Roën Character Analysis

A foreign mercenary with sandy skin. Though he’s somewhat slippery and raises Zélie’s alarm bells a little bit, he’s also extremely attractive, kind, and gentle—and so they slowly fall in love over the course of the novel. He left his homeland some time before the series begins, and like Zélie, bears physical scars of trauma: he has tally mark scars on his arm that torturers carved as they murdered his men one by one. Roën habitually calls Zélie zïtsōl, a pet name that he says means various different things depending on his mood. He’s sarcastic, funny, and quick thinking, but as a mercenary, he’s also dangerous and knows he needs to think about if and when he’s going to get paid. With his crew, Roën works for every imaginable side in the war: for Zélie, for Nehanda, and for the Iyika. However, Roën’s love for Zélie gradually begins to pull him away from his work and he takes it upon himself to help Zélie recover and smile after Mâzeli’s death. Though Zélie asks Roën to spend the night with her, she panics and insults him by calling him an unfeeling mercenary. Though this is an attempt to protect them both from heartache, Roën’s genuine anger over this treatment results in going ahead and setting off the bombs in the underground caves surrounding Ibadan. As Zélie saves Roën, Roën admits that zïtsōl means “home” in his native language—Zélie is, for him, his home. Zélie also sees that Roën’s lifeforce is gold, which helps her figure out what her ìsípayá meant and helps her save his life by connecting their lifeforces via the moonstone. After their ordeal in the caves and in Ibadan is over, Roën fires the rest of his mercenary crew and insists that he’s not going to leave Zélie again.