#leo stormscourge

[katiifaye]

I can make history, one step at a time. ~Lee sur Pallor, Fireborne

[miradragoncat]

Lee Sur Pallor Song

!WARNING, SPOILERS FOR ALL OF THE AURELIAN CYCLE!

I just realized what song sums up Lee sur Pallor's character from The Aurelian Cycle by Rosaria Munda (It's my favorite book series, be sure to check it out when you can, it's amazing). I was just vibing to Bad Omens as I do, and when Never Know came on it clicked. I'm rereading the series now, so it makes sense why it would click now and not when I first heard the song. Every lyric in Never Know is perfect for him, and some are very good for Antigone sur Aela as well, but I'm going into Lee's character with this song.

The very first words are, "Show me you're better off without me" . With Lee's conflicting sides with his family in New Pythos and, in Flamefall, the Passi. So he has to leave Annie on her own, although he has in the past like in Albans when they fought, and in the future where he risked his life and ended Pallor's so that she could escape and win.

The second line in the first verse is "Choking on every word you said". The silence between him and Annie of knowing too much about the other and their past, and when they just talked at Annie's old house, where she was choking on her words as it played out. And how they fight a lot, and have to keep their distance and silence to stay focused on their goals. Every time one leaves the other right after they swore to do this together, the other is choking on that promise that has been broken.

The repeating phrase throughout the entire song, "we'll see", is the way nobody knows how things will play out. How conflicted Lee is throughout the books, with his aching for his family, having to just see what Julia is like before choosing his side. With the Passi, how the riots will play out and how him and Annie will do. How many chances he has to get back his old life, with Ixion sur Niter coming to reign and hunting down Annie. He didn't know how it would play out when he was locked in the Big House as it was burnt down. The plan nearly failed, with Pallor's life gone. And the court plan almost failed, with Ixion's gained knowledge of her distant summoning.

"Don't breathe another word about me, I'll leave and you can finally rest in peace, we'll see" is the next two lines in Never Know. I think of how he faked his death, how the world thought that the Revolution's Son had died at the hands of his cousin. Also how he has to let go of his family and past so many times over to finally leave them behind. In Albans, killing Julia, facing Ixion. So many times he abandoned his heritage and family, only for it to catch up with him eventually until there was no family at all.

The pre-chorus is hard for me to do one line at a time, so this is the entire thing, "When I go out into the world, I just don't like what I see, You could call it Paradise, But it looks just like Hell to me" Remember this is repeating and I won't be doing this like 2-3 times. I like how it plays to his need to change the world, through becoming a Guarding, joining the Passi, and helping Annie make a new Guardian and governing system. Others like the Golds and Atreus saw a paradise, while him and the lower classes and lower born guardians only saw hell. And they fixed it, so it became more of a Paradise, though a pure paradise for everyone involved is impossible to get.

The chorus is beautiful to me, and speaks to the very core of him. The first and third lines are, "Lying in between the memories choking me, and". These beautiful words line his character of having so many memories of his past, so many desires conflicting with each other. But he isn't his past, and the present and future won't allow him to ever be that again. These desires make him act compromised by speaking with Julia and pretending to agree with Ixion for so long after he took over for that bit.

The line after that and the last line of the chorus goes, "I don't know which way to go, but I'm okay to never know". This goes with his conflictedness again, he doesn't know whether to choose his nostalgia or the world where he can have Annie, and where the world will stop burning the innocent and the weak. For so long he doesn't know which way to go, and this song represents the middle of his character arch where he is changing sides and ideals so much, breaking Annie over and over to save them both.

The second verse starts with, "Speaking in languages we can't read, No need for you to spell it out for me, for me". |t essentially means that he knows exactly the situation of the world, and doesn't need it spelled out for him to understand, even though it can't be spelled out. He knows the class Irons are starving and the Golds are having parties and feasts, he has lived both of those lives. He knows the class Irons are burning in the flamefalls, he sees it on Cor's face and the ashes of so many people. He knows he has to pick a side, because he can't have his old life and his new one. He can't have his family and Annie.

The third and fourth lines' lyrics are, "Swallowed up and I spit you out, Like a drug that just wouldn't stay down, stay down". This line to me speaks of how many times he had to abandon or hurt Annie and how she felt, like he was spitting her back out. Also how even with his desires, he betrays his family and chooses the side that tried to kill him more than once.

The chorus is all that's left of the song after this, so that's all of my analysis of Never Know by Bad Omens as a Lee sur Pallor theme song. If you haven't yet, you should check out the song and the band, along with the book series. I love all three of them so much, and I'm glad I could make this connection. I know it's a giant word vomit above, but I enjoy writing and I hope you can understand my connection to Lee and Never Know. Have a wonderful day, and know that you are loved and valid!

