One Last Rainy Day: The Legacy of a Prince

Storms are often associated with passion or depicted as something to be afraid of. Despite these violent and tumultuous associations, through Dom’s association of storms with his mother and Cecelia, they become a motif that demonstrates The Healing Nature of Emotional Vulnerability. He has a flashback to the day he asked his mother if he and Tobias would always be brothers, and she said that they would. There was a storm outside, and Tobias told Dom that thunder was the sound of giants. Dom ran to his mother, and she reassured him, saying, “It’s just a storm, Dominic […]. Nothing to be afraid of” (117). She explained that there were no giants, that it was only thunder, and she hugged and kissed his fears away. Given his treatment by Delphine after his parents’ deaths and his attitude toward women, his mother was likely the last person with whom Dom felt capable of emotional vulnerability. During life’s storms, the figurative and the literal, she supported him, and she told him he’d always have Tobias’s support as well.

As an adult, Dom comes to associate storms with Cecelia, because she spends rainy days with him. Being with her brings him peace; in fact, he seems capable of relaxing only when he’s with her.