Captive Prince

The only section of Captive Prince that takes place in Akielos is the Prologue, reflecting Pacat’s deliberate separation of the Prologue from the chapters, which are set in Vere. This structural decision emphasizes the forced separation of the protagonist, Damen, from his home. The Prologue depicts the destruction of Prince Damianos’s house and ends with Adrastus telling Prince Damianos (now Damen), “You’re a slave. You’re worth nothing. Prince Damianos is dead” (17). The abrupt shift to Vere in Chapter 1 thus underscores the trauma of Damen’s displacement and highlights Akielos as an effectively foreign land. The novel’s worldbuilding of Vere occurs through an Akielon lens, Damen, as he adjusts to no longer being in Akielos or owning enslaved people but being enslaved in a new country. Everything Damen sees in Vere is set against the backdrop of his Akielon upbringing, but he’s the foreign element in the story. Veretian characters like Radel, the Regent, and Laurent rarely bother to explain Veretian customs to Damen, since their customs are the norm in this setting.

Adrastus’s comment about Damen’s transition from prince to “slave” also signals the character development of Damen, formerly Prince Damianos, as he tries to navigate life as an enslaved “pet” to Laurent, who holds the same title Damen formerly held. Damen is honorable but violent, and he’s forced to suppress both of these qualities in order to survive Veretian court customs, as he realizes when he sees that the Veretians don’t know who he was in Akielos: “He must stay quiet, inconspicuous. Enough presence of mind had returned to him to know that as Prince Damianos he would be unlikely to last a night alive in Vere” (20). At this early stage of his captivity, Damen fears that the Veretians would kill him for his role in the Battle at Marlas, in which he killed their former prince, Auguste. However, Damen isn’t accustomed to taking orders, obeying others, or serving anyone. In Akielos, Damen was the heir to Theomedes’s throne, and everyone in Akielos bowed to him. The transition to subdued rage and leashed walks is stark, and Damen’s primary challenge in the novel is both learning how to harness his captivity to find a means of escape and to locate the boundary between honor and obedience that can keep him from being punished.

The novel explores the nature of dominance and control, and the scene in the arena fully displays the importance of consent, introducing one of the main themes: The Dynamics of Power and Consent. Before even entering the arena, Damen is disturbed when servants try to clean his rectum, jerking “so forcefully that the wood creaked,” but the servants hold him down, leaving him feeling “changed by what had just happened to him” (32-33). In the arena, the sexual threat in Vere becomes more real as Damen watches the court viewing of one man sexually assaulting another. When he’s thrown in the ring against Govart, Damen consistently notes feeling “the man’s warm breath against his neck” (41), highlighting how close Govart comes to sexually assaulting him. The Veretians organize sexuality into dominance and submission, but it’s removed from the concepts of play and fantasy that exist in consensual sex. Instead, the dominant partner literally controls the submissive partner, and the Veretians see this control as a reflection of superiority or victory. Just as Govart would “win” by penetrating Damen, Damen would “lose” by being penetrated. The use of sexual assault as a means of asserting control is common in Vere and is subverted only by characters like Nicaise, who tries to get Damen to have sex with him after the match. For “pets,” submission is its own weapon, using seduction as a way to control others, which explains why Nicaise is offended by Damen’s rejection.

Nicaise’s offense foreshadows a prominent issue in the text regarding the practice of pederasty in Vere. Pederasty is a form of pedophilia in which an older man engages in a sexual relationship with a young or adolescent boy. Damen is offended by the practice of pederasty in Vere, which implies that it doesn’t happen in Akielos (or, later, in Patras). Damen would prefer punishment to sex with Nicaise: “Do whatever you want to me. I’m not going to rape a child” (43). Damen’s sense of consent aligns with contemporary understandings of development, acknowledging that Nicaise, who is only 13, isn’t capable of consenting to sex with an adult. As such, any sex act between Damen and Nicaise would be assault, and Damen would prefer to be assaulted, during which he wouldn’t be doing anything wrong, than to assault a child, even under duress. However, Nicaise’s master, Audin, is an old man, and the Veretians take no issue with his “tastes,” implying that pederasty is common and accepted in Vere.