I blogged recently on both Jaunty Quills and History Hoydens about Damaged Characters. By which, as I said, I wasn’t talking about the damage an author can inflict with one too many rounds of revising (though that would make an interesting blog topic in and of itself). I was thinking of characters who are damaged by their past experiences, whether it’s a painful childhood, battlefield trauma, the morally ambiguous life of a spy, or a love affair gone tragically wrong. Which comes down to the focus of this blog–history. Whether it’s real historical events, such as the brutal aftermath of the Siege of Badajoz, or fictional history, such as a lover’s betrayal or parental neglect, the scars of the past create damaged characters. To explore and heal that damage, a writer has to delve into the character’s history.
As a reader and writer, I’ve always been fascinated by history, both real historical events and the history of fictional characters (I love sequels and prequels, seeing characters at different points in their lives, part of what I so enjoyed about the new Star Trek movie). So perhaps it isn’t surprising that a lot of my favorite characters are defined by their pasts. Francis Crawford of Lymond begins his adventures in Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles already an outlaw and an attainted traitor, estranged from his family and guilty over his sister’s death. Damerel, the hero of one of my favorite Georgette Heyer novels, Venetia, is a social outcast thanks to the scandals in his past. He’s convinced he’ll make Venetia miserable by dragging her into social ruin if he marries her. Venetia has to go to great (and very entertaining) lengths to convince him otherwise.
Lymond’s past scars, while they involve fictional plot twists, are rooted in the real historical event of the Scottish defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss. Damerel’s damage on the other hand is more personal–a love affair with a married woman, subsequent estrangement from his family, his father’s death in the midst of it. Both Lymond and Damerel are wonderful examples of the classic tortured hero. Both have a complex backstory, which I think is one of the keys to doing tortured characters well (there’s nothing more annoying than a character who’s tortured over a deep dark secret that seems commonplace when revealed). But while traditionally it’s the hero who’s suffered the most emotional damage, I’ve always liked heroines with emotional baggage. Barbara Childe, the edgy, self-destructive heroine from Heyer’s An Infamous Army, is a wonderful example of the type. So is Dorothy Sayers’s Harriet Vane. I know some readers find Harriet too prickly to be sympathetic, but she’s one of my favorite heroines, struggling to come to terms with the past (her lover’s murder, her own trial on charges of killing him) yet refusing to let herself be defined or defeated by it. Of course Peter Wimsey has scars of his own, rooted in historical events–shell shock from World War I. In one of my favorite scenes from Busman’s Honeymoon, it’s Harriet (who begins the series “sick of myself, body and soul”) who comforts Peter. That scene shows the hard-won balance they’ve achieved in their relationship. (That scene also inspired the last scene between Charles and Mel in Beneath a Silent Moon).
It can be particularly interesting when both the hero and heroine have emotional scars. One of the reasons I found The X-Files so compelling for me is that both Mulder and Scully are damaged characters (and of course acquire considerably more emotional baggage as the show goes on 
). As I’ve blogged about recently, I just read Laurie King’s latest (quite wonderful) Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes book, The Language of Bees. In this series King (who talks about Sayers as an influence and has some wonderful Sayers parallels in books) took Holmes, who has suffered plenty of damage (some shown, some hinted at) in the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories, and paired him with the much younger but equally scarred Russell. One of the delights of the series is watching these two people, who both guard themselves carefully, reveal bits of their scarred pasts to each other and to the reader.
There’s something particularly heartening about two damaged people being able to form a bond. I love the moment in The X-Files episode Requiem (end of the 7th season) where Mulder says to Scully “I don’t want to risk…losing you.” From the way he delivers it and Scully’s reaction, you can tell exactly how much those words mean. The declaration scene in A Monstrous Regiment of Women is one of the most wonderful I have ever read, right among there among my favorites with the Harriet and Peter scene at the end of Gaudy Night). And of course, the bond doesn’t heal all the damage, which makes for interesting developments over a series. The previous book in the series, Locked Rooms, dealt with Russell coming to terms with the events surrounding her family’s death. In The Language of Bees, Holmes comes face to face with the “lovely, lost son” King referred to in a previous book and with a painful past that goes back to Irene Adler. King creates a Holmes who moves believably into the 20th century, yet he is still coming to terms with his past.
It’s perhaps no wonder that as a writer I can be quite merciless in creating histories for my characters that leave them weighed down with emotional baggage. When I first began sketching out notes on Charles & Mélanie, I knew that the secrets of Mélanie’s past would create plenty of angst for both of them. But it never occurred to me to stop there. Before I even had the plot of Secrets of a Lady/Daughter of the Game worked out, I had given Charles a tragic love past affair with Kitty Ashford, an emotionally neglectful childhood, a strained relationship with his brother Edgar, and questions about his legitimacy. While Mélanie had suffered the horrors of the Peninsular War (specifically the carnage inflicted by the British Army during Sir John Moore’s retreat) and lost both her parents and her younger sister Rosie. Quite a bit of that is mentioned or at least alluded to in the first scene between them in Secrets/Daughter. I wanted to show the damage these two people had suffered and the stable marriage they’d managed to build in spite it. To me, that made it all the worse when the very foundations of that marriage are threatened. All of that past damage also provides rich fodder for subsequent books in the series. Charles’s relationship with his family, particularly his father, was the starting place for Beneath a Silent Moon. And there’s lots more to deal with in Mélanie’s past. A llot happened in those years before she met Charles, not to mention the early years of their marriage…
Do you like stories about damaged characters? Do you prefer it to be the hero or the heroine or both to have the emotional scars? Any favorite examples to suggest? Writers, when you create characters do you think about how their past history has defined them? Do you try to work real historical events into their past history?
