Harkfast Q2

clash_bowley

The spotlight character - the person through whose eyes we see the story unfold - is the young Prince Ruan, Yet the book is named Harkfast after the Druid. Why do you think the writer did that?

Apocryphal

Yeah, good question. I suppose because Harkfast was really driving the bus here at the beginning. Possibly this was intended as a trilogy, and the last book would be named after Ruan the King, or some such, and the middle book after a character that featured in that story (like a love interest?).

NeilNjae

I'm with @Apocryphal here: Harkfast is the controller of events, at least at the beginning. Ruan is starting to assert his independence by the end of the book, but only just.

RichardAbbott

I'm totally convinced that he intended to write at least one more in the series - the story kind of goes nowhere at the end if there's no intention to follow it on. So then the question becomes, why didn't he? This was published in 1976 and he lived until 2014, so he had plenty of time to do so. So why not? I wonder if he couldn't work out whether to make it a kind of triumphal book (Ruan really does become king and takes command of large parts of Scotland) or a kind of Arthurian tragedy (things go against him, the druids lose their power and authority, and it all goes wrong in the end). I can see either route being available, and I guess we'll never know now which would make a better series

NeilNjae

I'd guess the first book didn't make enough money to justify writing another. A shame, but that's the life of a professional author.

clash_bowley

The responses kind of moved off from the question here, but I feel that is most likely because Apocryphal's response nailed the probable cause right away, and was generally accepted. For the record, I didn't think of that, and do agree with Apocryphal as well.