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Tuesday, October 27

Lysander au Lune Character Guide

Finish Golden Son and choose it above to read this guide. Later-book sections remain hidden until you select those books.

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Character guide · first on-page appearance: Golden Son

Who is Lysander au Lune?

Lysander au Lune is Octavia’s grandson. He grows up at the Sovereign’s court, protected by his grandmother and Aja. When he meets Darrow in Golden Son, he admires him while still accepting the Society’s Color hierarchy.

His father was Lorn au Arcos’s last surviving son. Lysander grows up between the influence of that family and Octavia’s plans for the Lune dynasty.

Current status

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Appearance and personality

The young Lysander is observant and accustomed to ceremony, argument and controlled behavior. He intervenes when Darrow clashes with the Sovereign’s Stained and understands that moral confidence does not place a visitor beyond Octavia’s authority. His education makes him unusually composed, without making him indifferent: he is distressed when Aja attacks Quinn while he is being held as a hostage.

Lysander learns to judge people inside a court that treats Gold rule as natural. He can admire someone’s kindness without questioning the power that lets that same person hurt others.[1]

At twenty, Lysander has lived with Cassius for ten years. He has an unusually precise memory, making his inability to remember his mother’s face especially troubling. He wants to act honorably, but often values Gold lives above those of other Colors.[2]

The Mercury campaign leaves Lysander badly burned, feverish and exhausted. The Mind’s Eye helps him endure some of it, but cannot heal his injuries. He earns a Peerless scar and a military reputation while discovering how much he still depends on more powerful Golds.[3]

Atlas’s men remove Lysander’s burn scar but leave his Peerless scar. Lysander uses medals, rewards and carefully staged rescues to build support. His public promises of a better Society increasingly hide bargains and crimes he does not want his followers to see.[4]

Attributes and abilities

As a child, Lysander’s strengths are his education, memory and familiarity with court politics. He understands who holds power in a room. When the Howlers take him hostage, his family connections are what make him valuable.

Growing up under Octavia and Aja’s protection keeps him far from the people who suffer under their rule.[5]

Lysander can spot when a maneuver will not work, stopping an attempt to copy Darrow’s boarding attack under different conditions. He also uses his intelligence to conceal information about Seraphina from Cassius after deciding she deserves special protection.[6]

Octavia teaches Lysander the Mind’s Eye, a discipline for controlling attention, memory and his response to pain. When Ajax’s assassins attack, he uses a flash to blind them and fights by remembering their positions. He survives, but is still injured.

The Mind’s Eye cannot protect him from every threat. A time-distorting drug overwhelms his control during interrogation. He also avoids fully entering the state in the cavalry battle because he needs to follow the whole battlefield. He wounds Darrow through riding skill and a concealed thrown razor.[7]

Lysander persuades people by offering what they want, whether that is reform, revenge, safety or profit. His success in combat still depends on his equipment and allies. Rhone nearly kills him with specialized ammunition, acid and hidden blades. Lysander survives the close fight badly wounded and missing fingertips.[8]

History

Book 2

Golden Son

Lysander meets Darrow in Octavia’s private rooms and helps interrupt an immediate confrontation with the Stained. He occupies a protected place beside the Sovereign and Aja, while other members of his family worry about the values that environment is teaching him.

During the attack on the Augustus household, the Howlers seize him as leverage. Darrow performs a threat he privately refuses to carry out. Lysander pleads with Aja before she strikes Quinn, exposing the limits of his ability to moderate the violence around him. Tactus later takes him from the escaping shuttle, ending Darrow’s immediate control of the hostage.[1]

Book 3

Morning Star

Lysander is present when Octavia’s bunker becomes the site of the final confrontation. He attends his dying grandmother and remains under Aja’s protection until she is overwhelmed.

When Adrius’s bombs threaten Luna, Lysander suggests reaching the Ash Lord, his godfather. He gives Mustang the Dawn Scepter and recognizes her as Sovereign, helping create an opening for the divided fleet to act. Afterward, Cassius takes him away rather than let his ancestry determine his fate. Darrow hopes the child can grow into someone different from the ruler who raised him.[9]

Book 4

Iron Gold

Life aboard the Archimedes gives Lysander an education and years of rescue work with Cassius. He still admires Gold’s past and resents Octavia’s death. During one rescue, he goes after a missing Gold instead of following Cassius’s plan to evacuate lowColor survivors. The woman is Seraphina, and rescuing her draws them into Rim politics.

Lysander travels under the name Castor while Cassius conceals his own identity. When the Raa expose Cassius and force him through successive duels, Lysander reveals that he is the surviving Lune heir to prevent the immediate killing. He then accepts the report that Cassius died of blood loss, although he is not permitted to see a body.

After Romulus’s death, Lysander decides Gold needs someone to unite it. Dido is preparing for another war, and he chooses to become involved rather than return to the life Cassius wanted for him.[10]

Book 5

Dark Age

Lysander joins the Society’s campaign on Mercury, initially insisting he does not want to rule. He volunteers for the Iron Rain to earn a scar and the standing he believes he needs to reform Gold. Seraphina is killed beside him, bringing home the violence of the war he has joined.

After destroying a Storm God, he is abandoned by Ajax’s refusal to send another extraction and badly burned when Darrow overwhelms his force. He survives the desert, defeats assassins using the Mind’s Eye and eventually falls into Gorgon captivity. Atlas recognizes him and turns his access to Alexandar into an infiltration plan.

