And you thought Game of Thrones was messed up!
Creative Staff:
Story: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Art: Dongzi Liu
What They Say:
Royal Blood – a shakespearean tragedy of betrayal, lust and warring kingdoms, from acclaimed creator Alexander Jodorowsky!
Wounded, betrayed and left for dead, King Alvar returns to his kingdom to regain his stolen throne. Hungry for revenge, Alvar finds himself in the middle of a bloody political game for power. To keep his throne he must crush his enemies who would destroy him with their machinations. But his own horrific appetites may prove his undoing…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The story opens with a battle, and king Alvar is shot with an arrow and wounded. Escorted away by his cousin Alfred, it’s clear the battle will be lost if the troops lose morale with the king wounded. Thus, Alvar asks Alfred, who looks almost identical to him, to take up his armor and pretend to be him. But Alfred is not loyal and sees this as a sign from God that he should be king. Tossing dirt into Alvar’s wound so it will not heal, Alfred abandons Alvar and steals his crown. A strange woman finds Alvar and takes him to safety, and in a fever dream Alvar and the woman make love, he thinking her to be his wife Violena.
Ten years later, we find Alvar is half-wild and mad, and he and the woman produced a daughter named Sambra. When her goat is killed, Sambra wants to bury despite her parents’ protest. As she digs, the arrow that wounded Alvar so long ago is uncovered and his lost memories returned. He shuns his new wife and rejects Sambra, leaving to take back his throne. Before hanging herself, the woman in a monologue reveals she raped days before Alvar appeared, and one of those men are Sambra’s true father. Thus begins the woman’s revenge in death.
Alvar returns to his castle and kills Alfred, as a reluctant Violena looks on. Her loyalty is to who wears the crown, and she is the king’s wife, and as far as she was concerned Alfred was Alvar and they produced a son, who is not a far cry from Joffrey Baratheon. Enraged at this and her son’s denial to cover up that he killed Alfred, Alvar cuts out the boy’s tongue. And then we cut to another ten year jump where times are tumultuous and Sambra’s mother looks on from the afterlife, her revenge about to truly begin with Alvar being unable to resist a young woman, and he meets such a woman on a bear hunt, and it sets it motion tumultuous events, excommunication, sin, betrayal, disfigurement, and a whole slew of Shakespearean tragedy.
In Summary:
Jodorowsky is no stranger to fantasy, he was in the past year much talked about with the documentary on his failed effort to direct Dune, which eventually went to David Lynch, but the ideas he put forth were exciting and creative to the point where many wish he had directed the sci-fi fantasy classic. In this book, he channels works like Game of Thrones and the tumultuous nature of royals clashing and intrigue with a story that moves through twenty years deftly, and brought to visual life by Liu’s stunning artwork. This is one of the most gorgeous looking books I’ve read this year, and it’s the sort of art that if a Lord of the Rings comic were to be released now, this is the artwork you’d want.
They describe this tale as Shakespearean and boy, does it go there and a half. There’s one potential plot point involving sort-of incest that may squick some readers out, so there’s your warning on that. Alvar, for all intents and purposes, starts out as a noble king and the events that happen twist him to someone far from noble and ultimately to someone heartless. This book can be brutal in places, and is also not for those bothered by gore.
If you like the intense drama of historical fantasy a la George R.R. Martin and okay with the plot going to uncomfortable and dark places, you will like this book. And hey, it can help kill the time waiting for the next season of GoT to arrive.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Titan Comics
Release Date: November 18th, 2014
MSRP: $12.74
I recently read this and agree it was excellent. The artwork was some of the best one is likely to see and ideally suited to the material. The story certainly fit the bill as epic tragedy, I would say more Greek even than Shakespearean given some of its themes.
Mild spoiler possibilities below:
I sympathized with Alvar much of the time- he clearly was an arrogant warrior type at the start, perhaps with a native touch of the bully that a medieval warrior prince might well have, but he fought bravely in the front, was not then apparently guilty of any crimes, and is shown even years later as popular and generous to his subjects, a dramatic contrast to his cousin and his wife. His path to self-destruction begins with Alfred’s betrayal, then that of the mysterious woman, and at last the discovery of his wife’s true nature. He goes off a moral cliff, but one sees where he is coming from, at least. Later on, he of course also goes off a sanity cliff, at which point I started to wonder if his fate would not have been better if he had had the capacity to just chill for ten seconds before making life-altering, not to say gross and grisly, personal choices. But epic tragedy is not built on emotional continence, and it was certainly gripping. And it fit the tragic mode that his arrogant, headstrong, and madly passionate qualities were his undoing, rather than the more Christian idea that his “moral” failings would cause his fall. By the end, he is still more moral and just than every other main character save one or two. That doesn’t save him.
The main thing that troubled me, but which suited very well the influence of Greek tragedy, is the essential amorality of the story arc- the mysterious woman sets in motion events that will destroy both Alvar and her daughter, and speaks often of her vengeance, yet has no just claim of vengeance against either, who have not actually wronged her in any way. Annoying, but in keeping with the themes and the darkness of the setting.