[aurelianmusings]

(Spoilers from Furysong below)

I was rereading Power's speech yesterday and I have sooo many thoughts about healing and being oneself and how important role models are for that, so I thought I'd share some of the ones about our three tragic dragonborn figures:

For most of the series, Lee struggles to reconcile the trauma of his family’s death with the acceptance of the regime that caused it. He has to hide his identity and grief, because in the new Callipolis that’s tantamount to approving of the old regime. Atreus shows this in Fireborne: he tries to kill him because he can’t see the loyal Firstrider and the dragonborn’s son in the same person; as soon as he finds out that Lee is Leo, the latter cancels the former. Lee sur Pallor is Leo Stormscourge is the Revolution’s Son, yet society only sees him as three separate figures. Even when the Passi leverage his legacy for their own propaganda they do so as if Leo Stormscourge were a closed chapter of his life. Only Annie understands how his identities intersect, because she knows him so well. She was able to recognize that the wrongness that had been done to her family didn’t justify the wrongness that had been done to his, long before he allowed himself to (thinking of that scene in Fireborne during Atreus’ lesson when Annie argues against Palace Day and Lee excuses it). She lets him talk about his family, sees the boy who shared his food in the man who argues for rations to be fairly distributed, and even gives him his father’s knife.

Sty is the Lee of the new generation: same origin story but with a slight deviation that’s enough to change everything. While Lee only had Atreus as a role model, Sty will grow up with two: Griff, quite literally Sty’s Atreus, who rebelled in the name of a better future and caused the death of his family, except Griff was able to see beyond what Sty was to who he was and spared him, and later became family (to contrast with the scene in Flamefall where Lee ironically calls Atreus a father figure, when he was anything but); and Delo, a dragonborn who rejected the imperatives of blood to follow his heart, proving that birth doesn’t determine who we are.

Which is significant because Delo himself struggled with the lack of that kind of example in his life, and his arc culminates once he finds it. At the beginning of Furysong, he is still contending with his family’s worldview: when he drops Griff he talks about “the wrong type of courage”, when he’s moved by his pain he’s “crying for the wrong reasons”, when the Norcians treat him badly, despite recognizing his role in their oppression, he “might have thought to regret” saving their children from the fire. What pushes him to switch sides once and for all is witnessing Power’s loyalty to Annie. Another dragonborn, a relative even, who’s not ashamed to act against his lineage or to declare his love for a peasant, and in front of Ixion of all people, something Delo never had the courage to do.

It’s the kind of solidarity of thought that Delo had been needing all of his life, that had to come from another dragonborn to truly matter, that Lee also craved from Atreus and never got and would have made all the difference if he had. But Sty will have it from the start. He won’t have to reject his past or repress his trauma to be accepted into the new world. I imagine him as becoming a well-adjusted version of Lee, someone who embraces his roots even while helping Norcia heal from the damages caused by his family.

[sofi182]

okay. for the last couple of years i’ve been obsessed with the aurelian cycle books. And the last book is coming out soon so i can’t stop thinking about it and i’m just sad because the fandom is barely there. I need good fanfics urgently and more more fanarts. GAHDJWHD. i’m desperate. help

Could fans of the Aurelian Cycle come out and tell me they exist and suffer as i do? Just react to the post and you’ll make me happy and if you want to chat about it, go ahead. I’m all about hearing people rant or simply be excited about it.

[dazzledbybooks]

