Sara, the Blossoming Flower…
Dear Friends:
No character in Son of the Borderlands has transformed more than Duchess Sara Ristana.
In her earliest for, she was a caricature—a spoiled high noble’s daughter with a wrinkled brow and a wineglass. A party girl, a symbol of wasted privilege, and an enabling father with an implied incestuous relationship. Her relationship with Agni? Less depth than a mud puddle. Venomous barbs, mutual loathing out of a bad sitcom sans laughs.
What a loss that would have been!
As the story deepened, so did she. I hadn’t planned to make her a point-of-view character. Then I realized: she was perfect—not only as a foil to Agni but herself at the nexus of power, expectation, and heartbreak. Her story is not just about rebellion or survival, but about reckoning with duty when every part of her wants to flee.
Unlike any other major character, her every relationship is fraught with contradiction.
She and Agni wound each other with words, but she knows neither chose the path that bound them.
She loves her father, Duke Verlan, and he, in his own way, loves her back. But she resents that he sees her as a piece on his board.
She despises what Kali represents but understands that love and duty can pull at one another.
She hates life in the East, snaps at the locals, and drinks too much, but part of her envies the simple life they take for granted.
She feels the weight of all their actions in the way that only a woman, a high noble, and an exile can.
Yet beneath all that is a core of brilliance, ambition, and will. She bears her responsibilities even when joy feels out of reach. Her words command attention. Her presence bends the air around her. One beta reader told me she was the most magnetic character in the book. I was stunned. I had peppered my writing coach with questions about how to write a real woman. And yet here she stood—elegant, sharp, aching, alive.
If Sara has a true voice, it might be the gentle, haunting harp melody of “Passed Tense” (from the Tales of Maj’Eyal soundtrack)—a song she might play in the dark, in front of a dying flame, when no one is watching.
She is not a trope or a victim. She is a force herself.
And I hope you come to feel for her as deeply as I do.
For the Borderlands,
Joe