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last_herald_mage2018-08-04 10:11 pm
swimmer963) wrote in last_herald_mage2018-08-04 10:11 pm
A song for two voices - book 6
This story is getting HARD to write and I'm not super happy with this draft yet, especially re: pacing, there is way less intense action and it's much more a bunch of loosely connected side plots than I would prefer, and it probably doesn't end in the right place, but it's already taken me forever and is at like 180,000 words, so here, have a rough draft :)
(Note: I have made a bunch of changes to book 5 since the last draft I posted here, which means there isn't perfect continuity between the old book 5 and this section. I've listed major plot-relevant changes below, and I've also linked to the more recent and improved version of book 5.)
Book 6 MOBI
Book 6 EPUB
Book 6 RTF
Covers:
*Savil and Van trying to patch things up after the events of the end of book 5. Drama.
*Some clarification on what Leareth is up to, in case you were curious.
*Lots of magical research.
*Stef and Medren have adventures.
*Political drama. Vanyel is not great at politics.
*There miiiiight be a side plot where Need shows up.
*Jisa getting trained as a Mindhealer.
*Checking in Lissa, Karis, Shavri, Tran, etc etc etc (there are too many characters in this series and they are all amazing and deserve their own side-story, damn it Mercedes Lackey)
New Book 5 MOBI
New Book 5 EPUB
New Book 5 RTF
Major plot changes made from last draft of book 5:
-Rolan doesn't come back right away, and Tran gets re-Chosen by Delian instead. (Justification: I think it loses a lot of the impact of Taver's death to have Rolan immediately show up as a replacement)
-Jaysen still dies but no longer calls Final Strike (because my friend thought there it was too much "a chain reaction of spontaneously combusting Heralds")
-MOST IMPORTANT: the mystery of Leren's assassination attempt is resolved within book 5 and Vanyel finds out it was Leareth's plot. (I mean, I *think* this was canon already, but main thing is that Van already knows what's up by the beginning of book 6)
(Note: I have made a bunch of changes to book 5 since the last draft I posted here, which means there isn't perfect continuity between the old book 5 and this section. I've listed major plot-relevant changes below, and I've also linked to the more recent and improved version of book 5.)
Book 6 MOBI
Book 6 EPUB
Book 6 RTF
Covers:
*Savil and Van trying to patch things up after the events of the end of book 5. Drama.
*Some clarification on what Leareth is up to, in case you were curious.
*Lots of magical research.
*Stef and Medren have adventures.
*Political drama. Vanyel is not great at politics.
*There miiiiight be a side plot where Need shows up.
*Jisa getting trained as a Mindhealer.
*Checking in Lissa, Karis, Shavri, Tran, etc etc etc (there are too many characters in this series and they are all amazing and deserve their own side-story, damn it Mercedes Lackey)
New Book 5 MOBI
New Book 5 EPUB
New Book 5 RTF
Major plot changes made from last draft of book 5:
-Rolan doesn't come back right away, and Tran gets re-Chosen by Delian instead. (Justification: I think it loses a lot of the impact of Taver's death to have Rolan immediately show up as a replacement)
-Jaysen still dies but no longer calls Final Strike (because my friend thought there it was too much "a chain reaction of spontaneously combusting Heralds")
-MOST IMPORTANT: the mystery of Leren's assassination attempt is resolved within book 5 and Vanyel finds out it was Leareth's plot. (I mean, I *think* this was canon already, but main thing is that Van already knows what's up by the beginning of book 6)
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(Also it allows me to do something neat and different with Rolan later when he does show up)
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holy jeez i just finished this and you've got the original series 'drop a mountain on everyone's heads' style down flat lmao--between the blood magic, need, stef taking a dive in a river, van's constant state of crisis and starwind's injury everything is nuts! and that ending, oh my gosh!!!! jeez what the heck is going to happen? where'd yfandes go? this is wild!
my favorite line in the entire thing has gotta be: "“Is it just me,” Randi said dully, “or does Van not actually listen to me anymore?”" i have no idea why it's so amusing but it kind of sums up van's entire existence lmao
stef's huge friggin crush on van (and van's parallel concern for stef) is wonderful and i loved the scenes they were together--also stef's preference for older men is very obvious and also hilarious
shavri is so badass here! between having need and her awesome healing abilities, she is so cool! i do like how when we see her from jisa's point of view, she isn't necessarily the best mother in the world--a lot of her duties and problems take away from being a better parent.
