49 pages • 1-hour read
Accomplice to the Villain
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes sexual content.
Transformative Power of Love
Evie and Trystan’s forbidden workplace romance changes how the characters see themselves and experience the world around them. Their love for each other is initially based on infatuation, but deepens over time. The longer they are compelled to work together to save Rennedawn, the more life-changing their affection for each other becomes. Evie’s love for Trystan—Rennedawn’s resident Villain—opens “his cold, closed-off heart” (9) in ways even his best friend Alexander Kingsley couldn’t have anticipated. Trystan’s love for Evie makes her feel seen, understood, and worthy for the first time. Despite the odds against them, Evie and Trystan find themselves “defying the gods, defying destiny, defying everything that had ever told [them they] didn’t deserve” to be loved (90). They choose to be together and act on their feelings for each other because they discover that their love is empowering rather than dangerous.
Evie and Trystan are able to face challenges and to overcome their fraught personal histories because they have each other. Their love imbues them with newfound self-assuredness and possibility, while making them feel wanted and safe. Evie’s internal monologue on the night she and Trystan have sex conveys these aspects of their dynamic:
She wasn’t cold anymore; she wasn’t sure she’d ever be cold again. […] she really had little to which she might compare this feeling of her world shifting at every point their skin touched. But there was no possible way anything could feel better. Every missing piece of her felt like she had come home (319).
The sensory language captures Evie’s emotional and physical transformation. Before Trystan, Evie felt “cold”—a physical sensation which suggests that Evie was emotionally closed off, guarded, and alone. Now that she is with Trystan, she feels as if “her world is shifting”—a metaphor of planetary movement. Finally, Evie being with Trystan is akin to returning “home” and to completing the puzzle of herself. These metaphors conjure order and rightness, comfort and security.
Evie’s abiding love for Trystan transforms his sense of self and regard for his future, too. Because Trystan was rejected by his family when he was young, he has doubted his right to be loved. However, his relationship with Evie changes how he sees himself: “If the only good thing in life he ever did was ensure Sage had a happy future, he’d do it, his own fate be damned” (250). Evie has given up things to be with him, and Trystan is willing to do the same for her. Her love has offered him happiness, and he hopes his love can offer her the same. The reciprocity makes the relationship work; it also changes how they perceive themselves, their lives, and the future.
Journey Towards Self-Discovery
Evie and Trystan’s adventures in Rennedawn launch their concurrent explorations of their own inner worlds. When Evie and Trystan are consigned to Massacre Manor, they feel trapped in their assigned roles. Evie is the obedient, compliant, and responsible daughter. She is also the dutiful apprentice to The Villain and an empathetic guide to her friends. Trystan is the kingdom-appointed Villain, and thus feels destined to be wicked, maniacal, and heartless. Because of workplace, familial, and societal expectations, Evie and Trystan cannot discover who they want to be on their own terms. However, when they set out from the manor in search of clues to reverse Kingsley’s curse, they discover the freedom to explore their emotional and psychological interiority for the first time.
Evie and Trystan’s assigned roles have been determined by their personal histories and familial relationships. Ever since Evie’s mother disappeared, Evie has “had to be so careful. Happy. Upbeat” (136). To care for her siblings, she assumed a pseudo-parental role. Even after her mother is rescued and attempts to rejoin the family, Evie feels it is her responsibility to “Make it easier for Mama” (136). Whenever Evie is around her family members, she tamps down her emotions, quiets her opinions, and tries to appease. Her self-control is sacrificial and suffocating. Once Evie leaves the manor, she escapes these expectations and starts to think, feel, express, and emote more naturally.
The same is true for Trystan. As Rennedawn’s Villain, Trystan has grown up believing that he is “incapable of caring, truly, for anyone but himself” (315). When he does have more positive, empathetic impulses, he pushes them aside, convinced that he must play the part of the cruel antagonist to satisfy others’ expectations. Once he and Evie leave the manor, however, he begins to realize that he is, in fact, capable “of caring for others” (315). He is also brave, intelligent, and emotional. Leaving the manor, therefore, grants Evie and Trystan the opportunity to distance themselves from their assigned roles.
Parental deceptions complicate Evie and Trystan’s search for authentic selves. After the protagonists’ confrontation with King Benedict, the “identities they’d had their entire lives [were] ripped out from under them. Now they existed in a new, unknown world where Evie was The Villain and Trystan was the prince” (354). When they were young, their parents worked together to siphon Evie’s dark magic out of her and into Trystan—imposing onto each of them an identity that went against their innate tendencies. This dynamic implies that family expectations can be a trap, and that escaping one’s prescribed identity allows a person to locate and inhabit a truer self.
Complexity of Intimate Relationships
Evie and Trystan’s relationships with their friends and family capture the complicated nature of establishing and maintaining healthy connections. The structure of the novel supports this exploration as many of the secondary characters pursue similarly fraught romances and familial reconciliations in subplots that echo the conflicts of the protagonists. This formal choice highlights the importance of community to the story. Often, the novel juxtaposes the supportive nature of friendship with the often tense or otherwise difficult nature of romantic and familial entanglement.
The “office full of loving eccentrics” (75) offers its members acceptance and belonging as they rely on each other for support. Their dynamic is both raucous and heartfelt, showing emotional range and depth.
Evie’s relationships with her siblings and mother are full of ups and downs. When Evie is with Lyssa and Nura Sage, she often assumes a reflective mood as she tries to reconcile the evolution of their dynamic. She welcomes but resents her mother, still adjusting to having her in her life. Evie loves Lyssa fiercely, but also feels burdened by the need to protect her sister. In contrast, Evie’s easy rapport with her girlfriends takes less of an emotional toll; this is “why Evie was so grateful for the family [she] found in the offices, for how this group had accepted Lyssa as one of their own, anticipating her little sister’s needs” (46). Evie creates a sisterly dynamic with Becky, Clare, and Tatianna. The women spend a lot of time working together, but they also share vulnerable details of their families and love lives. The scenes of them supporting each other emotionally underscore the importance of such connections: “Tatianna leaned her head on Becky’s shoulder, and then Evie did the same. They sat there in silence for a few more moments, taking in a level of safety that only other women could give” (146). This scene conveys the intimacy the women have fostered—a tight-knit kinship that can withstand external challenges and frustrations.
The way the characters regard each other underscores the work it takes to maintain healthy bonds. For example, in Kingsley’s chapters, he often reflects on the evolution of his friendships with Trystan, Tatianna, and Clare. The novel implies that time and circumstances inevitably change how people connect. By reminiscing and considering these bonds, Kingsley wants to ensure their dynamic can last over time. Similarly, Trystan reflects on his relationship with Kingsley in his point-of-view chapters. These passages reveal Trystan’s deep affection for Kingsley and guilt over failing to reverse his curse. Each of the characters’ reflections on friendship and platonic love conveys their investment in their friends and willingness to grow together.
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