Bruh, it’s hardly a threat. And my main character WILL NOT be apologising for protecting Leon’s kingdom at the cost of his own life.
I swear you Leon apologists know no bounds lmao
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Just wait until the other side’s evils are revealed. We all might end up with Compromised moral compasses lol.
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The more I’m thinking about MC’s execution, the more I’m start thinking that the main problem is a meta one. Very first scene in Book One - our walk to a stake, MC’s fate is sealed from the very beginning.
If Leon was more reasonable, or MC tries to put more effort in showing that there is something wrong, then I don’t think that the execution would happen. Like, even if he thinks that MC is 100% baddie, MC still can possess valuable information. MC, in their turn, don’t try to put more effort in showing that they under spell. Like, try being more dramatic, try to show that it’s physically painful talking about motive, try Yes/No questions, anything.
Problem here, I believe, that he is Out of Character for plot. Because the REAL story begins in Book Two, and if MC don’t die in the end, then it kinda TIME PARADOX, SNAAAAAKE!
Maybe it’s would works better for me, if MC had to be executed not by Leon, but his older brother & previous king (forgot his name), because it’s make plot about revenge work (for me, I mean) and don’t make Leon so dirty.
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he’s killing you??
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It may be a mercy in comparison to what the other side may have in store for us. They could for example kill your character, resurrect your character and kill them again and so on.
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I mean yeah, we are in a story and you really shouldn’t waste a story’s space with irrelevant things. The investigation would be irrelevant, because what is there to uncover? There is a witness, there are bodies, there is a drive who drove you to some old lab of an Arcadian crazed enthusiast… None of this looks good. And who would lead that investigation? Ah yeah, the spymaster who saw us doing the deed and hated us for a long time. What people really want here is to stall for time, because in two months Ilya will crack the code, but guess what - in the parallel universe with investigation she’ll crack it in half a year. And the end result will be the same anyway. Because there is a story to tell about a Mage who died.
So there is that too. Leon’s still a bit of a dumb-dumb tho.
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I definitely love like… Meta stuff like this. The tragedy of a character’s fate being decided from the very start, the sadness of “it would end like this no matter what, but the MC’s kindness mattered, their choices meant something” just make everything feel so cathartic to me. MC’s story really starts where it ends: Someone dies because they made a selfless choice for another person/a group of people.
It’s sort of why I feel so strongly about MC and Eli’s relationship, too! The love and care they had for each other didn’t change anything, Eli still died to keep them alive, MC was still executed in the end, but it did matter. It affects MC the whole way through, and I think it is part of the reason why they decide to save Param no matter the consequences.
A Mage Reborn seems like… Entirely based around the concept of selfishness/selflessness to me, and how the horrible, cruel choices made by other people will inevitably result in someone else making a good, kind choice.
I mean, I doubt Tahlia is that cruel, and it’d be a major waste of resources for them. 
It also isn’t like Leon didn’t… Well… Burn the Mage alive. He has reasons that can explain it, yes, but I think trying to excuse him murdering his best friend/lover isn’t possible,
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Leon granting the MC a swift execution by fire and without a humiliation parade is indeed a small mercy. But it still doesn’t negate the fact that he acted emotionally and hastily assumed the worst of the MC and killed the MC in one of the most painful ways possible.
For a soft-hearted person like me, that small mercy may make it easier for me to forgive Leon and not take revenge on him. But that doesn’t mean my MC will still see him as a friend from there onwards. The sting of betrayal is too strong to overlook.
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What I find fun about this series is the fact that the heroic sacrifice isn’t the end, but rather the beginning, and we get to experience the repercussions of it – for better or for worse.
Edit; done writing now after a minor mishap with posting prematurely LOL.
unsure how aggressive to be with tagging spoilers so I'll just hide it all LOL; spoilers abound
I think that’s the reason I like Leon despite how book 1 ended; you so rarely get to see crippling flaws of characters introduced as the “golden boy”. They might have flaws, sure. Pride, wrath, etc, but the repercussions of those flaws are rarely (if ever) explored, because, at the end of the day, you’re meant to like that character.
He’s introduced as reckless, self-righteous, and oblivious. Interestingly enough, the fate of our MC ends up painting even some of his positive traits as a flaw – self-assurance/confidence is rarely a negative trait, but in context of the ending/beginning of book one, it actually works against him. His own self-assurance is part of what leads him not to consider alternative options. He’s not the type to stop and think – not when people’s lives can be saved. If indeed the MC is dangerous, something needs to be done before something worse happens. In the snippets of his life that we are privy to, that sort of thinking never backfired on him in any meaningful capacity. The stakes are higher now, and I think that feeds into the recklessness that is displayed in him from the beginning. What’s great about him, I think, is how all of his flaws play into his decision, ultimately.
