Or, Why do I care about Tovera?

Tovera is completely unique in my experience.

Usually, when a fictional character is labelled in canon as a sociopath (or a psychopath, or sometimes schizophrenia gets the same treatment), they might as well be called a demon instead. The effective meaning of the word sociopath– the way it’s commonly used– is a person who does evil things for no reason. It lets authors import Sauron-style inherent and implacable evil into a non-fantasy setting. It creates a character whose actions don’t have to be explained, because they are, by (unofficial) definition, outside of human reason.

I wouldn’t really have a problem with that, if they’d just go ahead and say “demon” or “evil”– if people didn’t use the word sociopath this way, and then also believe that sociopathy is a medical diagnosis, a real condition that a person could actually have. “This character is evil for no reason” is an acceptable conceit in a piece of fiction, where many things are simplified and we’re asked to suspend disbelief. It’s not a depiction of any real person. People have reasons for the things that they do, even if they aren’t good reasons, and evil is not a medical condition.

I’m afraid that that may be the hardest point to accept in this whole thing, but it’s the most important one: Evil is not a biological characteristic. It is not a fundamental property of certain people’s brains. No one is congenitally predestined to be evil.

Mental illnesses and cognitive disabilities can certainly be a factor in why people make bad decisions or do harmful things (along with a million other factors.) Where we go wrong when it comes to “sociopathy” and its relatives is in thinking that mental illness and evil are one and the same thing. That mental illness inevitably makes people evil, or that every evil person must be mentally ill, or that true, deep evil comes from mental illness and nothing a sane person could do is really as serious.

This specter of mental illness as evil is very, very common in fiction of all kinds, and also in mostly-nonfiction based on actual criminals. These ideas pop up in people’s minds whenever there’s a high-profile crime. Ordinary people, talking casually about mass murderers, call them “crazy” and “depraved” and “sick,” and news outlets positively rush to suggest in all seriousness that such criminals are mentally ill. (At least when they’re white. Otherwise the “terrorist” or “thug” angles may win out.)

Tovera is unique, and David Drake is unique, because when he writes that Tovera is a sociopath, he doesn’t mean that she’s evil for no reason.

Instead of being an implacable evil, completely unaffected by anything, she’s well aware that her mind works differently from most people’s, and she feels vulnerable because of it. She wants to fit into society, but she doesn’t know how to. From her reaction to Adele and what she says about her former employer, it seems that in the past, people who’ve realized that she’s different have either found her disgusting, or tried to take advantage of her and use her as a tool. The most compelling line, to me, is something she says to Adele near the end of the book–

“I told Markos [Tovera’s former employer] you were too dangerous to use the way he tried to,” Tovera said musingly. “He didn’t believe me. He didn’t think I could know anything about people.”

Tovera has spent a long time in the power of someone who thought she was barely human. She depended on him, not just for practical things like her paycheck, but for the entirety of her sense of direction and purpose in a world she feels lost in. He told her she couldn’t understand people, even when she thought she did, and she at least partly believed him. That she would have so little confidence in herself that she put Markos’ judgment of her abilities above her own shows just how inadequate and vulnerable she feels without someone to guide her.

All in all, Tovera behaves like an actual person with a disability, not like a caricature of a villain. It seems to me that David Drake isn’t exactly sure what it is that Tovera lacks– “conscience,” “empathy,” and “understanding of social norms” aren’t exactly the same thing, after all– or how he wants to define “sociopathy,” but whatever it is it’s still a cut above defining it as an uncontrollable urge to murder people in inventive ways.

I also like the fairly explicit parallel between Tovera and Adele, and to a lesser extent between Tovera and Daniel in the later books. Rather than being contrasted against the main characters, as an example of evil or disease, Tovera and her explicit label of “sociopath” serve to point out just how little empathy Adele and Daniel often show, and how easy it would be to argue that they deserve the same label.

They are all willing to resort to as much violence as is necessary to protect themselves and accomplish their goals. They all react to violence and danger calmly, whether as victims or as perpetrators. Daniel and Adele have had to learn to do that in order to survive. They’ve both lived through situations where panicking or freezing in the face of danger would only put them in more danger.

Labelling a character as a sociopath generally means the audience is supposed to view them as inhuman. When David Drake labels Tovera as a sociopath, and then shows her vulnerability and her similarity to the main characters, he affirms Tovera’s humanity and theirs, and that of everyone who has done cruel things to stay alive.