Perspectives in Imagient king: Leonli vs. William Vilheim Cyph

​ Perspective is generally thought of in the third or first and occasionally second person. It is how we view a book through the eyes of a character or by a narrator. It allows us to focus on a viewpoint and perspective of a certain character or a story in a certain way. In my novel The Imagient King I have many viewpoint character in fact I have a total of eleven viewpoint characters, but the views are mostly split into two individuals. We have the main protagonist Leonli aka Li and the main antagonist William Vilheim Cyph who tell the story of Journey with a Princess of the East. This allows me to show that both my antagonist and protagonist are human, that they both have something to lose and to show empathy on both sides. These aren't just cookie cutter heroes and villains.


The main reason I have a duel perspective is I don't like I when a book has the protagonists as the good guys and the dark lord as the main bad guy. The antagonists are just a fixed evil characters and we don't know anything about them, no hope and no dreams or aspirations except for maybe world domination. But, seldomly do we understand why they want world conquest if they want that at all.


I always wanted William Cyph to be the main antagonist of the first book, my goal with him was to eventually lead him on a path towards being a protagonist of his own rite and his own story. For me, the generic bad guy character is boring. William is much more of a complex character so I wanted to show not just his thoughts, hopes and dreams to eventually allow him to have a character arc of his own, but to show that he is not just some bad guy stereotype.


William is a character who changes over the course of the story. He starts out as a bastard prince hunting a princess so he can find legitimacy in his kingdom and try to show himself worthy of the Cyphic name. He is almost a foil for the main character Li in that regard. Li doesn't have motivation, except to help Tsuna, while William's whole motivation just like Li is to capture Tsuna although he does have a responsibility and reasoning for doing it. Just like Li, except our protagonist wants to protect Tsuna as she saved him and transformed his life. William seeks the capture of the princess to prove himself. The character arcs of these two characters intertwine to create conflict between the two, and that drives the story.


The character arcs we see at the start of chapter three initiate the coming clash between Li and William, both have their own hopes and dreams at stake, and it just so happens that one of them wins in the end. After the events of chapter three going into chapter 4 we see once again the paths of these two individuals parallel with each other, but still very similar. I wanted to show that, because again William is not just some boring antagonist to fight our protagonists, he is a conflicted individual as well.


William is human, well he is an Imagient, but that is besides the point. William has hopes and dreams, he as family and he is a flawed individual. He is a human character that people can relate to. Yeah, we don't have a lot of bastards who get forced from their birth father and get adopted by their uncle only for William to rise as a general of a country. His backstory and his status are not relateable, but his struggle to fit in despite his hardships which is a form of adversity.


Li also is human, he has a boring job as a blacksmith, but that all changes when a princess from a foreign country asks to have her spear fixed. From this interaction Li is thrust on a journey unexpectedly. He follows her after she protects him from a demon possession not only as a form of reciprocate but also because he wants to find out more about himself.


William's character arc is about proving himself to others and Li is about proving himself worthy of Tsuna. These two stories both center around Tsuna, the other main character, but equally would be nothing without our main heroine Tsuna. Through their perspectives we see a side of not just our characters, but a bit of Tsuna as well. In William's eyes we see Tsuna as a childish princess and in Li's eyes we see a heroic and powerful princess on a quest to save her realm. Two different perspectives of one character through their eyes. It is an important distinction to have and one of the other reasons I wanted duel perspectives in my book.


The other reason is I wanted to show loss and success with both characters. I briefly touched upon this early when I talked about their character arcs colliding. Both character arcs feature rising and falling actions of success and loss. In the end of the book one of these perspectives is shattered while the other is allowed to move on. So in the end one character arc succeeds and the other fails ultimately. But, you feel empathy for the one who fails, because both characters have grown on you. We know that each side Li and William both have something at stake and both individuals deal with the rising and falling actions accordingly.


I have many perspective characters, but William and Li are the main focus of the book both linked to Tsuna, the story's heroine and she has her own perspective and motivations as do these two young men. The story is just as much theirs as it is Tsuna. I didn't want to write a book with boring protagonists or antagonists, but daring and competitive characters who want two different things and both revolve around a stunning plot and cast of characters. With perspective writing I found a way to do that.