Speaking of real historical events, this week’s Fraser Correspondence addition continues Charles’s & Mel’s updates from the Congress of Vienna with a letter Mélanie writes to David’s sister, Isobel Lydgate.
June 1, 2009 at 3:13 am
Hi Tracy,
I love the way Lymond stoically bears his scars, and is hardly ever tempted to give up, and Venetia and An Infamous Army are 2 of my favourite Heyer’s. It’s probably more common for the hero to carry emotional scars than the heroine, but I don’t think I have a preference. What can be especially moving is where the usual roles within a book are reversed: when Lymond helps Philippa immediately after her encounter with Bailey in Paris, or after Charles is wounded in An Imfamous Army, for instance.
Another recent example is BROKEN WING a romance by Judith James, where the hero has been brought up in servitude in a Parisian brothel, and so has a lot of baggage to overcome, although the heroine has a troubled past too. I think the author must be a Dunnett reader; though set around 1800, the story features Barbary pirates, a dissolute French aristocrat named the Comte de Sevigny, and the hero is called Gabriel!
June 1, 2009 at 6:18 am
That’s an interesting point, Lesley. I hadn’t though of it in those terms, but you’re right, it’s very moving when the more damaged of the couple ends up nurturing the other. That’s definitely true of the last scene in “Busman’s Honeymoon.” And Russell and Holmes both end up looking after each other at various points in the series. In “Secrets/Daughter” I consciously set things up so both Charles and Mel had to physically look after each other at several points during the story. I liked the tension of them both of them having to play the nurturer, at a time when so much was poisoned between them.
June 2, 2009 at 2:29 am
It’s rather rare that we see TRULY damaged characters in today’s romances, especially heroines.
The hero is usually simply an immature jerk (because mommy didn’t breastfeed him) and his “darkness” is cured by the heroine’s magic hymen!
And heroines are rarely dark. Usually they’re.. petulant.
And of course, any “darkness” is glossed over. Their scars wiped away to be replaced by Niceness. At the end of the book the hero/heroine is shown romping in a magic garden with spouse, 5 rosy-cheeked children, 4 dogs, 7 cats, and a pet hamster. And of course, his/her newly discovered siblings/parents/grandparents.
June 2, 2009 at 4:03 am
LOL, JMM. I like to see damaged characters healed, but I also like it (and find it more believable) when the scars of the past aren’t completely wiped away. That’s one reason I like series–you can see the ongoing evolution of characters and relationships. Russell and Holmes definitely are still dealing with the scars of their past, despite being happily married. So, obviously, are Charles and Mel.
June 4, 2009 at 12:58 am
Characters with problems are usually more interesting than characters who have none. Still, it’s possible to overdo the angst and make troubled characters seem self-indulgent rather than damaged.
Take the tortured hero, for example. He’s been around in some form or other since antiquity. But the incarnation we often see in genre romance doesn’t have the kind of problems that seem to justify the amount of wallowing he does. Finding out that you killed your father and married your mother or discovering that your uncle killed your father and married your mother and you’re the one who has to rectify the whole ugly situation somehow–those are understandable reasons for going around the bend, railing at the gods, or at least drinking yourself into a stupor. Finding out that your sweet, virginal fiancee was actually a trollop bedding half the ton? Well, maybe the drinking yourself into a stupor part is justified, but spending the next decade or so wallowing in vice, dismissing all women as calculating sluts, and generally letting yourself go to the devil instead of thanking your stars for a lucky escape and making a better life with someone worthier? Not so much.(Yes, I recently read a book just like that.)
If the tortured hero is in danger of coming across as emo and whiny, damaged heroines run the risk of seeming too passive and martyrlike–as if they’ve already been defeated by circumstance before the story even begins.
I would really question the viability of the happiness two severely damaged individuals could achieve–unless they’d had some positive life experiences to counteract their various traumas. Harriet and Peter at least had stable, even happy, childhoods; they acquired their emotional scars as adults. Lymond had the love of his mother to protect him to some extent from Gavin Crawford. Melanie had a loving family too, despite their being taken from her too soon, and even Charles had positive influences in his life, despite being neglected by both parents.
I guess what I’m taking my usual verbose way to say is that damaged characters can be intriguing, but if they’re the hero and heroine of a romance, I want some indication that they’re emotionally capable of achieving happiness–and cherishing it once they have it. I don’t want to read about someone who’s too tortured and self-destructive to enjoy his or her HEA.
