Random Thoughts on Throne of Glass

Lorcan's Backstory

Spoilers for pretty much every TOG book so yeah you have been warned

 Spoilers for Crescent City (A House of Earth and Blood and a House of Sky and Breath)

Alright I am seriously Elorcan obsessed so there will be a lot of Elorcan things on here, so I may as well start off with something in the series that killed me. 

"Because I'm trying to understand. How you could come to love a monster."                           

 "Why?" He pushed into her space. She didn't balk one step.

Indeed, her eyes were blazing as she hissed, "Because it will help me understand how I did the same."

Her voice snagged on the last words, and Lorcan stilled as they settled into them. He'd never ... he'd never had anyone who—

Now I will die. Lorcan -who was over five hundred years old, had served for and therefore loved Maeve for nearly five hundred years- had never had anyone who loved him. Not only that, when Elide told him that she had loved him, he wasn't able to understand it, not even being able to think the word 'love'. 

This is something that I think is seriously overlooked in the series, even by people who are Elorcan obsessed. I missed it the first few times I read Kingdom of Ash, sort of just thinking that I knew that already. And I did, but it never really sank in until I looked at that line for a few seconds and realized that he wasn't able to say the word love, either because he thought that Elide had been the first person to ever have loved him and that he had lost that love, or because love was always something he found so unrealistic that he had made sure that he would never think about and never torment himself over. In all likelihood, it was probably both. 

What really hurts me -and I can understand why Elide was as angry as she was- is that Elide, who is known for being one of the only people to read Lorcan's emotions, continued to make him feel worse. 

If the Throne of Glass world (including Elide and Lorcan because mortality which is a whole other issue) is brought into the Crescent City universe, then I need need need to learn about Lorcan's backstory. Rowan asked him about is in Queen of Shadows and he deflected the question easily, insulting Aelin, which he knew Rowan would not tolerate. While Elide's backstory was pure pain, growing up a bastard in a place where Demi-Fae were seen as a lesser race, and were often forced to have sex for money by the sounds of it in the Heir of Fire short story, was sure to leave some scars on Lorcan, and I have no doubt that he experienced purely awful things before Maeve found him. Though the fandom does make Lorcan seem like a stupid, tough brute most of the time, it is clear from the books that he is not and the whole 'summoning Maeve' thing was just because he wasn't sure how to react when Elide was in danger, which makes me believe that Maeve used whatever happened in his past to manipulate into serving and 'loving' her. 

I'd also love to know where the name 'Salvaterre' comes from. Was it his mother's name? His father's? If so did he know them (I kinda hope not because I love Lorcan too much to think that his parents didn't love him) and how? Was his father perhaps a semi-famous warrior who he heard rumors about (he mentioned something about his father being a prick in the beginning of Empire of Storms if I remember correctly) and built an opinion of him off of those? Was it a name given to all of Doranelle's bastard children?

I have seen very few fanfics and theories on what happened in Lorcan's past, my favorite fanfic being Eigengrau: Color Seen by the Eye in Perfect Darkness by D_Reagan_Fly on Archive of Our Own (AO3). I haven't read it in a while and I don't remember the plot that well, but I remember liking the bits of Lorcan's backstory that the fic contained. 

If you have any theories or have read any other fanfictions about Lorcan's backstory (or just Elorcan in general I'm addicted) then please leave a comment about them. 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15748152 (the link to Eigengrau: Color Seen by the Eye in Perfect Darkness) 

Art is not my own, and obviously neither is the fic so if either of them are yours then feel free to tell me to f*** off