Seraphina meets Red Rising in a debut young adult fantasy that's full of rivalry, romance... and dragons. Annie and Lee were just children when a brutal revolution changed their world, giving everyone—even the lowborn—a chance to test into the governing class of dragonriders. Now they are both rising stars in the new regime, despite backgrounds that couldn’t be more different. Annie’s lowborn family was executed by dragonfire, while Lee’s aristocratic family was murdered by revolutionaries. Growing up in the same orphanage forged their friendship, and seven years of training have made them rivals for the top position in the dragonriding fleet. But everything changes when survivors from the old regime surface, bent on reclaiming the city. With war on the horizon and his relationship with Annie changing fast, Lee must choose to kill the only family he has left or to betray everything he’s come to believe in. And Annie must decide whether to protect the boy she loves . . . or step up to be the champion her city needs. From debut author Rosaria Munda comes a gripping adventure that calls into question which matters most: the family you were born into, or the one you’ve chosen. Fireborne (The Aurelian Cycle #1) by Rosaria Munda Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers Release Date: October 15th 2019 Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Dragons Links: Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36578543-fireborne Amazon: https://amzn.to/30u8Vxd B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fireborne-rosaria-munda/1130335149 iTunes: https://books.apple.com/us/book/id1450108384 Bookdepository: https://www.bookdepository.com/Fireborne-Rosaria-Munda/9781984816511?ref=grid-view&qid=1562938950225&sr=1-1 Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/hk/en/ebook/fireborne Google Books: https://books.google.fr/books/about/Fireborne.html?id=J2A_vwEACAAJ&redir_esc=y Favorite Quotes: "And as with gods the world quaked, to see them fireborne." "He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her forward, past all the great, beautiful stormscourges that he'd always dreamed of flying. Barley looking at them, because all he could focus on was the feeling of the girl's shoulders shaking as he led her on." "The words are choking out of me; the world around me blurs." Excerpt: Prologue Later, he would be known as the First Protector, and under his vision the city would transform. Serfs would be freed, schools would be built, and dragons would, for the first time, be ridden by commoners. Before that, he was the leader of the bloodiest revolution his people had ever seen. He never doubted that he would create a just city. Nor did he doubt that the families of the old regime deserved to die. But he did, sometimes, regret the way it happened, the day the palace was finally overrun. He remembered in particular one of the ruling families, their tormentors still at work when he found them. The dragonlord had been kept alive, to watch; his youngest son was the only child left. A boy of about seven or eight, his expression blank beneath a mask of blood. The remains of their family lay around them. “Stop this foolishness at once,” the First Protector said, when he and his guard found them. The revolutionaries let go of the boy, whom they had been hurting, and began to protest: This man is Leon Stormscourge, don’t you know what he’s done—but they fell silent when the dragonlord spoke from his knees on the bloodstained carpet. “My son,” he said, in the language he and the First Protector shared. “Please, Atreus.” The First Protector took a half glance at the child. He said, “Leo will be looked after.” He gave one of his guard a murmured order. The soldier started, hesitated, and then lifted the dragonlord’s son in his arms. When the boy had been carried, limp and silent, from the room, the leader of the Revolution knelt before the dragonlord. “Those—animals—” the dragonlord rasped. The First Protector did not disagree. Instead, he put a hand to the knife on his belt. When he met the dragonlord’s gaze, it was in an unspoken question. The dragonlord closed his eyes and nodded. Then, to the First Protector’s surprise, he spoke. “Your vision,” he said. “Do you think it will ever be worth this, Atreus?” The First Protector drew his knife. “Yes,” he said. The dragonlord’s question returned to him often in the years that followed. Even as many of the other details of the Revolution began to fade from his memory, he remembered Leon Stormscourge. Leon’s son, on the other hand, was a detail he forgot.   Chapter 1 Messages from the Ministry Nine Years Later Lee Morning is our favorite time to fly. Today, even with the tournament looming and the empty arena below us a reminder that soon we’ll be watched, for the first time, by thousands, it’s still possible to savor the city sprawled beneath a dragon’s wings. When we pull tight on a turn, I glimpse one of Pallor’s black eyes, depthless, turned on me. The line between us, of shared emotions and thoughts that are usually latent in the saddle, goes taut. Yes. Today it begins. Today we’ll rise. But in order to do that, I’ll need a clear head. I gently extricate myself from Pallor’s simmering anticipation and refocus on the arena. Two other dragonriders fly with us, each riding one of the other two breeds: Crissa and her skyfish are in the air above us, while Cor and his stormscourge glide below, bellowing ash over the arena stands. We’re on our last rehearsal, this time with just the squadron leaders. I lift my voice over the wind. “You’re taking her too low, Cor.” Cor grunts, frustrated, and urges his stormscourge higher. We’ve been over the choreography of the tournament’s opening ceremony over and over with ministry officials, and every time the question of how to demonstrate stormscourge might becomes tricky. Before the Revolution, the dragon breed of Stormscourge House—of my family—were known for terrorizing the countryside; but in even older days, they were our island’s greatest defense against aerial invasion. “They told us to fire low,” says Cor. “Not that low. It’s risky for the audience.” Our dragons are still