By: Robert Mitchell
Fantasy loves a visible enemy. Armies gather. Kingdoms fall. Darkness advances. Heroes discover powers they never knew they possessed. But some of the hardest battles are considerably quieter.
In Shadows & Kings, Jennifer Aitken places her characters inside a sweeping world of mythology, power, and Universal energies, but beneath the scale of the story is something strikingly familiar: the struggle to believe we are capable of becoming more than we currently believe ourselves to be. For Aitken, that struggle isn’t merely something she invented for her protagonist, Lucius. It’s one she knows personally.
“Lucius’ crisis of confidence is a reflection of myself,” she says. “It’s always been important to me to have an underlying message in my stories. Whether this is about overcoming what may seem like an insurmountable obstacle or looking inwards and overcoming things like self-doubt and insecurities.”
Aitken admits that self-doubt runs through her work as an author and her personal life alike, a constant companion she continues working to shed. That admission reveals something important about the novel. For all its fantasy elements, Lucius’ journey isn’t simply about acquiring enough strength to defeat whatever stands against him. His deeper challenge is learning to recognize the strength that already exists within him.
It’s a distinctly human problem.
The Life We Imagine, and the Life We Actually Get
Most people begin adulthood with some version of a story already written. We imagine who we’ll become, what success will look like, who will stand beside us, where we’ll live and what we’ll accomplish. Perhaps most importantly, we develop an idea of the person we expect ourselves to be when we get there.
Then life starts editing.
“I think when we are children or young adults we have a very romantic idea of what life is going to be like, what we will become and the successes ahead,” Aitken says. “But life always has surprises in store, and the events we encounter, how we respond to them, and the people we surround ourselves with has a lot to do with the person you’ll become.”
Those surprises can change more than our circumstances. They can change our identities. The people we meet, the choices we make, the disappointments we endure, and the unexpected doors that open all participate in creating someone who may look very different from the person we once imagined. Aitken doesn’t necessarily see that as a loss. “Just because the picture of your life or yourself changes, it isn’t always a bad thing.”
That idea sits beneath Lucius’ story. His journey asks a question that extends far beyond fantasy: What happens when the person you’re becoming no longer resembles the person you thought you were supposed to be? Perhaps growth isn’t finding your way back to the original plan. Perhaps it’s having the courage to let the plan change.
The Shadows We Carry
Aitken has always wanted her stories to contain something beneath the adventure. She wants to explore what it means to confront something that appears insurmountable, but she is equally interested in the obstacles people carry within themselves: insecurity, fear, and the nagging voice that says we may not be capable of doing what needs to be done.
In Lucius, those ideas become deeply personal. Aitken describes him as someone struggling with identity and lacking the confidence to take control of his own life or make necessary changes because he’s afraid. Fear doesn’t necessarily leave him incapable of change. Instead, it makes change feel impossibly large.
“We have all experienced moments or periods in our life where we feel like we’re drowning in a life that doesn’t belong to us,” she says. “And just like Lucius, it takes little steps, tiny changes, to begin to see how much strength and confidence we all already possess. We sometimes simply forget it’s there.”
It’s a surprisingly grounded truth inside a genre famous for dramatic transformations. There isn’t always a single moment when fear disappears, and confidence arrives in its place. Sometimes courage is considerably less cinematic. It’s making one decision, then another, and discovering along the way that perhaps you were stronger than you thought.
The People Who See Us Before We See Ourselves
One of Aitken’s favorite moments in Shadows & Kings belongs to Elowen. Lucius is struggling to shoulder the Universal energies writhing within him when Elowen agrees to help carry them, despite knowing that eventually the burden may become too much for her.
“She sees his potential, sees where he is weak, and she can help and doesn’t think twice about the sacrifice, only what Lucius will be able to accomplish for the entire Universe with her help,” Aitken says. “It’s a very powerful scene in my mind, and it makes me fall in love with her character every time I read it.”
There’s something beautifully human beneath the magic of that scene. Sometimes becoming who we are capable of becoming requires someone else to see that person first.
For Aitken, those people were her parents. She describes them as her rock and the foundation of her thinking, the people who supported her dreams while leading by example. When other people questioned whether something was too difficult or suggested she might be making a mistake, her parents didn’t tell her to abandon the dream.
They told her, “Go for it.”
“They taught me to follow my dreams no matter what,” Aitken says. “They never said it was too hard, or impossible.” That unwavering support helped her build the confidence to pursue the life she imagined.
There’s an interesting echo between that experience and Elowen’s relationship with Lucius. Elowen doesn’t magically remove Lucius’ burden. She helps him carry it because she can see what he may eventually be capable of doing himself. Sometimes that’s what support looks like in real life, too. Someone believes in us long enough for us to begin believing in ourselves.
Writing Without Permission
Aitken’s battle with confidence followed her into writing. Looking back at the version of herself who first dreamed of creating Legends of Light & Shadows, she knows what she would tell that younger writer now: don’t be scared.
“Not to fear what other people might think of her ideas, or how she chooses to articulate them,” she says. Early on, Aitken found herself asking questions familiar to countless writers. Who will read this? What will they think? Am I writing like other fantasy authors? Those worries didn’t help the work. Instead, she says, they held back her progress.
What eventually mattered more was writing the story she herself wanted to read.
“There is an audience for everyone,” Aitken says, “but the most accomplishing feeling is writing the story you want to read and being happy with the end result.”
It’s difficult not to see Lucius in that evolution. Creator and character are confronting different versions of essentially the same question: What becomes possible when you stop allowing fear to decide who you’re allowed to be?
Finding Ourselves in Fantasy
Aitken doesn’t want readers to finish Shadows & Kings remembering only its mythology, battles, or magical world. She wants them to recognize something in the people inhabiting that world. Maybe even something in themselves.
“I hope as they read through Shadows & Kings, they find a connection to one of the characters,” she says. “I want them to feel so invested in their journey, they find links that mirror their own and can see themselves in this plot, fighting to keep shadows at bay.”
Perhaps that’s one reason fantasy remains so powerful. It allows us to make internal battles visible. Fear becomes darkness. Responsibility becomes a burden that can almost physically crush us. Transformation becomes a journey across kingdoms and worlds. And the person who believes in us can literally step forward and help carry an impossible force.
Yet underneath all of it remain questions people encounter in considerably less magical lives. Who am I becoming? What am I afraid of? What happens if the life I imagined isn’t the life I’m meant to have? And what strength might already exist inside me that I simply haven’t learned to see?
Jennifer Aitken may have created Lucius to explore those questions through fantasy, but she has spent years confronting versions of them herself. Perhaps that’s why his struggle feels so familiar.
The shadows aren’t always monsters waiting somewhere in the darkness. Sometimes they’re the voices inside us insisting we’re not ready, not capable, not enough.
And sometimes defeating them begins with taking one small step forward anyway.
Shadows & Kings by Jennifer Aitken is available through Amazon and major booksellers.
