Overcoming

By: EvaLeigh (edited by: Alice Bibliofaith)

Something I love the most about the Shadowhunter Chronicles is the representation. We see LGBTQ+ characters, female empowerment, strength of families and friends, overcoming issues and trauma, love and pain, disabilities, and so much more. But I wanted to talk about the overcoming that Cassie shows in her books.

The Shadowhunters are raised to believe that they shouldn't grow attached-- that their family could die, their friends or even them. We see death countless times in the books; Livvy Blackthorn, Robert Lightwood, Will Herondale, Jessamine Lovelace, Max Lightwood-- the list goes on. But with every death we see the Shadowhunters breaking away from the rules, mourning and hurt. This isn't good. It's not nice or cheerful or perfect, but then again, neither is the world. We see death and sadness and suffering, so for Cassie to show how the world really is, and how even the strongest can shed a tear, it tells readers that they aren't alone in grief. People can feel like they're understood, and to read these books can mean that they have something they can love and treasure which can also help them. Tessa Gray, for example. An immortal warlock who had her whole life ripped away and changed because she had things hidden from her. She'd suffered pain, but powered through it-- found love, married, had children. But, again, she's immortal. She had to watch those she loved age and die, which is pain I would never wish on anybody. Her husband, Will, died in 1937, and her kids years later. To continue life from so much mourning and grief is inspirational: to know that you will see more in your life but still love and make friends and be happy. Cassie does an amazing job at creating characters who we can look up to.

Aside from grief, we also see disability and struggle. Ty Blackthorn has autism. Henry Branwell lost the use of his legs. Two examples of brilliant characters who had to work through judgement, and overcome what obstacles their struggles created for them. Henry had walked all his life, so to lose this would have affected him greatly. But he didn't mourn or stop living: he helped himself, he made a wheelchair fit for him and carried on. Disabilities aren't shown in a lot of books, so Henry acts as something that those facing the same thing can look up to and relate to. We see how his family and friends are affected as well, which again portrays how things like this can do damage to so many people in the real world for different reasons.

Ty had autism for all of his life, but never really knew it. He was 'different'; had to wear headphones in training, loved to focus on and learn about new things, took things too literally and couldn't understand what people were doing or thinking and why. In the Shadowhunter community, disabilities and medical care were never known of-- they had no doctors, only the Silent Brothers, and didn't need surgery, only iratze. This all made it even harder for Ty, because he was constantly thought of as just different, nothing diagnosed. We don't see much of mental disability in books, either-- difficulties like dyslexia, ADHD or autism-- and so having a frequently seen character in a series (who is soon to be a main character in his own series) with a mental disability is fantastic. We feel sympathy for Ty, but also see him as strong-- he can face what people say about him, does what he wants, and leans on those around him, not letting people push him down. So yes, there are struggles, but we again see how this character can overcome them, which can make anybody reading feel like they can, too.

Charlotte Branwell. The first female Consul, and first female head of the London Institute. She was given hardship for her gender, told she couldn't lead, and had to hide behind her husband in order to get anywhere in life. But she faced those who opposed her, like the then-Consul Josiah Wayland, and made it to the top. Consul is the most supreme role any Shadowhunter could have, and so for a woman to make it there was revolutionary at the time, setting an example for Consuls after her. The use of a feminist character like Charlotte brings the representation that we have been seeing more and more in books-- not a damsel in distress, but a woman who can pick up her own sword and get through struggles herself. She suffered: thought she would lose the Institute, was told she wasn't good enough, but still succeeded, which, like Cassie's other characters, is something that readers can hold onto and aim towards.

One of the series' villains: Sebastian Morgenstern. He was undoubtedly evil, having killed and enslaved so many-- men, women, children. But readers have said that when he died, they were upset. I can say this, too-- when his green eyes were described, and him saying that he felt so "light", I practically broke down. I feel that this was because we saw who Sebastian could have been, had his blood not been tainted, and had he not been raised by his father, Valentine. Sebastian shows something extremely important to acknowledge-- an abusive childhood. This is a growing issue in the world, currently, with problems stemming from children who had a hard time when being raised. We find out how Sebastian had been injected with demon blood, and how from there he had been trained to fight and hurt and kill. For a Shadowhunter, this would be normal-- they're trained in battle from an early age, but only to battle those who do wrong and oppose them. Sebastian was trained to use others to help himself, only. He killed innocent people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but didn't feel any sympathy. However, turning away from this, he also loved. We see many times how he wished for love from his sister, Clary, and how he didn't know how to handle this because he hadn't been raised to know. So he hurt her, thinking it was the only way. This again, shows how his childhood affected him so greatly, and when he died, all of this weight was lifted. Cassie represented this in a hidden way: she made us focus on what bad things Sebastian had done, which made his death and what could have been so much more important to those who saw them. It shows that even those who do bad things may have some layer of humanity, and that people who suffer could turn to something like this, and so we would respect those around us, and show them how to live the right way, and to overcome struggles that could make us do things we would regret.

One of the main reasons that I enjoyed reading Shadowhunters was because of how much representation we see, which I think is so important in the world right now. We witness so much negativity online and in the news, and so for characters in the books we love to represent these things in whatever way, and to overcome the pain is brilliant. They can act as role models, who can joke and laugh and love, even when their world might be falling down around them. Anything can be overcome, if you think about it, and The Shadowhunter Chronicles teach us to use and lean on what you have.