i love your description of jisa's mindhealing abilities.
man, i hope the thing with yfandes gets sorted out. she's one of my favorite characters and it seems out of character for her to reject van like that, even if he is asking really scary questions.
and lastly, it's always sunny in valdemar, or; vanyel's current mental state:
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Would you believe me if I said I meant this section to be *less* angsty than anything since book 3? I don't think it turned out that way. I mean, I think the constant crises are a little less extreme – Van is, in fact, getting better at working at a sustainable level, and this section covers ~4 years, most of which is not a state of emergency. It seems like it still came out fairly depressing?
Yfandes is coming back. First of all, I'm pretty sure it's in character for her to find out some way to get around her programming-as-a-Companion that's preventing her from even being able to consider Van's point of view with this, and I think she comes back *more* able to be fully behind Van. Secondly, it *has* to go that way because in the version of this story where Yfandes doesn't come back I think Van doesn't survive it. I ended it here mainly because the next bit is going to be REALLY HARD to write (not just Yfandes – I think also Savil ends up learning the full story about Leareth, can't see how she would let Van get away with not explaining it at this point, and omg is that going to be a Whole Thing.) I'll probably share that section as an addendum to this though, rather than making you wait until I'm done book 7.
I'm glad it sounds like the Stef stuff worked? I wasn't sure how to approach him and Van meeting when Stef was much younger, even though it seemed really implausible to me that they *wouldn't*. I went with Van having inexplicably strong feelings that just weren't at all romantic/sexual in nature. (Also, given the # of my readers who haven't read canon and don't know who Stef is, I do want how that plays out to be a surprise, so trying not to be heavy-handed about their early interactions).
I enjoyed the Stef river incident because it let me parallel something from one of the other books (Talia getting chucked in the river by the Blues, although honestly I don't even remember what political drama *that* was associated with), and for some reason I find it really satisfying to do that.
Shavri is so badass! Ngl, she is one of my favorite characters from canon, even though I think her characterization there really doesn't do her justice – something about her resonated with me so much. She's incredibly talented, and yet she spends half her life dragged away from that in order to fill a role she *isn't* really suited for – and she figures out how to make it work anyway, even though it's shitty and unfair and not the life she wanted. AND at the same time she sets a few hard boundaries around things she is absolutely not willing to give up (like having a child). Also, I like how in my version this is *all on her* – she's not a Herald, she has no official position, it's actually a bit awkward and against the grain for her to be inserting herself into the government to the extent she does. And it's the last thing she wants to do. But she does it, because someone has to. (And she doesn't do it perfectly, and sometimes she isn't the best mother because she's pulled in so many directions)
(I am vaguely thinking Shavri blossoms into a full-fledged feminist SJW once she manages to figure out actually talking to Need. Didn't get fully explored in this section mainly bc there are TOO MANY SUBPLOTS ALREADY).
Starwind's injury is a little off the beaten path of the main story, but I wanted an excuse for a) Shavri and Jisa to do cool concert work, and b) Jisa to end up being a Wingsister. Jisa is going to so really f***ing cool. I'm not sure exactly how her life goes - she's probably not going to be the next King's Own unless something happens to Dara, and she plausibly doesn't get Chosen at all, but she does end up with Need.
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oh savil is going to be so immeasurably pissed (also she's going to blame herself so much. poor savil)
i noticed the arrows parallels! dara reminded me of talia at first blush, and ofc stef getting almost killed by bullies--i really liked that inclusion.
i thought stef and van's interactions were very natural. stef has the hero-worship crush on him he does in canon, and he's still too young to be attractive to van, so van is more platonically concerned at this point in time, but still feels drawn to him. stef and van's connection also feels natural in that despite the hero worship, stef doesn't carry the baggage for van that van's other friends do
i liked how you highlighted how need wasn't detecting any women in crisis among the tayledras--helps to establish how different valdemar and the tayledras really are.
