Sebastian Valcour

The courage to remain soft.

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Prince of the Empire. Younger brother to its future ruler. The Spare. Born into privilege yet unwilling to be defined by it, Sebastian Valcour has spent a lifetime quietly challenging the expectations attached to his name.

Sharp-witted, irreverent and armed with a tongue every bit as dangerous as a blade, Bastian possesses an unfortunate habit of saying precisely what everyone else in the room has collectively decided would be better left unsaid.

He is charming when it suits.
Infuriating, when it doesn’t.

And considerably more perceptive than either quality initially suggests.

Because Bastian sees the undercurrent running in every room he graces. The absurdity, beneath ceremony. The manipulation behind politics. The uncomfortable truth everyone else has agreed to politely ignore. 

And, perhaps most importantly, he sees people.

Where Evander was raised to carry the weight of an Empire, Bastian grew up beside the man being crushed beneath it.

That distinction shaped them both.

It would have been very easy to make Bastian another version of his brother. Darker. Harder. More emotionally contained. Another dangerous man, whose vulnerability must be excavated piece by painstaking piece, before anyone is permitted to see it.

I didn’t want that. Because one of the things that interests me about the men of Threads of Fate, is the idea that masculinity doesn’t have to exist on a sliding scale where hardness automatically equals strength.

Bastian is formidable.
He is also warm.

He laughs easily. Loves openly. Flirts shamelessly. Feels deeply, though he would deny it to your face in a heartbeat. He is more socially adept than his brother, and considerably more likely to wrap an uncomfortable truth in something charming before handing it to you with a smile.

None of that makes him less dangerous.
It simply makes his danger look different.

Many mistake Bastian’s irreverence for recklessness.
Sometimes, they’re even right.

But beneath the effortless charm, lies a man whose loyalties run extraordinarily deep. Family is not merely something Bastian loves. It is the axis around which much of his world turns. And when someone he loves is threatened, the warmth doesn’t disappear. It sharpens.

Because Bastian loves with an unwavering ferocity that makes sacrifice almost instinctive. He would burn his reputation, his position and, if necessary, his own future for the people he considers his.

There is something beautiful in that.
That is also something quite volatile.

Because the man who will give you everything, is also a man capable of giving too much.

That is the contradiction I wanted inside Bastian. His softness isn’t naïveté. He knows precisely what kind of world he inhabits. He understands cruelty. Recognises manipulation. He has seen what power does to people, and what the pursuit of it can demand.

And yet somehow, he has refused to let that knowledge make him cruel in return.
For me, that is its own form of rebellion.

What does it take to remain soft in a world determined to make you hard?

Bastian’s answer is not innocence.
It is choice.

Again and again, he chooses loyalty over ambition. People over position. Love over pride.

Because those kind of choices are not easy. Not before he has decided what kind of man he wants to become. And there is yet another reason Bastian matters to this story.

In a world filled with prophecy, politics, violence and men carrying rather alarming quantities of emotional damage, someone occasionally needs to walk into the room, and point out that everyone is being completely and utterly ridiculous.

Bastian is usually happy to be that volunteer. But humour, like charm, can become armour of its own. There are things even Bastian can’t say. Feelings buried beneath the jokes, the easy smile and the apparent refusal to take anything quite as seriously as everyone around him.

And the deeper you look, the clearer it becomes that the Spare has spent a lifetime understanding far more than anyone expected him to. While others see a prince with no particular interest in inheriting an Empire, those closest to him know something far more important.

Bastian has never been interested in deciding whether he gets to rule it.
He is far more interested in deciding who deserves to survive it.

Some men survive brutal worlds by becoming harder than those around them.
Bastian Valcour has the courage to remain soft.