

Mordred and Leon (2019)

Leon, physically, resembles Fenris, most notably in his eyes. He's also the quietest of Mordred's children, rarely speaking or expressing emotion. So when Mordred sees him, he sees Fenris – or, he sees what Fenris could have been. He sees his chance to make right everything that went wrong with Fenris.

But Leon isn't like Fenris. Maybe he is in a sense what Fenris could've become, a non-traumatized, unscarred Fenris who never had to learn to trust. But he's not the Fenris that Mordred loves and fought to protect his whole life long. And he really isn't Fenris in the end. There's something wild and restless under his quietude, something that seeks more than the life he's always known. Fenris, in paralyzing fear or deepest gladness, has never thought to be anywhere save where he is – beside his brother. And it's only when he's separated from Mordred that he has any type of discontentment, this deep-seated need to return to the place that, for him, means the world is right.

Leon doesn't have that kind of attitude towards Mordred – it would be foolish to expect him to – or towards anyone. Yet still, to Mordred, he's the "little Fenris". He can't let go of the association, and while, despite Daren Thorne's dire prediction, Leon's death would not kill him, it would stun him in a dangerous way – hammering home the idea that he had failed Fenris yet again. This time by losing his "second chance" Fenris, the one in whom, as he sees it, he was supposed to remedy all his failures from before.

Exploring The Leader's Personality (2019)

The Leader likes unconventionality. Unconventionality is something of a gamble, of course, when one is in a place of leadership. Sometimes the attitude pays off, sometimes not. But for the Leader, it paid off often enough that he rose to the highest-ranking officer in the nation.

The Leader's impatience costs him far more than his unconventionality ever does. It played half the role in choosing Mordred as a spy – hardly his most costly mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

The other side of the Leader's impatience coin is that he is decisive. And not merely decisive, but proactive. He's not afraid to take risks. His men never see a hesitant or backward general, which leads them to confidence and unquestioning loyalty. Despite setback after setback, it's not until the final crushing blow, when the officers themselves admit defeat, that the Runnicoran army loses heart. Till then, they accept as a matter of basic fact that they're going to win. Their Paraki believes it.

Further balancing the Leader's unconventionality and impatience is his shrewdness. The Leader is prone to flash decisions, but those flash decisions are aided by a measure of intuition. There's a reason he picked Mordred and not Jedediah Crayes for his spy. He gave them both the same cursory glance that first night, and probably forgot them in the next thirty seconds, but what he saw in Jedediah Crayes told him enough: this wasn't a man he would trust with anything. Later, he refers to Jedediah Crayes repeatedly as "wily". He also recognizes Jedediah Crayes without a disguise, having previously only seen him with one. Mordred, on the other hand, is certainly no better an actor than Jedediah Crayes, but the youthful guilelessness and vulnerability in him actually throw the Leader off. Mordred is so caught up in playing his part and not blundering that he forgets his normal tough facade, and the Leader meets – certainly not the real Mordred, but not the haughty, distant Mordred either. He meets a submissive, naive, completely ingenuous young soldier.

The Leader's most notable identifying physical characteristic is, oddly, his smile. It's picked out repeatedly as being unpleasant and yet disarming. Two on-the-surface incompatible qualities, that paradoxically mesh together quite well. The Leader is not a pleasant person, at all. I doubt even his mother found him pleasant. One would thus expect his disagreeable smile to be alarming. And yet that smile sends a clear message. I'm happy, it says. And since I'm happy, you're safe. Because – and this is important – Leader is not a sadist. Occasionally, he does smile when causing pain to Mordred, but this is not his typical smile; it's a snarl of satisfaction, the vicious pleasure of vengeance. When the Leader is actually happy, he's not about to hurt a bystander.

Jedediah Crayes with Mordred (2020)

Jedediah Crayes' eyebrows soared as high as he could send them. "You can manage?" He shook his head. "Listen, my boy, I'm not going to leave you here; you needn't fret for that. You can manage, and you shall manage, but you are going to lean on me, and once we get a safe distance I'll take a look at that leg. No buts from you."

from The War, Chapter 22

This paragraph is a singlehanded testament to how much Mordred needs Jedediah Crayes.

Mordred is not doing well, to put it lightly. Less than 24 hours ago, he was wishing he could die. Remembering Fenris gave him the will to fight again, but it wasn't exactly a mood booster. He's sick, exhausted, struggling with guilt and trauma and a vendetta against Inspector Dickson that's eating him alive. And on top of it all, his captor just discovered that Mordred is the man he's pursuing murderous revenge on.

Into this situation comes Jedediah Crayes at his absolute best.

| He doesn't dramatize, sentimentalize, or waste time in any way lamenting Mordred's abuse at the hands of the Leader. He treats the whole affair with a certain matter-of-fact detachment that is actually good for Mordred, because it weakens Mordred's own traumatized, unhealthy focus on the terror he's just been through.

| With his mind busily running on the tracks of how to settle this problem as efficiently as possible, he forgets himself and calls Mordred "my boy" with no hint whatsoever of vacillation or chagrin. He's simply too busy caring for Mordred to pretend he doesn't care.

| Mordred's pigheaded vanity runs into a wall with Jedediah Crayes. He won't let Mordred get away with it, and Mordred so badly needs someone who can assert authority over him when he's being stupid. Mordred, who had to grow up so fast, needs someone who will let him be a child again.

| While he delivers a rebuke, cloaked in the form of sardonicism, he doesn't leave it at that. He tells Mordred that he can manage – with help. Mordred hates taking assistance and admitting his own weakness, but Jedediah Crayes isn't offering him a choice.

| He tells Mordred, with that endearing, matter-of-fact bluntness, that he isn't leaving him. As if it's the most natural thing in the world. But to Mordred, fresh out of a moorless, shattering existence where he was the only one available to keep himself from falling apart, someone who won't leave is exactly what he needs. He needs someone to trust again. It's good for him to hear that casual declaration of loyalty.

Jedediah Crayes himself is still in denial about what's happening to him. He's not ready to believe that his unbreakable loyalty has attached itself with such pathetic ease to this stupid idiot boy. But every word he says, every moment of gentle bluntness, is already giving the lie to his insistent ploys.