Pirates:
Lovable scoundrels, or cut-throat villains?
By Julia Maiola
What
would a villain have to do to lose support from a sympathetic audience?
We
as humans have a love for the underdog, for the misunderstood hero. We look to
the Golden Age of Piracy for adventure, romance, and treasure. We root for the
small thieves, the soul-tortured swashbucklers, and cheer when they do the
right thing or grow a heart. Pirates were just trying to live a better life,
after all, and weren’t real villains.
Or
were they?
When
I started The Red Flag, I had one
goal in mind: to give readers the truth. Pirates were some of the cruelest
people who ever lived. And they enjoyed being cruel.
We
know that pirates were criminals. Yet we dress like them, talk like them, make
exciting movies about them. As I myself got caught up in this popular culture,
I started to wonder why there seemed to be such a celebration of these
murderers and thieves. My research turned to myths vs. facts, and I realized
that not only was there this strange interest and infatuation with piracy, but
that the pop culture surrounding it was wrong. People aren’t dressing as
murderers, but treasure-hunters. Not thieves, but hopeless romantics.
Everything I saw in pop culture had nothing to do with pirates at all. This
popular image had influenced people’s perception of pirates to the point of
changing how they view them. So I decided to write a story about pirates that
accurately portrayed the real rogues of the sea as they truly lived three
hundred years ago.
I
wanted to give readers a detailed depiction of what pirates were like and what
sent them on this path of violence. I created a pirate captain, Stephen
Boswell, who is motivated by fear in order to push him to do things that will
shock and abhor readers. This is no adventure, and the motivation is no
treasure. This is a dangerous, deadly voyage in which each kill is simply another
day and each day still alive is a success.
Having
created Stephen, I needed a character to completely contrast him, to be at odds
with his evil, to give readers two sides of the same story, as far from each
other as possible. Who better than Alice Bradford, a child, the epitome of
innocence and naive goodwill. While Alice experiences the violence of the
pirates firsthand, it is Stephen Boswell’s own recounting of what led him to
this life that may draw the reader to his side. I think we subconsciously come
to sympathize with those whose perspective we share, and I took advantage of
this by putting Stephen’s accounts in the first person. My hope was to confuse
readers over who to ultimately root for. On the one hand is little Alice who we
want to protect from the villainous pirates. On the other is Stephen who shares
his own experiences of being mistreated by the hypocritically villainous nature
of the British navy. Readers will know and agree that Stephen is the villain,
but they will wonder, and maybe even hope, if he can conquer his fears and
escape the navy for good.
This
was a deliberate effort on my part because while I wanted to expose the true
nature of piracy, I also wanted to raise questions about human nature itself,
both in the pirate characters and in the readers. Despite Stephen’s actions, we
as humans want to see another human succeed, even as Stephen acts against other
humans despite his own humanity.
But
what would a villain have to do to lose support from a sympathetic audience?
What
line would have to be crossed? That is, if the simple act of being a pirate
didn’t mean he had already crossed it. For as I hope readers will come to
understand as they read The Red Flag,
pirates may have been humans, but they committed atrocities against their
fellow humans. They were true villains, and not the swashbucklers that pop
culture has come to idealize.
The Red Flag
Captain
Stephen Boswell sails under the red flag, a symbol of no mercy. It’s the only
reason he has lived this long. The only reason the navy has not found him yet.
But they are closing in. And if they catch him, they will execute him for
piracy.
Ten-year-old
Alice Bradford doesn’t know why she is alive. When Captain Boswell found her
hiding on his ship, she expected him to kill her, and it seemed his own crew
had expected likewise. But now she is his prisoner and she fears that she will
be forever. Somehow, though, it seems that the captain might be more afraid of
the navy than she is of him. Something from his past has him ill at ease, Alice
realizes. Even if the navy cannot bring him to his knees, his own paranoia
will.
Julia
Maiola
Julia
Maiola is a professional ice cream scooper from Rochester, New York. She will
receive her Bachelor’s in English at the end of 2018 and will continue to
develop her writing. The Red Flag is
her first novel, the first of many to come. A science fiction title is
currently in the works and will be followed by more in the fantasy and
historical fiction genres. When Julia is not writing, she is gaming and
skateboarding, but most of her spare time is spent reading adventure novels.
Julia
loves to hear from readers, you can find her: Website • Twitter • Goodreads
• Facebook • Instagram
