Knights and Princes, a Kylo Ren character meta
So I want to take a second to talk about how Kylo Ren is both the culmination and subversion of two of my all time favorite character types: the knight in shining armor and the prince.
You have the fairy tale prince who comes from a place on high, who is bestowed with wealth and good will who seeks to destroy the monsters in order to rescue the princess and become King. Pretty straightforward, usually a pretty boy with mild to none character except that he Loves Well and is Good. Honestly you just have to look at Disney’s prince lineup to know what this character archetype look like. Not a whole lot of variation.
And then you have the knight. The man burdened with purpose and creed who is set out to achieve a goal. He is loyal to a fault and few, if any, things can sway him from his goal. He is strong and trustworthy, the image of knights of old, who do nothing but good deeds because they are good men and who want to spread good. They rescue maidens and slay dragons because that is what they do. They are the Lancelots and Obi-Wans of the world, who stand as the vanguard against evil.
Obviously Kylo is not the Good portrayal of either of these and I think that’s what makes him so fascinating. He is the son of Princess Leia, the heir to the throne of Alderaan who grew up in a time of political upheaval where his mother was a galactic head of state. He is the son of war heroes in a time when heroes were needed. Not to mention that from a Force perspective, he was the heir to a legacy as great and mighty and bloody as the stars in the sky.
But he grew up in that world. He grew up learning to be a prince – maybe (obviously) not a good prince – but there is no way that he would have been able to escape it. He grew up knowing he was different, a scion of a new time, and yet he was powerless to do anything about it. He didn’t want to be the fairy tale that his world wanted to make him into. He saw darkness in places where there shouldn’t be and was unable to deny that part of himself.
And so he didn’t. He could have grown into a Jedi Knight, a new version of the guardians of peace, but again, he looked at that legacy and chose a different path. Chose might be a weak word here, rather, he carved himself a new path against the wishes of others. He saw his role as a prince and knight and took them and corrupted them and made them into his own mantle, one that he could be proud of.
But it in the eyes of the First Order, he succeeded. (And i’m not even bringing in his costume design here: how in TFA he looks like a Knights Templar with the robes and broadsword cross guard, and how in TLJ it looks like the tunic of a stately prince) He is the shining son who leads his people into battle and cannot fail, the midnight star who leads the charge forward. Kylo does not watch from the sidelines; he fights on the ground with his men, rallying them to his cause. He is the perfect example of a Knight from their perspective: you couldn’t ask for a better exemplar of a man so lost in his search for belonging that he gave himself for his creed.
But then you factor in Rey.
And I only bring her in because a prince does not have his own story without a princess to chase or a knight who has a girl he must seek. And while Rey isn’t a princess per say, in the way these two have interacted with each other so far, she is a princess (a person of value and desire and strength) in Kylo Ren’s eye.
But Kylo is not simply a beast who needs to be redeemed before he can take up his mantle as prince. He IS a prince, who walks a different line, and yet he still is not immune to the calls of a girl he doesn’t understand. He is not just a knight who has realized his creed is a lie and who now must walk the long journey home alone; no he was the Knight who knows his creed is a lie, but who burned his home so he has no choice left but to follow it. But then he meets the girl who sees him without his mask and who stands at his equal – a girl who makes him kneel as she disarms him with a snarl.
Kylo Ren is the corrupted prince and the fallen knight, the son cast from his family for transgressions he believes are unforgivable. He is the fallen son of Alderaan and the Jedi Knight who ruined it all in a perfect mirror of the grandfather he so adores. He is the combination of both: at once the perfect prince and the sundered child; the holy knight and the broken relic. He has denied so much of who he is and now, less than a few days until the Last Jedi, we can hope he can find the balance between them.
