#the breaking of prentice's mind wouldn't lead to THAT

[crymeariveronceagain]

Breaking Prentice led us to you--- and my dad always thought you were the key to everything. It's why he worked so hard to find you.

-- Alvar, from Exile, by Shannon Messenger. Page 367-68.

[bookwyrminspiration]

Alden’s character was like mainly a plot device I think. Which is the main reason he does so much questionable shit in the books lol.

Yeah, exactly!! Alden's purpose in the story was to find Sophie and to introduce her to the new world and what it was supposed to be like. He was an almost perfect example, the top of the top, able to show her the wonders of the Lost Cities and tell her about how different things are, how much nicer.

At the same time, he serves as an example of how everything he says isn't true because the top of the top is looking into illegal things, things that shouldn't exist in their world, etc.

(I'll put the rest under a cut to save space!)

Alden's not sending Fitz into the Forbidden Cities because he doesn't care about him, Fitz went to the Forbidden Cities because Shannon needed someone close to Sophie's age for her to latch on to and be guided by, and Fitz needed a reason to be there--boom, his dad was looking into it and involved him!! Alden's existence moves the plot forward and allows everything to actually take place.

Shannon needed Alden to exist so Fitz could find Sophie, so then the next question is why does Alden need/want to find Sophie? What's his stake in all of this? From there we get backstory about Prentice and the memory break, which further contributes to Sophie's story outside of Alden's existence.

He's also a great resource for her in the first few books while she's establishing herself in the world and figuring out her place. She goes to him with questions and concerns, and through that we learn about how things work (or how they don't). He gives her advice, serves as a father figure, looks into things for her, etc. He's her anchor for the beginning before she finds strength from other sources, and then he's mostly exhausted his purpose. I mean we really haven't seen him in a while. Yes, there's the whole situation with meddling in the love triangle I'll get to later, but aside from that? He's very much a background character now. He brought Sophie to the Lost Cities and introduced her to the world, and then his mind broke prompting Sophie to look into her power and into her past, and once she had those leads and solid footing she didn't need him anymore.

And because it's talked about so much I'm giving the advice to Keefe to leave Sophie alone it's own section. I think that it was entirely for drama. The love triangle has obsessed readers for so long and is one of the driving points of the series, especially for young sokeefe shippers. Creating a situation where sokeefe is being actively discouraged by the characters in the story and the "rival" ship is being encouraged gets a reaction, and it creates drama. So out of the people who could do that, Alden was the best option. Grady would discourage Keefe from getting with Sophie flat out, no sophitz mention, and Keefe doesn't have a history with him that can be employed. Sandor would discourage all people from dating Sophie, and Keefe has a history of joking around with Sandor and laughing off his threats, so it wouldn't land. Alden has a history of being like a father figure to Keefe, of caring about both Keefe and Fitz, and doesn't object to Sophie dating. He happened to be the best person to create the drama, but I think that's all it was. It was drama. It's not going to change the course of the ships in the story, just temporarily create a conflict to be dealt with that will have invested readers in agony and emotionally distraught.

There's nothing wrong with having characters that exist to make other things happen in the story, it instead creates this kind of situation looking at these characters where you have to evaluate whether the reason for this characters actions are because the author needed it to happen or because the character needed it to happen. And from there decide if you're going to base your understanding of this character off a need that wasn't their own or if it's something you can separate from them. Sometimes authors are pulled along by the characters, and something the characters are pulled along by the author. In Alden's case, he was useful for Shannon and while a lot of the things he did were questionable, I don't associate that as a desire of his but instead as a desire that was funneled through him, if that makes sense.

Alden makes things happen! He served a purpose and now he's done, but because of the importance he had in the beginning he does still exist in the story and pop up from time to time, just not nearly as often. Alden character vs Shannon's desire is so interesting to me so thank you for bringing it up!!