The Fires of Esus - Ranger's Apprentice

Why The Royal Ranger was a MISTAKE.

SPOILERS ON THE ROYAL RANGER BELOW

Fresh off my fifth read of John Flanagan's The Royal Ranger (TRR), and only a month after I reread the entire Ranger's Apprentice series from book one to eleven, I was struck, yet again, by how incredibly disappointing TRR was.

After only the first three chapters, I felt the now-familiar hollow, depressing feeling of one of my favorite couples in the book being broken apart, Will and Alyss. After their wedding in The Lost Stories Vol. 1, I was looking forward to seeing some really great content about the pair of them while they were married. But then in the very first few chapters of TRR, Flanagan crushes your hopes and dreams by killing Alyss off.

As a storyteller myself, I completely understand an author's right to do what they want with their characters, and do what they want with their plot. I commend Flanagan for choosing such a bold, daring plotline, and for executing it quite well. The rest of the book following the reveal of Alyss's death is actually very satisfying because of its obvious parallels to the very first novel, The Ruins of Gorlan, and the apprentice-mentor relationship being shared between Will and Maddie being similar to Will and Halt's. Not to mention Maddie, who I grow to love as a character. The following criticisms are not against her, by any means.

So if the rest of TRR is a satisfying, nostalgic read that has excellent character development and a well-paced plotline with an explosive ending, why are those first few chapters so disappointing and depressing to read?

Here's why I think killing off Alyss's character ruined the rest of the Ranger's Apprentice series.

It's all about expectations and the audience.

Good storytellers, authors and filmmakers alike, have to set up a series of expectations with their audience when they construct their plots. Think about a movie like The Lion King, for example. From the very beginning, Simba and Mufasa are introduced as son and father, the ruler and ruler-to-be of Pride Rock. This relationship becomes an expectation for the audience; they know that they're related and they assume that the relationship will be important throughout the plot, and have some sort of satisfying resolution at the very end--that being when Simba takes over the pride and sees visions of his father's proud spirit shining down upon him. It is also an expectation that, in order for Simba to fulfill his destiny of ruling the pride, Mufasa will have to die.

If Simba had never taken up the role of ruling, and Mufasa had never died, the expectation set by the filmmakers would not have been met. Lion King would be a failure of a movie. Or they'd have to devise a different plot, with different character relationships, in order to make it work with both lions still being alive.

Expectations are essential to your audience enjoying a story. If you meet a pair of lovers at the beginning of the story, and you get hints of foreshadowing along the way that they're destined to end in tragedy, you develop a subconscious expectation that, no matter how much they love each other, they will not end up together. Even if your heart wishes they could be together, you know deep down they can't. That all boils down to beautifully crafted emotional turmoil that still resolves in an expected way. Cue the tears.

In the same way, if you meet two characters, watch them fall in love, and get absolutely no hints about anything that might separate them permanently, you expect them to be together and live happily ever after, no matter what troubles they go through. In one stand-alone book, the expectation may not be very strong, and the author might be able to get away with killing a character or making the couple separate without discouraging their readers. The build-up wasn't long enough for the expectation to be very deeply ingrained in their audience. John Green does this in nearly every single one of his stand-alone novels, and gets away with it, because the stories are short enough that he can break the rules and his readers can still recover and remember they like him.

But if this expectation of the couple ending up together is not met, where the storyteller prevents them from being apart, the story immediately becomes a let down for the audience. Especially after a long build-up.

That's what happened when Flanagan killed Alyss.

He spent eleven books--ELEVEN--building up a beautiful relationship between Will and Alyss, showing how they met, how they fell in love, and all the adventures they went on. He spent years developing the expectation that they would end up together and live happily ever after. And then he just doesn't deliver. It's true, I won't deny that he implies that they do. He cuts off at book eleven with their wedding, and indicates that many years pass where they're happily married.

But we don't get to see any of that. And a good author never makes their readers imagine something they desperately want. Flanagan doesn't directly deliver on his eleven-book promise.

A brief one-off sentence about how they spent many years together just isn't enough.

We wanted to see Will and Alyss end up together. We waited a decade to see them finally get married and live together, and just be happy. And right when we thought we would finally get to read that, Flanagan snatched it all away and ruined it.

He built an expectation, for years on end, leading his readers down a path that we all followed happily, and then right as we thought we reached the end, he suddenly road-blocked it and sent us down a completely different street without giving us any of the satisfaction of finishing. He refused to satisfy an expectation he spent a decade building, and in turn made the entire series end and rebegin in a terrible and depressing way.

It's like running a marathon, getting to the final mile, and then having someone tell you that you can't finish and you have to keep running on a different course for another ten miles.

Or if you've read the Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan, how would it feel if they got to the end and Percy never defeated Kronos, or saved Olympus? Sure, there are many different pathways to get to that endpoint, and Riordan did an excellent job of keeping his readers guessing until the end. But he still delivered the expected ending, the one where Percy wins.

Will and Alyss don't get to win, even though he built up to their expected win for years, and that's what makes TRR so disappointing.

I understand that Flanagan was trying to craft an unexpected ending, and start a new series. He needed a large event, something to make the circumstances around the main characters change. I understand why he chose to kill off Alyss: he wanted Will to directly parallel Halt's grimness from the first novel. This makes a very nice start to another series, mirroring his first book in a satisfying way. In order to make Will become Halt, he had to give him something in his life to make him sad. Killing Alyss is an obvious answer.

But is it the right answer?

Not for me, and not for thousands of other readers.

I feel like my trust in Flanagan has been broken. I adored him for years when the first series was being released, and I felt like he really took care of his readers and delivered excellent plots, characters, and endings. I loved Will's arc, and I loved Will and Alyss's beautifully crafted relationship. In TRR, all of that was torn away and Flanagan lost all my trust. I'm wary now when I open a new novel from him, worried that he'll take something else away that I love. It makes the overall reading experience less enjoyable. It makes me sad.

Flanagan is still one of my top five favorite authors, and no matter what else he writes, that will never change. But do I trust any of his new content? No, never again.

I love the Ranger's Apprentice series. But the Royal Ranger was a huge mistake on Flanagan's part. And nothing can ever fix that.

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A/N ...and that's why I rewrote his ending! I refused to let him take Will and Alyss away from me. So I hope you enjoyed my story, and I hope it gave you a more satisfying ending that Flanagan delivered.

Remember: THIS IS JUST MY OPINION. If you loved TRR, then I'm glad you did. It's a great book, even I will still admit that. If you don't agree with something I said, please remember this is not personal. It is just my own feelings about this put into words. You don't have to agree, and we can definitely still be friends no matter what. I just felt like I needed to provide justification as to why I changed the ending.

Thanks for reading, I love you all. ;)