Brendan Carroll's Blog: Working my way back - Posts Tagged "protagonists"

I've had more than a few questions from fans about why I would make my hero, Mark Andrew Ramsay, suffer so many pains and sorrows in the Assassin Chronicles and I've given the question a lot of thought.
At first, I thought maybe I was just being cruel and vindictive and wondered why I would take it out on him, but then I realized that Mark Andrew, the indomitable Knight of Death, would not be nearly as interesting or compelling, if he did not suffer the same slings and arrows as the rest of us.
Mark's past is dark, lost in shadows and things he would just as soon forget. Is this not the way with most of us? Everyone I know, at least, those willing to admit it, have things in their past that is better left under the floorboards, in the attic or behind the woodshed. Mark has an abundance of these shadowy things simply due to a few facts about him that we do NOT share with him. Namely, his age 800+/- years and his occupations: Assassin/Alchemist. Of course, his membership in the clandestine Order of the Red Cross of Gold doesn't really ease his pain, since the Order requires him to leave his comfortable seclusion in Scotland (none of us like to step outside our comfort zones, do we?) and they also have a set of archaic rules set up during the middle of the Dark Ages. These facts almost certainly lend themselves to a required measure of unhappiness.
I have assuredly shared his pains on many occasions, some mentally, others physically, but enough to be able to sympathize with him on several levels.
But not only is Mark's past darker than most,his future is pretty grim as well. He has worked for the Order, making gold in his creepy lab to support their efforts for almost a millennium and he has killed so many deserving and sometimes, undeserving, people, a career change at this late date is probably out of the question. Again, I found myself in the very same position as far as career changes only a few years ago. I wanted to be a full-time writer, but I had worked too hard, for too long at my job with the State of Texas to just throw it all away and take a chance on making a writing career pay off. At least I never had to assassinate anyone, even though the thought crossed my mind a number of times; but, on the other hand, neither could I ever figure out how to make gold from base metals in my cellar.
I think that Mark endears himself to us at some sub-conscious level when he falls hopelessly in love and then realizes that his dream of a simple life was always an illusion and would always be an illusion. It was as if his one and only dream of a simple life was suddenly shattered, leaving him adrift in a confusing and uncaring world, without the comfort of his hearth and home waiting to soothe his terrors away like the arms of the mother he never knew.
Mark Andrew is the epitome of the troubled bad boy that only wants to be left alone. I think we (young and old, rich and poor, male and female) can all relate to his struggle on more than one level, and I believe I have constructed his character, perhaps sub-consciously, based on the failings and short-comings of myself and everyone I've ever known intimately.
If the reader can find him or herself somewhere in his character, then I feel I have succeeded in creating an enduring characterization that most everyone can relate to this year, next year and for years to come.