Chapter Forty-Six Part Two

As I’ve said before, I worried about the Sarene-Raoden plot falling too much into ‘romantic comedy’ stereotypes, so I took measures to try and make them act more honestly. In this chapter, Raoden tries to push Sarene away–but, of course, she doesn’t believe him. Honestly, I think people in a lot of such plots TRY to find ways to misunderstand each other. That’s the only explanation I can give for why such ridiculous things occur.

In cutting the Mad Prince, this section in the Sarene/Raoden chapters was one of the things I was sad to change. As I mentioned in a previous annotation, in the Mad Prince version of the book, Sarene thought that Raoden had returned with an army to try and take the city. I started this chapter out with a scene of Raoden thinking about the problems Sarene’s realization caused. I’ll just stick it in here:

One side effect of her mistaken supposition was that she hesitated in regards to their own relationship. He could see the conflict within he–the two of them had grown very close over the last five days, acting on the feelings they had both been forced to hold back during the weeks of Sarene’s food distribution. Yet, now, Sarene thought that her husband might actually be alive and, a truly devout daughter of political necessity, she felt that getting any closer to Raoden would betray her vows. With surprise, Raoden realized that he was competing with himself–and losing.

I really hate to lose that last line. I always struck me as ironically clever. However, there was another loss that was even tougher to lose. It comes in where Raoden and Sarene are at the city gates:

Raoden fell still. He wanted her to stay–he longed for her to stay. But, at the same time, he knew he had to do whatever it took to get her out of Adonis. The city was death. As much as it pained him to think of her leaving, it pained him more to think of her staying.

“He will be there,” Raoden said enticingly, his voice suddenly growing quiet. “Raoden. The man you love.”

Sarene’s hand grew slack, and she waved uncertain eyes towards the Elantris city gate. “No,” she finally said. “That’s not what I want any more.”

I think the reason I hated to lose this scene is obvious. Right here, Sarene gets to choose ‘Spirit’ over the images she has in her head of the perfect Prince Raoden. It’s an opportunity for her to show that she really does love him, despite what he is, despite what the other options might be. It’s love offered against logic and against wished-for dreams. In other words, it’s realistic love. Of all the scenes I had to cut, these few paragraphs make me the saddest to lose, I think.