immature, barely horse-size, and can’t yet breathe fire. But the smoke they produce can still burn. Crissa and her skyfish, long, slender, and pale enough blue to blend with the morning sky, circle above us. “You want to impress the people,” she calls down to Cor. “Not roast them.” Cor waves a hand. “All right, all right . . .” Our fleet is still in training, dragons and riders both. Known now as Guardians, the new regime’s dragonriders are lowborn, commoners, even former serfs. No longer the sons of dragonlords. Except for me, though I’m the only one who knows that. Because in the wake of the Revolution, to be dragonborn is to be wanted for dead. I was born Leo but, since the orphanage, I’ve been Lee. Not even the First Protector, who saved my life and then welcomed me, without recognition, into his Guardian program two years after that, knows the truth. That a Stormscourge tested into the meritocratic dragonriding program designed to replace everything his family stood for. Even though I know I’m lucky to be here—lucky to be alive, lucky to have escaped the orphanage—memories of the old life have a way of intruding and twisting. Especially today, as Pallor and I circle above the Palace arena, open to the public for the first time since the Revolution. The old regime had tournaments here, too, that I watched my father compete in. Dreaming of the day it would be my turn. I lean forward and rest a gloved hand on Pallor’s silver-scaled neck as his wings, translucent in the morning light, tighten in a dive. Pallor is an aurelian, a breed known for being small, maneuverable, careful, and the aurelian formation for today’s ceremony is the only one complex enough to require coleaders. I can rehearse alone but, really, to do the thing properly, I need— Annie. There she is. Another aurelian, this one amber-toned, has emerged from the cave mouth at the base of the arena, and on her back rides my sparring partner, Annie. She and I have trained together for as long as we’ve been in the Guardian program, and we’ve known each other since the orphanage before that. It’s a past life’s worth of memories that we’re both pretty good at not talking about. “Annie!” Crissa calls with a cheerful wave. “There you are.” “Lee’s been flying like an idiot out here without you,” Cor says. Pallor and I fire ash downward. Cor dodges the stream with a bark of laughter. Annie’s lips curve at Cor’s remark, but instead of answering, she rolls seamlessly into formation opposite me, her dragon, Aela, mirroring Pallor’s movements. Her red-brown braid hangs low on her back, her freckled face is set in its concentration. I’ve thought of Annie as beautiful—strikingly beautiful—for almost as long as I can remember, but I’ve never told her. “Play it from the top?” I suggest. There are calls of assent from the other three. We right ourselves only when the bell rings the hour. The arena below, the Palace to one side and the pillar supporting Pytho’s Keep on the other, the jagged rooftops, the plains stretching out to the sea—for a moment I feel a protectiveness, almost a possessiveness, of the city and island spread below. The vows that we took when we became Guardians echo in my mind: All that I am, henceforth, belongs to Callipolis. By the wings of my dragon I will keep her . . . Today, eight of the thirty-two Guardians will compete in the quarterfinal tournament for Firstrider, commander of the aerial fleet. I’m one of those eight, along with Annie, Cor, and Crissa. Qualifying rounds have been going on among the dragonriders for weeks. It will be the first time since the Revolution that Callipolis names a Firstrider, one of the only titles it’s kept from the old regime. The dragons of the revolutionary fleet are finally old enough, and their riders well-enough trained, to vie for a position that’s been vacant since the Revolution. For the other Guardians, the Firstrider Tournaments are a chance to prove themselves; for me, it will be that and something more. Because Firstrider is a title I’ve wanted since before the Revolution. It would be all the recognition, power, and respect that my family lost over the course of a single bloody month when I was eight years old, regained. Excerpted from Fireborne by Rosaria Munda. Copyright © 2019 by Rosaria Munda. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Direct link to the excerpt: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/586257/fireborne-by-rosaria-munda/ Review: Fireborne by Rosaria Munda is a fantastic read. It hooks the reader right away. This book is about two young people from different backgrounds. Both of them having lost their families, they met each other at an orphanage and became fast friends. Lee and Annie are dragon riders in training. After seven years of training, they are finally competing to be the FirstRider. The firstrider is a very important position in the dragon army.  I thought this book was such a great story. I loved getting to know the characters. It was hopeful and dark. I loved all the dragons and politics. I really liked how the story focused on what it costs to be the leaders and the responsibility it takes. Fireborne definitely takes you on the ride of your life. I can't wait to read more about these great characters. I absolutely love them and I am so anxious for more. About the Author: Rosaria grew up in rural North Carolina, where she climbed trees, read Harry Potter fanfiction, and taught herself Latin. She studied political theory at Princeton and lives in Chicago with her husband and cat. For book recs and updates, follow her on instagram: @rosariamunda Links: Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17320159.Rosaria_Munda Website: http://rosariamunda.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosariamunda Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rosariamunda/?hl=en Giveaway: Prize: Win (1) of (2) copies of Fireborne (The Aurelian Cycle #1) by Rosaria Munda (US/CAN Only) Starts: 9th October 2019 Ends: 9th October 2019 a Rafflecopter giveaway Tour Schedule: October 9th The Unofficial Addiction Book Fan Club - Welcome Post October 10th L.M. 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