The Art of the Valdt 2

Lyrica

I pride myself in my well developed villains. It seems that no matter who is reading my stories, they feel strongly about my villains. In the beginning when I was in my room telling myself stories using my littlest pet shops as the characters and a little purple dragon that could flap his wings as the hero, my villains were just psychos who wanted to enslave the peaceful village of petropolis.

As I have written more stories, my view of my villains has changed. And my villains have changed along with my views. I grew up with the mentality that you should only like the good guys in a story and that villains are totally not okay to like or even relate to. Thankfully the parental brainwashing has worn off, and I find myself writing villains I can relate to, villains who I really understand.

Lyrica started as an embodiment of my hatred towards everyone who put me down, but as I developed the character I realized that I understood her. When she was younger, when she had first met Leif, long before Leif was Empress, Lyrica was jealous. She saw in Leif the goodness that was just under the surface in her own heart that she wasn't allowed to show to the world. She saw the friends who always had Leif's back, the family who held her close. And instead of befriending Leif, she decided to crush her.

In crushing the goodness in Leif, it was a psychological statement of throwing her own goodness aside. Lyrica couldn't show others that she was good, because the very force that killed her parents and took her under its wing wouldn't allow Lyrica to be good. Lyrica had to prove to the Red Shadow and the voice inside her head that she wouldn't let Leif get in her way. And she did everything she could to destroy Leif because she wasn't allowed to show who she really was while Leif's inner light shone throughout the Valdt.

Lyrica killed the previous Empress and a human child whom Leif held dear in an attempt to kill Leif. But Leif escaped, having to disappear and fake that she did die in Lyrica's attempt to protect the others she loved. And when she finally came out of hiding after becoming Empress, Lyrica was furious and she set another plan into motion.

Before my two main novels took place, Lyrica had become a dracolitch, selling her own soul for immortality. In essence she was slain and reborn as a corpse of her true self.

Lyrica trapped the Empress in our world, stole her heart stone which is essentially the vessel that holds a dragons soul so that she would loose her memories of who she was, and she gathered an army to take over the palace. (Read my book Lily of the Shadows)

In the sequel to Lily of the Shadows, Lyrica goes into a sort of crisis where she realizes that what she thought she wanted and what she really wanted were two very different things. (Read my book Alike a Novel from the Valdt)

And now, here is the drawing in its original form and with filters of Lyrica in her current state, regretting the past and knowing the future is hopeless.

She would die, except she can't, and she has become a mere corpse of her former glory. Her choices have stripped her mentally and physically of the beauty and innocence that she once had before she chose the evil path.