i'd love to see more of jisa and van's relationship! i really really loved the scene where jisa first accidentally uses mindhealing on him--i suspect van's mind looks nuts to a mindhealer and we got descriptions of many of the other characters' minds, but not his.
jisa is also one of my favorite characters, and i'm glad we're going to see more of her! (my favorite aspect of her tbh is that she's such a sweet person but she definitely inherited van's stubborn streak lmao)
aaaah i can't wait for the next part! :)
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(Also Rolan is going to find out some stuff. I seem to have ended up thinking of Rolan as less experienced and capable than Taver, not sure why. Anyway need to decide how he reacts too! Yfandes is definitely going to get yelled at, because, well, she just up and *left* her Chosen for days without even warning anyone, that is pretty unacceptable, Van's downward spiral after she left was very predictable, and she is INCREDIBLY luck that Savil and Melody started looking for Van when they did.)
I haven't really decided where to go with Dara – she gets basically no characterization in this section. Although *something* interesting is going to happen with her long-range Foresight, I just haven't figured out *what*.
Yeah, Van's mind looks really, really messed up to a Mindhealer. I chickened out of describing it from Jisa's POV bc I wasn't sure I could do it justice and leaving it to the reader's imagination seemed maybe better. Do you think more of Jisa and Van's relationship would be good to add to this book, or more of an explore-later thing? (I think she's just now getting to the age where they could start to have real intellectual conversations, which obv is very important to Van for connecting to people. Also in canon she deduces him being her biological father when she's 12, which is soonish and I'll cover that in the next section). Jisa has definitely inherited Van's stubbornness, and honestly I think she got a double dose of it – Shavri can be hella stubborn as well.
The next part is still a formless pile of meta – obviously Van dealing with the revelation from Leareth and the impact on his relationships with Yfandes and Savil is going to be a big part of it, but I haven't even started on an outline. (I had hoped book 7 would be the last book, but it seems clear at this point that there's a LOT of the story left).
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these poor people are in such a mess...and on top of being pissed at van, savil and fandes, there's the very real self-blame (i really loved when shavri and savil especially recognized that van is like this because valdemar needed a weapon)--yfandes is subject to companion duties/programmings, savil and van subject to their own heraldic duties that sometimes superscede personal ones, and of course, the gods fucking around with everyone's lives.
i like the exploration of the end result of van's own personal philosophies--he considers conflict and war intrinsically bad, and had circumstances been different, he probably could have pacifist leanings. his distaste of destiny and problems with authority shine through in particular here--ofc he's going to listen to leareth, because, well, maybe he has a point. ultimately van's behavior is totally logical considering circumstances (in particular his increasing stress and alienation, as well as deteriorating mental state)
(i loved how stef is quietly the most sympathetic to van in the blood magic matter. 'cold bastard, but our cold bastard' i love that! that's very stef, and it's good early stef/van relationship building--they have each other's backs, where savil and yfandes and medren might push to guide, or jisa and shavri and randi need support, stef and van are more partners, complete with similar moral compasses)
more jisa and van would be good, actually! vanyel's mind and aura looks so different from everyone else's, due to the broken lifebond--clearly jisa knows something is very wrong with him, but no one has explained it, because it's such a difficult concept. i could see jisa approaching van with questions about why his mind is like that (that could also lead into conversations about lifebonds in general, and in particular shavri and randale)
yeah, i was trying to visualize what a broken lifebond would look like, actually, in particular what van might look like to jisa or another mindhealer, and it's really a tricky thing to try and express:
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(Jisa would be well positioned to be the first to notice when Van & Stef end up lifebonded, which could be veeeeeery interesting. I am not totally sure how lifebonds work but my vague model is that they aren't properly lifebonded yet at this point?)
Stef is so great. My model of his ethics is that he's extremely pragmatic about it, and considers very few moral rules to be "real" – and Vanyel has ended up at a similar point, from a different starting position and for different reasons.
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First I want to see that mug😄
And just let people know where you get my art from--i don't really have an online presence except for dreamwidth, so link (or whatever) to my dreamwidth
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Added scene: Jisa finding out about broken lifebond
Jisa woke with the sun shining into her eyes. She had spent all morning with Mama, using her Gift to show her what to do, and she had been very tired afterwards. Moondance had given her some herbs for her headache, and she had curled up and gone to sleep in a hammock.
