So, obviously, Sérisse is the character I’ve created that I identify with and love the most. She is just over six hundred years old (even though she looks like she is in her fifties), she’s seen a lot of stuff, she’s experienced loss, heartache, feeling misunderstood, alone, being hated on a mass level, and all of the in between.
Clearly, she is not perfect. She has made some colossal missteps throughout her lifetime. Sérisse was not granted immortality until she was well over two hundred years old (that will be explained later in a different book).
Sérisse is more hated than she is loved; primarily becuase she is so misunderstood. She always has a reason for everything she does, but the reason cannot always be revealed right away (and sometimes it never is).
This leads to others filling in the blanks in regard to her intentions. When she was younger, this sincerely bothered her. She would try to explain, to justify, and that made it worse. For a while, she functioned as an isolated intellectual who shut herself off from everyone except her immediate family.
When Languilier fell to the Kethri, this prompted Sérisse to go to the ends of the earth and back in the attempt to exterminate every Kethri, but as we all know, evil can never truly be eradicated.
Sérisse has pushed herself to the point of exhaustion, collapse, and eventually…a full nervous breakdown. Even Gorgons have their limits.
Eventually, she had to accept that there were core things she could not change:
- Kethri had been always been a part of her world and always would be. She couldn’t defeat all of them, but she could arm mortals against them. How? By educating them on what Kethri are and how to protect themselves against psychic attacks.
- She would always be misunderstood by most, and all she could do was change the way she reacted to it.
- She would always have enemies, and this would never change.
Sérisse also realized the following truths:
- The past was the past, and it had to stay there.
- She could not do everything all on her own; asking for help wasn’t a sign of weakness. Nor did she have to carry everything alone and suffer in silence.
- Athénaïs loved her, her children loved her, her grandchildren and so on loved her. Unconditionally. Without hesitation.
And perhaps the most bittersweet one of all:
- It was time to step down from the throne and pass the torch to Charlestre and Charon. They were ready and had been for centuries. Sérisse had prepared them well.
Sérisse would always be Le Roi, that would never change. It would just be in a different capacity; more of a guidance and mentor type of role.
Well. She might not quite be to Mentor status yet, considering she ordered corn dogs for the entire flock of serpentine steeds and charged them to Jean-Luc’s credit card.
I mean, I said she was evolved, not a saint…