It’s also rarely explored in media, what comes after the heroic sacrifice. The story ends when the main character dies, and it’s assumed that people live on happily ever after. Those close grieve, but ultimately the grief of a few matter less than the greater repercussions.
That’s probably why I’m personally keen on getting back to Param. We get to see some of the repercussions of grief and heroic sacrifice in what Eli did for MC, and the MC does the same for Param and the crew there. I’m excited to see how everyone is coping (or isn’t) after the execution. Grief is part of growth, and what the MC did for the Param crew is, with certainty, something that will change each character. Being able to ask Ilya to forgive Leon being a conscious choice at the end is fascinating, because of the implication is that she may not even consider that a possibility if you don’t ask that of her. Despite being the “healer” (a character archetype often recklessly giving), she’s always been far more grounded and practical than Leon. Saine, we’ve seen, is taking things rather poorly. Being the youngest and most impressionable of the crew, I think he had the greatest potential to bounce back positively or be affected disastrously by the loss of a close friend.
All this is to say – the book 2 demo is delightful so far, but I’m itching to see my old friends again ;O;. And Leon I guess LOL. I’m so keen to see how he grows and changes from the MC’s death, whether he leans even harder into his flaws or truly works to change them; whether the MC’s final moments and how they acted would have an effect on his character trajectory.
Tahlia is also easy to dislike but at the same time she’s an incredibly compelling character. The further tragedy that the MC continues to be a tool on someone else’s chessboard even after death is so fun. Regardless of how the MC feels upon death, whether they swore revenge or sought to forgive, the MC is once again being used. One can argue that she is a convenient tool for vengeful MCs to achieve their goals, but ultimately, the MCs dependence upon her means that they’re still ultimately collared and lacking agency. I’m curious to see how the MC ends up taking their agency back after being so firmly shackled to someone as Tahlia did by resurrecting the MC (potentially against their will).
It’s a fun story and I can’t wait to see where it goes!
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“I will have answers. Or I’ll chop your head off myself.”
Proceeds to burn MC alive
me:
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Oh yeah, wanted to replay to this - the spar was a test for the retainers, it was business, not just pleasure. He definitely chose a nap instead of work later tho, lol.
But why I wanted to answer is… well, it’s not Leon who runs away from responsibilities. Sure, he leaves for the first time, because otherwise some people might try to pit brothers against each other, and Leon didn’t want to deal with that. But when he comes back - he isn’t very happy, but he is ready to do what must be done. Saine, however, wants to leg it. And I also believe that all of our friends weren’t thinking straight in the end. It’s just that Leon ended up feeling guilty for not listening to Ante’s warnings earlier and letting this whole mess happen, and Ilya and Saine decided to be the good guys even if facts didn’t say anything in suppor of the Mage and their decision undermines their friend and brother’s rule like a good landmine.
Also also are we to see Leon in the November update or is it only Ilya, I kinda forgot?
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i see you putting the mountain goats on your amr playlists and i love you for it
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Might as well just throw my flag into the ring at least once.
The MC is literally a war hero that single-handedly won the war and saved Param at a (very visible!) terrible cost to themselves. Yet they were given zero benefit of the doubt and zoomed off to public execution within one week with no trial and no proper investigation.
That is the way you treat someone that you wanted to dispose of all along and were just waiting for a plausible reason to do so. (And I wouldn’t be surprised if that was exactly what the Anti-Arcadian church was banking on all along)
And let us not forget said war that just finished (because of the MC!) was literally fought against a country whose entire government had been brainwashed & mind controlled. This is a setting where magic mind control has been indisputably proven to exist.
The first, second, and third thing that should come to mind for anyone with two braincells (unfortunately a thing only Saine & Ilya seem to possess in Param) when someone has suddenly started acting murderously OOC is to wonder has this person been magically compromised?. (Not to jump to the baffling conclusion that “they were secretly teh evulz all along with this idiotic plan that accomplished nothing”)
This isn’t modern sensibilities. This is basic common sense. It’s a huge security risk if there’s someone still running around mind controlling people, particularly if that person is able to overpower someone like the MC, so you damn well better figure out what is actually going on before doing something irrevocable (like setting your country’s greatest weapon on fire).
And that’s the objective outside POV of the situation for those who know nothing about the MC. People who actually personally knew the Mage should damn well know better with their doing a complete 180 personality flip from saintly saviour and with them still acting strange even while in custody.