She sat up, rubbing her eyes, and relaxed her shields, looking for anyone nearby. There. She could feel Starwind and Moondance both in the downstairs part of the ekele – was it still called downstairs if there were no stairs? Down-ladder, maybe. Down-tree? She giggled a little to herself.
Moondance had been fun to play with, before, but he never paid much attention to anyone except Starwind now, and Mama had told her to leave him alone. She could feel Uncle Van as well, though, not very far away.
Jisa rolled out of the hammock and stood up. :Uncle Van?:
His shields opened for her. Not very wide, not like Mama; it felt like the difference between being hugged by someone, and talking to them across the room. :Bright the day, pet:
:Wind to thy wings: She liked saying it, the way the Tayledras did. :Will you play with me?: She felt restless, now. Bored. Usually she had lessons all day, and it was strange to have nothing to do except helping Mama. It wasn’t so much fun to explore the Vale all by herself. She had thought about making friends with more of the children her age, but there weren’t so many – there were only about two hundred people in the entire Vale – and besides, she felt, not shy, she had almost never felt shy, but something vaguer and more confusing. She wanted to play with Brightstar and Moondance and Mama and Uncle Van, right now, not make new friends.
:We could go for a walk: Uncle Van came out of the trees, Yfandes right behind him; she pranced delicately across the paving-stones, picking her way around the hot springs. Companions always looked so funny and out of place in the Vale.
“Hi, Yfandes!” she said brightly. Yfandes bent her head a little, like a nod, and whinnied. Jisa went up to her and stroked her nose. She liked Companions. They were so bright to her Sight, all clean silvery-blue.
Not like Uncle Van. He was blue and swirly too, when she Looked with those other eyes behind the door in her head, but there was something wrong. If she looked at his mind with her other kind of Sight – which she didn’t, usually – it was like there was a part missing. Not the same way that parts were missing from Starwind’s mind, now. There, it looked like a garden burned down to the rock underneath, but solid, and with the center still twined around Moondance. That was the part of his garden that lit up the most, when she Looked.
With Uncle Van, no parts of his garden were scorched and dark, all of the plants were alive, but there was something under it all that should have been there and wasn’t. In the center, an inky darkness that she didn’t like to look at, vines that curled towards it and away from it at the same time. She had never seen anyone else’s mind look like that, and she was very curious, but she hadn’t wanted to ask, not after the first time.
She held out her arms, and Uncle Van picked her up and swung her around, briefly. “Oof. You’re getting too big for this.”
I’m a big girl now. She was almost ten. Soon she would be big enough to see patients with Melody; she could hardly wait, although she was a little nervous for it as well.
Uncle Van looked tired. He had been staying up during the night with Moondance. Jisa had thought it would be very exciting to stay up all night, and had asked Mama, but Mama had said no.
“How was Starwind with you, this morning?” Uncle Van said, as they started to walk, towards one of the bigger paths. He had one hand on Yfandes’ neck, his fingers tangled in her mane. “He kept trying to roll out of bed, earlier. Which is annoying, but it does seem like a good sign.”
Mama had said so as well.
“He moved his arm when Mama asked,” Jisa said. Moondance had been so surprised and delighted. Seeing him smile again had felt like the whole world being a little bit brighter. It was hard being around so many grownups who were so upset and sad, even when she shielded.
Uncle Van sighed, but it was a relieved sigh. If he was sad, she couldn’t tell; some people’s shields were like frosted windows, but his were like brick walls. “So he understands us, at least some of the time. That’s something.” His shoulders drooped. “I’m almost more worried about Moondance, honestly. Jisa, how does he seem to you?”
It sent a little warm flush through her chest, how he asked her like she was another grownup and not a little girl. She straightened her shoulders and tried to look serious. “He’s scared. And he’s very tired. But he’s happy that you’re here. You’re very good friends, aren’t you?” She had liked hearing about how Savil had met Starwind. “How did you meet him?”
