A review by tragedies
Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Captive Prince was recommended to me many years ago by an internet friend. At that time, it was still an ongoing series. I don't know what possessed me to start reading it the night before my exams, but I did. I ended up finishing both books in two days and spent the next weeks reading them all over again, making Damen & Laurent playlists on 8tracks (Spotify wasn’t a thing yet lol), and scouring Tumblr for theories on the upcoming finale. Since then, I've reread the series dozens of times, though never with a physical copy. This is my first time doing just that, and it’s the most surreal experience.

“...To have lost so much and gained so much, all in the space of a moment.”
“That is the fate of all princes destined for a throne,” said Laurent.

With the Akielon king dead and the throne usurped by his half-brother, Damen finds himself captured, enslaved, and shipped off to Vere, an enemy nation. He may be a formidable warrior, but none of his past battles could have prepared him for the Veretian court, brimming with decadence, depravities, and deadly political machinations. Stripped of his crown and identity, he is gifted as a pleasure slave to the beautiful yet cunning Prince Laurent, heir to the throne of Vere. Damen immediately dislikes him, judging him to be a spoiled, arrogant royal who shirks from his duties and delights in the suffering of others. Laurent’s icy persona and unyielding cruelty does nothing to dispel this notion, affirming the worst of Damen’s prejudice against Veretians. Powerless at the hands of this new master and a foreign court, all Damen can do is obey. Or, at least, he tries to.

Though the first book mostly serves as a set up for the rest of the trilogy, what makes it so addictive is Pacat’s clever writing. Every word is deliberate, a force of its own meant to add nuance and create depth yet at the same time elude readers until the story unravels on its own. Unremarkable at first glance, these details hidden in plain sight pack quite a punch in due time, making the later arcs more powerful and emotional. I know the Captive Prince trilogy like the back of my hand, but I swear, every time I reread the books, I find myself utterly gobsmacked by the little details that somehow escaped my notice. It makes me appreciate the story and the characters even more than I already did.

“And what did it mean, to be a prince, if he did not strive to protect those weaker than himself?”

And do not even get me started on the characters. I love how flawed they are and how the book unapologetically explores these flaws. I love Damen, but what I love even more is how his greatest strengths are also his weaknesses. He is so sure of his convictions, that when he is confronted by something that disproves them, he answers with an almost bull-headed defiance that at times blinds him from seeing the truth. He was “born to rule” as Jokaste said, a crown prince who had the natural air of a king, the endless adoration of his countrymen, a household of servants and slaves at his beck and call, and a father who taught him to bow to no one, even enemy princes. He was privileged and entitled, and now that he’s put in a position where he isn’t, he realizes he knows very little of the world beyond his status and culture. We witness these harsh realities alongside Damen, watch as he weighs in what he knew before as heir and what he was experiencing now as a slave. We feel our perspectives shift just as he does when a newfound realization dawns on him — he was not the only captive prince ensnared in this intricate web of politics and power.

If I love Damen, I love Laurent even more. He is definitely one of my all-time favorite fictional characters. At this point in the trilogy, we’ve yet to uncover the other layers of his character. Damen first described the enemy prince as a nest of scorpions, and to some extent it’s true. He’s cold, cunning, and cruel. Many of the things he did in the book were horrible and by no means inexcusable. However, in a culture whose language is deception, in a court that glorifies cruelty and makes a spectacle out of it, it’s no wonder why Laurent acts the way he does. That doesn’t mean that this is all there is to him though. Laurent is more than just a nest of scorpions, and Damen himself will be a witness to that.

“I can't protect you as I am now, Laurent had said. Damen hadn't thought about what protection might entail, but he never would have imagined that Laurent would step into the ring on his behalf. And stay in it.”

There’s no romance yet in the first book. Personally, I like it because Pacat really takes the time to flesh out the “enemies-to-lovers” trope, which I'm a huge fan of. I’ve read tons of books with this dynamic, but I find that they all too easily overlook the "enemies" part. Captive Prince embraces it, revels in the slowburn to portray the complex yet surprisingly natural chemistry between Damen and Laurent. There's more of it in the next book, but there are flickers of it here in the first — small moments that I appreciate more now, knowing full well the weight they hold in light of the entire trilogy.

Honestly, this is my least favorite in the series but only because it pales in comparison to the next books. However, for what it is, it's clever and well-written, a masterful exploration of character, deception, and what it means to be shackled by people and prejudice. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings