CHARACTERS: Broyan

From: Jonathan Quaife <jonathan.quaife_at_...>
Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 08:16:47 -0000


Peter wrote:

"What is lacking in the Broyan theories that have been put up so far is any
sense of the man's personality. He's always doing the right thing whether it is correctly divining what the Lunars are intending to do to Orlanth even though the Lunars do not themselves know how it will end. There's no daylight between him and Kallyr even though she later leaves Whitewall. There's
no appreciation of his personal motivations in the way that there is of Fazzur or Tatius. Everything he does is to the greater glory of his god or to the greater good of the Orlanthi people.

"Broyan has one critical flaw in that he somehow learns a secret way into
the lair of his enemy and then betrays that secret. The details of this are largely unknown to us and may happen after Whitewall falls. But does this flaw that causes his death later on show itself at whitewall? Dos he do something bad as a result of his personality that causes the Orlanthi camp at Whitewall much grief?

"Where does Broyan think he is going? Is he acting on the misunderstood
advice of three witches? Is he torn between the need to demonstrate his undying loyalty to Orlanth and the consuming hatred against the same God for some dreadful wrong that has been visited onto him? Does he suspect his wife of adultery? Is he thrall to some forbidden passion? Does he want Orlanth to die to extirpate his own evil crime?"

I heartily second this. In my opinion we need more of this complex character motivation generally in published hero bands. I particularly liked Peter's idea of Broyan's secret hatred of Orlanth for some wrong visited on him in the past---a theme not unrecognisable from Icelandic sagas, for example, and also a beginnings for a discussion on the problem of theodicy ("Why does the good Orlanthi suffer?") in many of the Gloranthan theistic cultures (up to now, so far as I know, absent). I would think this question is a key one from the standpoint of, for example, Lunar proselytisation.

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