Uncle Van’s shoulders went tight, and his aura swirled and darkened just a little. “A long time ago. I trained here, after my Gifts awakened and Yfandes Chose me.”
“Oh.” Jisa bent down to pick up an interesting-looking rock, then skipped ahead. “Why?”
His face was like marble, all still and unyielding, but his eyes looked away from her. “It’s complicated. My Gifts were very powerful, and I had no control; there was no one else who could teach me safely. And the way my Gifts were awakened meant I needed a kind of Healing that no one in Valdemar could do. Moondance Healed me, so I owed him a great deal.”
“Oh.” Jisa frowned. “How were your Gifts awakened, then?” She remembered a few snippets she had overhead from Mama and Papa, back when she was much littler. She hadn’t known enough at the time to be curious. If he had been hurt, so badly that even Mama couldn’t Heal it, maybe that was why his mind looked so strange?
“It’s a long story, and I would rather not talk about it, actually.” He smiled at her to soften it. “In any case, I’ve known Starwind and Moondance for a long time. Just about fifteen years. They’re very important to me.”
Fifteen years. It was funny to think about things that had happened before she was even born. “Were they already lifebonded then?”
“Yes. They would have met, oh, ten years earlier.”
Jisa nodded. She was good at doing sums in her head, now. Twenty-five years. Back when Mama would have been only a little girl. “So Moondance isn’t from here?” She had wondered. “He looks different.” Even if his hair and eyes were the same.
Uncle Van smiled. “Good noticing. No, he’s from a village somewhere northwest of our border. He was adopted by k’Treva, you could say.”
“Does that happen often?”
“No. It’s very rare.”
It was so interesting. She walked for a while, thinking. “What would’ve happened to Moondance if Starwind died?” she said finally. She had overhead Mama whispering something about it, quickly stopping when she realized Jisa was listening. And it had been horrible, watching Moondance’s mind when Starwind was on the edge between life and death. The deepest center of him was woven together with Starwind, and watching that solid ground go boggy and soft, starting to fall apart, was one of the worst things she had ever seen. Uncle Van had asked her to help Moondance stay calm, and she had been trying so hard, but she couldn’t tell him without words that everything would be all right. It might not have been.
The air felt suddenly colder. Uncle Van’s head spun around. “I don’t know.” His voice sounded strange, and she imagined shutters closing behind his eyes. “He might have survived it. Probably not, and…I’m not sure I would wish that on him. Jisa, it’s not a nice thing to talk about.”
“Sorry.” She was more curious than sorry, though. It would have been very sad, but it wasn’t the thing that had happened.
Uncle Van didn’t say anything else for a long time, only walked with his arm around Yfandes’ shoulder. She wondered if he was talking to his Companion. It was harder to tell than for normal Mindspeaking.
Cautiously, she reached for her Sight.
Uncle Van’s mind was always moving, knotted and vibrant, except for the center. Still because it was empty, a place where something should have been but wasn’t. Anymore. And with her training, she could See a lot more than she had the last time; she Saw the cracks that spread from that emptiness, patched over, and some of that was him but some of it looked like Melody, all clean and blue, layered on top of older, fading redirects. Woven tightly, holding him together with no foundation.
It was wrong. Deeply and horrifyingly wrong. She gulped, trying to swallow the hot weight in her throat.
“Jisa?” His voice was sharp. “What are you doing?”
She wrenched back her Sight. “Sorry.” But she wanted to know. “Uncle Van, did you–” She stopped, shutting her mouth with a click.
Melody had said she needed to learn to think before she spoke, that sometimes there were things better left unsaid. Things that people already knew, that would only be upsetting to dwell on. Things that were none of her business. It was dawning on her that maybe this was one of those times, and maybe she should have kept her Sight to herself.
But Uncle Van’s voice was only weary and sad, not angry. “Jisa, it’s all right. You can ask.” He had stopped walking, and she realized he was looking at her.
She swallowed again. “Uncle Van, were you lifebonded to someone who died?”
He bowed his head, hugging himself as though he was cold, and she thought that he looked so tired, and somehow out of place, between the vines and flowers, with birds singing out above his head. “I wondered when you would guess.” He shook his head. “It was a long time ago.”
