The Three Kings revealed

by Slawomir Rapala

First of all, I wanted to thank Bewildering Stories for publishing The Three Kings. I realize that it was a lengthy novel and that’s why I am thankful for the patience of both publishers and readers.

Given some of the criticism directed at the novel, I wanted to take a moment and point out a few things. It seems a fitting time to do so now when the book has just recently finished and it’s still fresh.

Some of the comments that the readers had posted, made me realize that The Three Kings, in the form that it’s in now, is not given justice by being read separately from the rest of the Aezubah stories. I hadn’t realized it before and I always considered it perfectly well suited to be a stand-alone. In the form that it’s in though, some things are unclear to the readers because they are part of a larger story. Thus there is some confusion and questions regarding logical issues.

Having said that, though, I think that The Three Kings possesses all the qualities that could turn it into a great quest story. Don once suggested that there were more stories in it than one, and that’s clearly true. It was perhaps an over-ambitious attempt on my part to try to bring the many stories together under an umbrella story, a meta-story, if you will.

The Three Kings is definitely a quest story, though instead of questing for an item, or instead of completing a task, Iskald is on a quest to find and accept himself. When we first meet him, he is living in a haven of sorts, an untroubled place guarded by his father, a great warrior and another famed soldier, General Aezubah. He is at home, peaceful and almost perfectly happy.

Iskald becomes a reluctant hero when he is forcefully torn from this haven and put on a downward spiral, at the end of which he has basically lost his identity as a Duke, an heir to a throne, an aristocrat and — in all fairness — as a human being. And thus begins his quest to reclaim his self and identity. It is perhaps a chaotic quest and an emotional roller coaster where some of Iskald’s decisions are made on a whim — but that really only reflects that chaos raging within him. Having been stripped of an identity and much of his humanity, he has become a creature of passion and passions are what guide him.

I think that key to understanding this story is to realize that it is infused with themes of migration and uprootings: it is in fact a story familiar to any modern immigrant. Finding oneself after being taken away from a homeland can be a lifelong quest as well. Losing a home, a language, a culture is akin to losing your status as a human being. Learning a new culture and language is doable, of course, and many are very successful at it — but what is learnt isn’t inherent. We can’t learn to be Canadian or American — we can only learn how to act like they do. Home is elsewhere.

Iskald feelings of loss are similar except that his home has been destroyed entirely. Everything he had held dear was stolen from him and therefore his feelings of homelessness are a hundred-fold. His search for a home happens alongside his search for an identity.

His reluctance to return to Lyons after making home in Nekrya can be compared to the immigrant’s attempt of making home away from home in his new country. No matter how well he/she does, something will always be wrong and that nagging feeling that they’re out of place, will not go away. The smells are different, the colors are different, the birds sing differently, the food is different — the people are different. Everything that an immigrant experiences he/she does so through a filter of sorts.

But the story is layered and so The Three Kings is also a love story, albeit with a migrant twist — Laela is the only grounding experience that Iskald had while away from Lyons. He understands his feelings for her and they are perhaps the only things that make sense in the chaos of being uprooted. She is really the only one that keeps him sane: by stirring his passions she brings them to the foreground and allows him to keep them at bay.

She represents a false hope, however, because regardless of how happy he would be with her, Iskald would always be a stranger in the Kingdom. That’s perhaps where his reluctance to pursue her while in Nekrya stems from. Finally, he uses the first excuse to leave her and Nekrya behind and to continue on a quest to find his identity. Again, passions guide him and he acts before reasoning.

Years of doubt go away when Iskald learns of a threat looming over his homeland. The Vikings are really just a footnote in this story, that’s why the war is passed over in just a few pages. The nature of the threat is unimportant — what is important is the effect that it has on Iskald. It takes a moment of revelation for him to understand that he always knew who he was: he just simply never accepted it.

One more test: Iskald has to choose between Laela and Lyons; between selflessness and selfishness; between passion and duty. Once he does, everything else falls into place. In essence, one could say that the quest is pointless because at the end Iskald realizes something that was already there to be true. Except that he needed the quest to realize it. The quest is the story and the story is the quest.

And then he dies — why?

It really seemed the only way for me to say goodbye to Iskald. Speaking from my experiences as an immigrant, I couldn’t believe that he would live happily ever after. I’m always fascinated with what happens after “The End”. How do they live? How do they cope? I couldn’t image Iskald being happy for a long time. The feelings of loss, of being an outsider amidst his own kind — they would return. An immigrant is always an immigrant no matter where he/she goes.

Iskald’s death was the only solution that made sense to me — it was the only way to have an ending without any loose ends.

The idea of Diovinius and Aezubah joining Nekrya and Lyons over his body is another a footnote to the story. I couldn’t resist putting these two mortal enemies together over the body of a young man who, in a way, perceived them both as father figures.

There is a lot in The Three Kings that make it worthwhile — and perhaps in hands more skilful than mine, it could be a story the reader would find fascinating.

I have some ideas regarding it; they mostly have to do with tightening and restructuring certain parts. Getting the readers perspective is definitely helpful, though sometimes painful, because is shows me how big is the gap between what I intended and what is actually there. So again, thank you for this opportunity and for the comments.

Hopefully, these few paragraphs had shed some light on my motivations behind the story by pointing out some of the themes running throughout. It’s never good when you have to explain your stories, so I guess that should be my first cue.

We live, we learn, it was once said, so look for The Three Kings in years to come.

All the best,

Slawomir Rapala