Legacy - Character Profile - Leopold
Originally posted during my Legacy book tour.
Legacy is book two in my “Saga of the Bold People” 6-book sci-fi/romance series, and the follow-up to my amazingly popular “Leopold.” I am thrilled to finally be able to present it, and I can say that much sweat, blood, and toil went into this one. While “Leopold” took me nearly a decade to finish, “Legacy” was about a year. I think. Hard to keep track sometimes. And they are basically the same length! Whew.
Well then... what can I say about Leopold? He’s the only character to beam his thoughts into my mind and spring fully formed from my brow. He’s complicated, angry, and emotional. He’s often befuddled, flabbergasted, and annoyed. But now he can allow himself to be compassionate, to let himself feel love, to be vulnerable. He has friends. He has a home, such as it is. He’s not who he used to be. And now he has to navigate his new normal.
One thing that won’t change is his need for a mission. A goal. Something to sink his teeth into. Before it was assassinating the elites of the InterGalactic community. Now it’s saving humans from extinction and gaining their freedom at the same time.
The entirety of the first book was him readjusting to his new reality and realizing that he liked it better than his former life. Once he realized how amazing it was to find love, to indulge in the company of someone he trusted implicitly, he realized that he wanted it for all his people. And the only reason he wanted it was because he finally spent time with his own people and realized he liked them.
The thing is, at the core of us, people don’t change. Someone’s personally fundamentally doesn’t change. I ended up dancing on a razor’s edge trying to balance who he is at his core and how he is readjusting to the new communities in which he finds himself. He wants to change certain things about himself. He wants to be a bit more tender, gentle. A bit more compassionate and reasonable. A bit more understanding. And yet, when confronted with violence and danger, he will always revert to his old ways—to the ways that kept him alive for so long. He is a survivor, and at the core of him is a deep rage of defiance.
When he is gentle or compassionate, it is not a lie, necessarily. He does feel for people and those he cares about very deeply. But it is like a new skill he is still learning, something he has to practice at. And the biggest difference, perhaps, from book one to book two, is that he wants to learn. He wants to be more human.
One of the reasons, certainly, is his growing attachment to Alex. She is one of Mastrodai’s human slaves. She is his best friend and as his desire for her deepens, so does his effort to connect with her on a deeper level—an emotional one that includes teasing, playfulness, and communication that he only just learned with Mastrodai.
Those around him are absolutely changing him... but only because he lets himself be changed. Or perhaps modified is a better term. He modifies his behavior to fit the situation. And that in itself is another survival technique. But this is emotional survival.
I enjoy reading and writing about character growth. For a character to feel real to me, they have to be affected by what happens around them and to them. Leopold’s tentative steps towards becoming a more well-rounded—at least semi-rounded—human being, made me cheer.
In the beginning of the first book he is a cold, bitter, selfish person. By the end of book two he can still be cold and bitter but his friends, family, and allies have grown to the point that he can no longer be selfish. There are too many people in his life that cares about who will gladly kick his ass if he even thinks of reverting to his old self. He’s beyond that now.
I can only hope that readers will also enjoy the modified Leopold and want to continue the story—because it’s not just about him anymore. His world his bigger now.
And it’s about to get even larger....
May dragons guard your dreams,
M.D. Grimm