Disguised as Cato au Vitruvius, Lysander enters Heliopolis with the rescued prisoners. He manipulates Glirastes through a false account tailored to the Maker’s fears and helps prepare an uprising. When Darrow identifies him, Lysander injures Rhonna and shoots Alexandar rather than accept a duel. Glirastes’s EMP and the loyalist revolt collapse the defenders’ position.

Lysander leads the cavalry attack, wounds Darrow through the lung with a concealed thrown razor and gains possession of the broken slingBlade’s hilt. He recognizes Cassius alive during the rescue of Darrow’s command, but conceals that fact from Atalantia.

Victory does not free him from the Society’s power struggles. He offers marriage to Atalantia to survive her threat, learns from Kalindora that Octavia ordered his parents’ deaths and erased his memories, and finally makes an alliance with Apollonius.[11]

Book 6

Light Bringer

Lysander rebuilds his military position through Lightbringer and covert arrangements with Apollonius. Atalantia still controls his circumstances: Glirastes’s captivity forces him into a public confession and obedience. The assault on Phobos gives him a major victory, and his negotiations with Virginia preserve Republican lives while transferring valuable docks and defenses into his coalition’s hands.

He travels to the Rim after Fá’s attacks, hoping for a reciprocal alliance with Diomedes. Atlas’s infiltration destroys that opening. Lysander saves Diomedes through an escape pod but is captured himself, discovers Rhone’s allegiance to Atlas and learns that the apparent enemy invasion is part of a manufactured liberation scheme.

Lysander follows Atlas’s plan and wins the Moon Lords’ gratitude through a staged liberation. Diomedes later arranges a meeting with Darrow and offers another path. Lysander refuses to give up his claim to rule or his belief that Gold must remain in charge.

Cassius reaches him and helps remove Atlas. Lysander kills Rhone in close combat and shoots Atlas after Cassius wins the duel. He then chooses to keep Eidmi, a weapon capable of targeting entire Colors. Cassius refuses to leave it with him, and Lysander kills the man who raised him.

Lysander destroys evidence, blames Rim assassins and displays Cassius’s body. When the Moon Lords refuse to hand over Darrow, he attacks the Garter, stealing growers and genetic material while destroying the Rim’s food supply. At the end of the book, he has fourteen Color-marked cubes of Eidmi and is considering which Color to target first. He has not yet used it.[12]

Relationships

Octavia au Lune

Octavia raises and protects Lysander while preparing him for power. Her beliefs about Gold rule become part of how he understands the world.[13]

Kalindora tells Lysander that Octavia ordered his parents killed and had his memories erased. He learns that the grandmother who trained and protected him also took his parents from him.[14]

Cassius au Bellona

Cassius takes Lysander in after Octavia’s fall. He hopes to give him a childhood outside the court and the expectations attached to his name.[15]

They care for each other, but increasingly disagree about Gold rule. Cassius wants to help people without governing them. Lysander believes the right Gold ruler could restore order.[16]

Cassius apologizes for his failures as a guardian and helps Lysander escape Atlas’s control. Lysander then refuses to destroy Eidmi. He kills Cassius rather than surrender the weapon and his plans to become Sovereign.[17]

Diomedes au Raa

Lysander admires Diomedes’s discipline and his willingness to oppose cruelty among his own people. He sees him as an example of the kind of Gold he wants to restore to power.[18]

After Lysander saves him, Diomedes trusts him enough to propose an alliance with Darrow. Lysander rejects it and attacks the Rim’s food supply instead.[19]

Darrow

As a child, Lysander admires Darrow while fearing what he might do to Octavia. The Howlers use him as a hostage, although Darrow privately refuses to kill him.[20]

On Mercury, Lysander blames Darrow for the devastation he sees. He infiltrates Heliopolis and works with Glirastes to bring down the city’s defenses, then wounds Darrow during the retreat.[21]

At their meeting in the shrine, Darrow will not accept a peace that preserves slavery and makes Lysander Sovereign. Lysander will not give up the power he has gained.[22]

References

  1. Golden Son, chapters 14–19, 26–28. ↩1 ↩2
  2. Iron Gold, chapters 8–15, 55. ↩
  3. Dark Age, chapters 16, 34–43, 89–92. ↩
  4. Light Bringer, chapters 10, 15, 33, 64, 79–88. ↩
  5. Golden Son, chapters 14–19. ↩
  6. Iron Gold, chapters 8–15. ↩
  7. Dark Age, chapters 34, 38–43, 59, 82–87. ↩
  8. Light Bringer, chapters 32–33, 64, 79–84. ↩
  9. Morning Star, chapters 60–65. ↩
  10. Iron Gold, chapters 8–15, 22–26, 37–41, 48, 55–56, 62. ↩
  11. Dark Age, chapters 2–16, 34–43, 59–64, 78–92. ↩
  12. Light Bringer, chapters 7–15, 32–36, 43–50, 64, 79–88. ↩
  13. Golden Son, chapters 14–15. ↩
  14. Dark Age, chapters 34, 90. ↩
  15. Morning Star, chapters 65. ↩
  16. Iron Gold, chapters 8–15, 37–41, 48. ↩
  17. Light Bringer, chapters 83–84. ↩
  18. Iron Gold, chapters 19–20, 22–26. ↩
  19. Light Bringer, chapters 43–45, 81–88. ↩
  20. Golden Son, chapters 14, 18–19. ↩
  21. Dark Age, chapters 14–16, 59–64, 78–89. ↩
  22. Light Bringer, chapters 82–88. ↩