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t back away from her when she took a step forward, so she went up to him and put her arms around his waist. “Does it hurt?”
“Of course. All the time.” He looked down at her for a moment, like he was confused to see her there, then sighed and rested his hand on her shoulder. “I manage as best I can.”
She could tell when someone wasn’t in the mood for a hug, and she let go of him. They kept walking.
Jisa had always thought that being lifebonded would be wonderful. To have someone who would always be your best friend, who would understand and love you no matter what. Forever.
Except that it wasn’t always forever. That was the risk, wasn’t it?
Maybe Uncle Van had guessed what she was thinking. “It was worth it,” he said, tight and fierce. “It was worth everything.”
Jisa had asked Mama once if she would be lifebonded someday. Mama had said she didn’t know, but probably not, it was very rare. Which made it funny that she knew so many people who were lifebonded. Or had been. Mardic and Donni had been as well. People had murmured about it, after they died. Mama had burned a candle for both of them in their quarters, and Herald Jaysen as well, even though it was the day after Sovvan.
She didn’t like to think about Herald Jaysen, how he had lain on the floor all over blood, so she tried to think about something else.
“Why do lifebonds happen?” she said. “Snowlight says it’s when–”
“The gods are meddling,” Uncle Van finished for her. “Maybe. Who knows? There are plenty of things in the world that we don’t understand.”
His voice sounded closed-off again, so Jisa didn’t ask any more questions, even though she had a thousand of them. She was proud of herself for holding back.
She did reach out and take his hand, and he let her, and they walked on in silence.
Re: Added scene: Jisa finding out about broken lifebond
it's interesting that jisa doesn't really know a lot of the circumstances surrounding van's choosing, but it does make sense. i could guess that the heralds wouldn't want to talk about it much.
this will be fun when stef and van begin to have a real relationship--i bet jisa would be able to see the change immediately :D
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My only qualm is that I don't like losing the heroism/ idyllic Vanyel (the trial), but that's because I love my Sue Vanyel who is perfect in every way, ha, even if I know it's not the techincal best. And maybe people are coming around to seeing him that way again?
Looking forward to the next part.
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Re: heroism, this isn't the canon timeline and Vanyel thinks and acts somewhat differently, but I don't think it's obviously the case that these events make people think of him as *less* of a hero? (Less idealized, sure). At least, that's not what I'm going for in the end. Something like, he isn't the hero they might have wanted but he's clearly the hero Valdemar needs - someone who can be as ruthless as required for Valdemar to survive. He isn't like anyone else, because of his power he has to make decisions that no one else does, he takes on awful tradeoffs so other people won't have to.
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(Anonymous) 2018-08-10 09:02 pm (UTC)(link)I also was totally hoping that Guildmaster would take him up on his drunken flirting, but it was very noble of him to refuse. I like to imagine everyone wants to bone Van, all the time, haha.
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I do like how well some of the character arcs in this end up fitting thematically with canon – in particular, how Vanyel is starting to pull away from other people more and more.
I love Shavri so much. She is definitely my self-insert character in this (and then becomes my wish-fulfillment character as she gets more and more badass, but she also has flaws and struggles and has to make hard choices and tradeoffs.)
Tbh the fact that they apparently didn't try to solve the lack-of-mages problem in canon and somehow...failed to notice that it was sneaking up on them until Vanyel was literally the last one made me so angry. And broke my suspension of disbelief, honestly, because these are supposed to be competent people! (I am not saying my versions of the characters always make good decisions, they don't, but at least they're trying!)
Stef is a lot of fun to write in this. (Challenging, because he's one of the characters who is most different from me, but delightful).
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One interesting thing is that *we* all have the context of "for the greater good" being a giant red flag, but Vanyel doesn't and neither does anyone else in his world, because it's not something they've already seen go wrong and been immunized against. So this is supposed to be more disturbing to many readers than it is to Vanyel (and it's pretty disturbing to Vanyel).
I'm trying to deliberately leave it ambiguous / up to the reader to guess how much Leareth is either actually trying to do the right thing, or right about whether it can possibly work, but in my head he is genuinely well-intentioned. (Which doesn't mean he can pull it off, of course, or that pulling it off would have good consequences.)