The defense that Leon was “forced” into the execution by outside pressure holds no water as (if the MC acts like a villain in the dungeon) Leon will literally offer to free the MC. So what the heck happens to all the pressure from the Church and all the potential rebellions and etc etc etc in that potential route where Leon frees the MC? What was he planning to do then, and why couldn’t he just do that anyway? Because quite frankly Leon himself thinks he has the power to just let the MC walk. And in the end, it’s his choice-- and his alone-- that ends up BBQing the MC.
Forget the MC being a comrade-in-arms. Forget them being a friend. Forget them potentially being a lover. They are literally the greatest resource Param has at their disposal.
Quite frankly that he thinks these daft decisions are something a proper King would do just proves how unsuitable he is for the role. Like I would give him better props if he was actually being Machiavellian and trying to get rid of the MC.
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I agree with this! I think that painting his decision as his hand being forced (to please others) cheapens the weight of the decision. Ultimately, the execution is the result of a culmination of his flaws and traits, consciously made.
Leon has very rarely made decisions to please others, he always did what he felt was right.
He was never meant to be a good ruler, that much is even said. He’s too reckless, too oblivious, too straightforward. Even his positive traits make him an easy target for manipulation (by us, by Ante, by any number of people) because his confidence in himself is unwavering, but the same cannot be said about his confidence in others. Ante worked that angle by driving that wedge in bit by bit, the MC drives in the final nail by proving all of Ante’s whispers correct. I think he’s aware of his own obliviousness to some extent, so his reliance on others to see what he can’t plays a huge role here. That’s the advantage Ante has over Saine and Ilya too – she never knew the MC personally, thus, logic follows that she would be the most objective source of information, free of manipulation. What he does not consider is whether or not that “objective observer” has their own set of biases they are pushing. It doesn’t seem like something that ever would’ve naturally occurred to him.
It also puts so much power in the MC’s hands – how he’ll grow and move on from there. The MC has such potential to absolutely destroy him, it’s the closest thing to agency the MC has currently because by sheer virtue of being alive, they already hold more power over him than they’ve ever had over anyone else in their life, really.
That’s why I think Leon’s character is so fun. He’s just a whole disaster and I’m here for it 
(but I love characters that are easy to bully, so maybe those are my biases showing too LOL)
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Other side? You mean Arcadia?
The side that kills people for money to fund their terrorist campaign with the goal to kill all of the MC’s friends?
Led by a bigot who openly considers her kind ubermensch above the mere peons?
Who boasts about using telepathy to turn Arcadia into a surveillance state where even the privacy of one’s own thoughts is routinely violated?
A leader who is not above extorting the MC with the threat of a painful death for cooperation?
What do you mean “wait for their evils to be revealed?” Thalia is very upfront about her moral bankruptcy.
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Personally I’ll fight for someone who brought me back versus who killed me
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i wonder if we’ll have the option to accuse leon of that later! knowing what we know about how leon reacted to everything, it’s obvious that leon really cared about the mc–he just handled a very emotional situation very (perhaps inexcusably) poorly–but mc doesn’t know any of that, and it really fits a pattern of exploitation in their life. i wonder if some mages wouldn’t look back on that whole relationship and suspect foul play.
i think i would love an opportunity to say something to the tune of, “You never once hesitated to put me in danger, and, no matter how much I did for you, you got rid of me as soon as I became inconvenient to you. When did I become just a resource to you?”
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Hopefully so! That sort of accusation vs Leon fits in with one of the choices if you go back to meet Saine during the festival instead of watching the fireworks.
When you learn that Param was holding festivities to raise morale and “pray for the MC who died a sinner’s death” you can choose to have your MC feel infuriated that Param used the MC during their life and is still using them in their death. Not much of a step to extend that further to Leon directly.
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You mean work for the person who let you die so as to manipulate you, you mean.
Arcadia knew about the collars. Knew about the ritual and the Saintess.
Thalia could have had the collar undone whenever she liked. You were an Arcadian arcanist, supposedly someone who she claims to care about, who she is supposedly fighting for.
Thalia could have spared you the pyre by letting it slip about the ritual to Leon’s spy network.
You got executed because Thalia thought you a pile of ash she could bring back under her thumb was more convenient than a living ally.
I mean you can be grateful for her cynically letting you die as to manipulate your emotions, but I pass, thank you.
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I think we can all agree no side of this argument holds any moral ground. All the modern nations of this world (realized Param is only a single nation not the name of the continent lol) benefited in one way or another from the fall of Arcadia and the continued discrimination of said arcadians. It’s also highly likely that Arcadia during it’s prime of magical dominance made all of these nations as tributary/vassal states and weren’t exactly nice magical overlords about it considering there are practices such as mind control and I would bet that experimenting on non-arcadians who weren’t as skilled in magic wasn’t out of the norm.
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