June 4, 2009 at 6:50 am
Stephanie, I think one of the big challenges of writing damaged characters is that one walks a fine line to avoid wallowing (a line I struggle with as a writer and am never sure I negotiate successfully). Fabulous as the emotional tension is in “Checkmate,” I confess there were moments when I wanted to shake Lymond and say “snap out of it.”
And that’s an excellent point about showing that characters have the emotional wherewithal to overcome their trauma. I actually think it would be an intriguing challenge to write a character who didn’t have an positive life experiences to draw on and still managed to overcome trauma. But you’re right, positive experiences give characters a believable foundation to heal damage. Great point about Peter and Harriet both having happy childhoods (I hadn’t actually looked at it in that light before). I actually consciously gave Mélanie a happy early childhood to give her some emotional stability to draw on with everything she goes through from age fifteen on. I think that’s why parenting comes more naturally to her than it does to Charles and also why, as he says to her in “The Mask of Night,” “you’ve always been more able to believe in the possibility of happiness than I have.” And even Charles, as you say, has some positive influences growing up (Giles McGann, Raoul oddly enough, Lady Frances, even his mother at times for all her erratic behavior).
June 4, 2009 at 2:09 pm
You said it better than I could, Stephanie.
So often, by the end of the novel/movie, I am so TIRED of the hero’s (or heroine’s) WHINING, I don’t want he/she to have a happy ending – because the romantic interest deserves better.
Or I don’t buy the ending, because he/she is too far gone.
“Finding out that your sweet, virginal fiancee was actually a trollop bedding half the ton? Well, maybe the drinking yourself into a stupor part is justified, but spending the next decade or so wallowing in vice, dismissing all women as calculating sluts, and generally letting yourself go to the devil instead of thanking your stars for a lucky escape and making a better life with someone worthier? Not so much.(Yes, I recently read a book just like that.)”
Steph, there are a million books like that. And all the other characters are willing to jump through hoops to coddle him. But of course, all he needs is contact with the Heroine’s Magic Curing Hymen.
June 4, 2009 at 5:10 pm
JMM, I think one of the things both you and Stephanie got at are that one of the keys to writing sympathetic damaged characters is not to have them wallow in their emotional baggage (often easier said than done, because one still has to show the damage somehow). I love tortured characters, but I do get frustrated when the reason they’re tortured doesn’t seem to match the reaction. It’s particularly frustrating when it’s built up as deep, dark secret and when the secret is finally revealed one’s reaction as a reader is “oh, is that all?” But then I like dark plot twists…
June 5, 2009 at 11:47 am
It’s a joke among friends that I have a thing for “brooding heroes, tortured heroes”, but I always feel the need to instantly qualify because of the many varieties and ways that it can be interpreted, and my likes are very specific. I think the deciding factor is strength.
A weak man whines.
A strong man builds defense systems like an outward coldness or cynicism.
A weak man is hit hardest by something that is done to him, so his motto becomes “poor me”, but a strong man is most self punishing because of something he has failed to do.
That can even come down to perspective.
A weak man is cheated on or tricked by a woman and he becomes cynical about all women, generalizing and punishing them for the deeds of the original.
A strong man berates himself for his blindness, and no longer trusts his own feelings or instincts, so it takes him a long time to believe what he sees in his heroine. Etc…
As far as I’m concerned it makes all the difference in the world. It’s easier to feel sympathy for a character who blames himself then one who expects your sympathy. That is why my tortured heroes tend to become loners instead of rakes. Unless they are a rake because they think they’re not good enough for anything else.
Also in those situations I’m not fond of the female who reacts with a “there, there, you poor thing, don’t blame yourself”, but more the one who snaps and says “very honorable of you. Now get over it and move on!”
June 5, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Angelique, I think you’ve brilliantly delineated the difference between tortured characters who seem self-indulgent and tortured characters who stay sympathetic. You’re so right, if a character internalizes the issues and puts the blame on him/herself they seem much more adult. Though Lymond does that, and as I said there are still moments where I found myself thinking “snap out of it!”. That’s why, like you, I tend to like heroines (or heroes in the reverse) who tell the tortured character to move on with life.
July 21, 2009 at 4:43 am
The most important thing for me in a book is the characters–as long as the characters intrigue me, I don’t really care about the plot. Yes, some of my favorite books do feature characters who are dealing with emotional scars–but they are still endearing and likeable. So while I really liked felt for the character of Conrad in Ordinary People, I really disliked the book Catcher in the Rye.
I also like it when the author just drops a few hints as to a tortured past (like with Charles and Melanie) without overloading the reader right away with tons of explicit details.
July 21, 2009 at 5:00 am
I too like it when characters’ pasts unfold gradually. Often the unraveling of the backstory keeps me turning the pages. Glad you thought that worked with Charles and Mel!
My favorite books have characters I like, but I can enjoy a book without liking or empathizing with the characters if the story interests me. Those books don’t engage my emotions in the same way. I love complicated plots, but I also love richly drawn characters. I’m very happy when I find a book with both!