Literary Crushes

Today is St. Valentine's Day, a day to celebrate your love. Since I am currently gloriously single, I am not going to celebrate my love with a real person - rather, my love for a harem of three literary chaps.

I quite regularly develop crushes on literary characters - although a little odd, I sort of welcome these crushes since, to me, it shows the skill of a writer. If you invest so much in a character that you wish they were real - well, an author is doing a fine job!

1) Silk

Silk, or Prince Kheldar, is a Drasnian Prince - a cheat, a liar, a swindler, an acrobat, and a spy. He is deliciously sarcastic, self-deprecating and arrogant about his quite considerable abilities. He sees all life as a game and is a fervent bachelor until he meets his match in Velvet during the Mallorean series.

Silk is far from attractive - being slightly rat-faced, with a long nose that twitches when he starts to gamble. Everything I love about him is to do with that attitude.

Silk: So, which boat did you want to steal?
Garion: We're not stealing, we're borrowing.
Silk: Did you plan to bring it back when you're done with it?
Garion: No.
Silk: Then the proper word is steal.

[They pick a boat]

Belgarath: This is a really bad boat. If you were going to steal one, couldn't you have picked something a little nicer.
Silk: Told you.

2) Gabriel

Gabriel Wolfe is the dark anti-hero of L J Smith's best trilogy for YA - Dark Visions. He is handsome in an icy way, with chiaroscuro colouring, dark, dark hair and pale skin. His eyes are grey, coolly mocking. Gabriel is... just... I can't even say how much I adored this guy when I was fourteen years old. I must have wished one hundred times for him to walk from the pages of the book I held. I read particular quotes about him until I virtually knew them by heart. I'm almost embarrassed about the extent of my crush on this guy. And why? Because, over the course of three books, we're allowed in the see the very heart of Gabriel, and his fierce love for Kaitlyn.

It was only then that she realized, that she remembered, what the true danger in this was. Only then that she understood what Gabriel had meant by his warnings.

Because she could feel what he felt. And along with the gratitude, the sheer satisfaction and relief, were other emotions. Appreciation, joy, wonder, and - oh, dear God, love....

Gabriel loved her.

And this:

And it was good just to hold her and touch the softness of her skin. He wanted to hold her hard, not to hurt her but to keep her safe, to show her that he was strong enough to protect her. Her beauty was like fire and strange music, and he loved her.

3) Anomander Rake

This is a more recent crush, and hence hasn't hit as hard as the other two did (since I was in my teens then, and desperate to experience true love). I'm a little older, wiser and probably more cynical - and Anomander Rake fits the bill for this sort of crush.

Rake is a Tiste Andii, nearly seven feet tall, with ebony-black skin, silver hair, sharp features and eyes with epicanthal folds and vertically-slitted pupils whose iris' change colour depending on his mood. Rake can also change form to an enormous, silver-maned black dragon. Rake is also currently the wielder of Dragnipur, a silver-hilted bastard sword forged by the Elder God Draconus.

"There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for ever should we fail- should we fall- we will know that we have lived."
— Anomander Rake

All three of these guys share one characteristic - towering arrogance. I do like my guys to be bad boys with a sneer and a sarcastic comment (in literature, obviously!)

On this Valentine's Day, please share with me your literary crushes!