#i already know mustang and darrow fuck at the end of book 3 but if i didnt then i would assume the endgame would be sevro

[filipinosamflynn]

I'm at the chapter right before the Iron Rain thing, and I am SO FUCKING GLAD we abandoned the harry potter hunger games plot

[andrethegiant3001]

Okay, so I don't know if anyone's talked about how important Julian's death at the hands of Darrow was in the first book of the Red Rising series, but that choice was so ingenious and it deserves to be recognized for the ways in which it shaped all the other books.

1) Julian's death was obviously the first moment that I think Darrow truly felt any empathy for the Golds. He didn't want to kill Julian, and like Cassius, he believed that Julian was probably the best that the world had to offer. Furthermore, since Julian was Cassius' twin brother, it creates an empathetic link between Cassius (the symbolic shining beacon of what the society is SUPPOSED to be) and Darrow (the symbol of the movement that will destroy it). This connection ensures that Darrow not only feels empathy for one individual Gold he killed (Julian), but also for a family member of his and a symbol of the Society, Cassius. Ultimately, this makes him realize that Golds have families too, just like his, ones that are ripped apart by the Society. He realizes that Golds also suffer because of the system in place and that's arguably what allows him to love the Golds like Sevro, Mustang, Victra and at the end even Cassius and to accept their help. It also forces the conclusion to the trilogy in which instead of destroying the Society, he makes Mustang the Sovereign. As he mentions, the Golds would never accept him, so his experiences from the above allow him to compromise to sharing power with Golds he loves and trusts. The last part of this point is that the death also gives him an empathetic connection to the Bellona, arguably his main enemies in the second novel. So one death results in him having an empathetic link to a Gold individual, that individual's family and to one of his greatest antagonists. This empathy also helps the reader identify more with the Golds, especially Cassius, who I basically liked throughout the entire series despite his more... unsavoury moments.

2) Holy shit that was long, but there's still more significance so let's take a looksie shall we? Julian's death is the catalyst to the major conflict in the second novel and the civil war that breaks out between the Bellonas and the Augustus'. I assume that everyone who's reading this has read the books because otherwise this is all just gibberish. But those who have read it will know that this conflict is a major event in the second novel and leads to two of the greatest Martian families being destroyed and/or fractured before the third book even happens. It takes quite a lot of planning to be so sure of your plot line that you can put in such a seemingly standard event into the first half of your first book, meanwhile knowing that that event will be incredibly consequential in the future. I'd just like to mention here how masterfully Brown builds up this conflict too. When you first read Red Rising and get to Julian's death, you know there are gonna be consequences since Cassius essentially becomes Darrow's best friend/brother. But what begins as a vengeful feud/blood feud eventually spirals into a full out war. This is done so gracefully that the reader barely even remembers why the two families are fighting in the first place. There's a lot of different reasons, but at the end of the day, what I'm saying is that Julian is the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Red Rising. His death is an excuse for conflict to begin and it's done so masterfully that you almost forget that. I want to point out that yes, I do understand that there were a lot of other factors to this civil war happening such as the Sovereign's preferential treatment of the Bellona, Darrow's decision to disobey Harmony's order, the tension that already existed between the two families etc. However, Darrow decided to challenge Cassius to a duel because he believed that once Augustus renounced him, the Bellona would surely kill him for killing Julian as a revenge plot. Furthermore, if Darrow hadn't challenged him, the Sovereign's plans to allow the Bellona to kill the Augustus' would have probably worked and then there would have been no civil war. Point is, as I said, that Julian, though not the only reason, is the immediate excuse/catalyst for civil war.

3) And now we get to the last (and in my opinion most important) point, but that's just cause I'm obsessed with character development. What does Julian's death mean for Cassius? Well, at the beginning, his grief manifests itself into hatred towards Darrow for being the tool that the Society used to essentially force natural selection. This, while being kind of an unreasonable belief, is understandable considering that in the first book, Cassius is only 17-18 and has lived a life full of entitlement and privilege that's been given to him by the Society. He's been brainwashed by his own Society. In the second book, Cassius loses everything. He loses, Mustang, his honour (when Darrow beats him in the duel) and his family or at least he loses them in any meaningful sense as a support structure. This loss comes mainly as a result of his blood feud with Darrow and the civil war between the Bellona and the Augustus', the catalyst of which was Julian's death. Cassius is probably the purest and best of the Bellona and definitely the most honourable, so in his mind those losses would have a sure connection to Julian's death. I would argue that watching his family and the Sovereign use his twin brother's death as an excuse to start a war with the Augustus' and Darrow would have most likely alienated him from his family, his Society and the Sovereign due to their unhonourable treatment of his death. And so that brings me to his development in the last book. This book needs to be put into the context of one line from the second. There's a part at the beginning of Golden Son when Sevro first reveals that he knows Darrow is a Red. Darrow asks him if he thinks the other Golds will accept him for who he is to which Sevro responds that some will and some won't. Specifically, he says that Roque won't accept him because he is too in love with the Golden race and the Society. Roque, Darrow and Cassius are the original three brothers in the first book. I think Roque and Cassius are the most similar in this case. They both had a thing with Quinn, they both grew up praised and loved in Society and at the very beginning, they were both in love with it, as Sevro says. So I think that the ultimate deciding factor in the divergence of their fates is that Cassius lost Julian and Roque didn't lose anyone in the same way. He lost Quinn, but he lost her in a war that Darrow started (or at least, he believed Darrow started it). However, over time while Roque continued to believe in Darrow's guilt and that it was his fault as a Red for rising above his station, Cassius realized that Darrow was an interchangeable figure. It wouldn't matter who it was that Julian ended up against, he would have died all the same, all for the sake of the Society's belief in natural selection. So this disillusionment with his Society through the loss he suffered as (what he believed to be) a direct result of Julian's death ultimately pushes him to choose Darrow over the Society and help him set his trap in the last act of the third book. He is probably the definitive character in the Rising since without his help, they wouldn't have been able to kill the Sovereign or anyone else in that goddamn room. I'd just like to take a moment to appreciate how effectively Brown works with time and age to create full and matured characters. At the end of the third book, Cassius feels like an entirely different person than at the beginning of the first book and that's some serious development. Furthermore, while Brown could've made Cassius turn out like Roque (as stated above) in the last book, Darrow thinks that Cassius is most similar to himself because of a rigid path that he was forced onto and the losses he suffered as a result. In terms of similarities between Darrow and Cassius, Darrow lost Eo to the Society which prompted him to become a part of the rebellion while Cassius lost Julian which set him on his course against Darrow. Both losses came as a result of the Society they live in.

Anyways, I want to wrap up this fucking essay by saying that I think I love Red Rising because if you actually analyse the plot structure (which is incredible) it reads like something that could actually happen. Like World War I, there's all these different tensions boiling from the very beginning and things that happen in the first book (i.e. Julian's death) end up being incredibly important to the whole novel. Wow okay I'm done I hope someone will read this lol.