Character from Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
The second son who became king through betrayal — a boy whose mother carved away his capacity for genuine emotion and left a throne-shaped hole where a person should have been.
Maven is the most tragic character in the Red Queen series, and he earns every ounce of that tragedy through acts that are genuinely monstrous. He was kind once — or he was programmed to seem kind, which is the cruelty of his situation. Elara manipulated his mind from infancy. She removed his love for Cal. She removed his love for their father. She removed his ability to dream when nightmares caused distress. She tried to remove his feelings for Mare and for a boy named Thomas, but those feelings persisted, damaged and distorted. Maven cannot tell which parts of himself are real and which are his mother's architecture. He betrayed Mare and the Scarlet Guard to seize the throne. He imprisoned his brother. He became king. And then his mother died and he was left alone with a mind full of empty rooms where emotions used to live, ruling a kingdom that was already collapsing, obsessed with a girl he couldn't stop wanting and couldn't genuinely love. Mare killed him during the Battle of Archeon. Cal buried him with honor. The question the series never fully answers — because it can't — is whether Maven was a victim who became a villain or a villain who was also a victim. Elara broke him before he had a chance to be whole. Everything after was the architecture of that breaking.
Six feet tall, lean and fine-boned with pale skin, thick black hair, and bright blue eyes flecked with silver. Sharp, serious features — regal in a way that's more knife than crown. After Elara's death he becomes visibly gaunt, with dark shadows beneath his eyes. He looks like someone being consumed from the inside.
Also known as: King Maven, The Boy King