Character Analysis: Ephraim ti Horn

It’s impressive adding a character to the fourth instalment of a franchise, giving them a criminal plotline, thick with chemical dependency and deceit and trying to make the story engaging.

Adding an understandable reasoning for adding a fall from grace, causing a master thief and criminal to descend into increasing bitterness and vile behaviour, allowing the audience in the following Dark Age to see how Ephraim’s talents suddenly become valuable for outside context problems, then appear as something of a mentor for the young makes Ephraim quite agreeable to follow chapter by chapter. There’s the sense of an intelligent protagonist on the wrong side, which characters such as Tyrion Lannister popularised, for a group -the Grey caste in the Red Rising series- that was really only fleshed out in the third book Morning Star.

Ephraim is one of the characters of a new paradigm, who shifts and adds greatly while not realising it at first to massively destabilise galactic politics. Ephraim is introduced as a ruthless and myopic vagabond and addict, constantly using a worrying drug to dampen any empathy and which expressly adds a chilling mechanical quality to his mood rather than offer any deleterious effect, allowing Ephraim to run away from the memory of a lost love he seems to disparage at every turn, and this we realise is quite a self-deceptive narrative from someone who originally took up rebellion in an act of revenge after being pressed into heinous war crimes.

It’s difficult to make the contradictions fit, but that’s the fun of fictional plots, and the essence of life. Law enforcement and legionary. Ungrateful misanthropic addict, but possessed of sweet memories, turning into an unreliable narrator, making themselves actively seem worse, and after making catastrophic mistakes, try to make it rich, take care of the one person they give a damn about, and defy the caste stereotypes defining the core of what the series is all about, human aspiration and concern in the face of tyranny, stupidity, and the sheer size of the cosmos.

In his first story Ephraim gets what he wants, the contempt of his sister-in-law, a big payday, the sense of having nowhere else to go, and widespread infamy. And from this terror, the latter half of his arc emerging into Dark Age places him with those who rather dishonourably cut away from their own society, set with a warrior culture, an oddity who speaks to conmen, shamen, and a human computer.

Rather amusingly, for a more practical, more ‘human’ individual of the cast, this dependency is used hilariously in a colourful accident exposing both the nature of fervour, spirituality, and daring until Ephraim realises he has dropped into battle holding a mop, Ephraim is not a hero, nor a villain, hearing from the best of his kind at the time, Rhone ti Flavinius: “Fuck heroes”. It is those who squeak by and live, that’s the way to be. Ephraim was once a boy looking with admiration at someone with fine accomplishments and signs of station, and became competent, able, and valued without reputation.

What one passes on becomes something of an anchor in this inverted arc, a character with nothing who lost the cause before the start of his chapters. The mystery and passage of his chapters is what led to a life already lived, the crew he founded, the people lost, and a perspective that’s wary, dubious of a cause, or rage, or desire to rule over others. Ephraim will never have a monument, and perhaps his best moment comes from seeing a loved one cast in a romantic mold, the man left behind looking at the mementos left at their statue.

The world is ugly. Even a hero can turn his back, a great rebellion let the war criminals go. Someone gave their life, in a fight someone can be utterly outmatched, their left ended like a candle snuffed out or a piece of fruit flung from a mountain. Ephraim never gets a reputational change, no accolades, ultimately no reward but a hug and helping to make rescues to undo his terrible act, and then late to rescue his one remaining friend caught in the chaos he was hired to cause.

We are what we are. That’s humanity. The worst is remembered, but we can also act the best.

And it must be said, unlike a hero, Ephraim’s story ends badly, terrifyingly, a bitter modern sentiment of what worthiness costs in the end.

References:

Brown, P. Iron Gold. Hodder & Stoughton. 2018

Brown, P. Dark Age. Hodder & Stoughton. 2019