Glory is compelling. I ponder why.
Glory is a RainWing dragon in the Wings of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland and the point-of-view character in The Hidden Kingdom (Wings of Fire Book 3).
Spoiler Alert.
The following contains spoilers for the Wings of Fire series.
Glory’s egg was a substitute for the SkyWing egg that was destroyed when the eggs to fulfill the Dragonet Prophecy were collected. Because of that, the adult caregivers didn’t consider her to be a true part of the Prophecy. And being a RainWing, they considered her to be a lazy, weak, fruit eater, which was the stereotype for RainWings.
The caregivers treated her as inferior, which caused her to grow up bitter and with a bad attitude that hid her sadness. She almost always expressed herself with biting sarcasm. However, she was smart, remembered what she read, and even though she wasn’t as good at fighting as some of the others, she learned to fight and was willing and able to fight when needed.
Even though the caregivers treated her badly, her fellow Dragonets of Prophecy always treated her as one of them. She might have been in a constant state of irritation and annoyance, but she was loyal and true to the other dragonets because they were her family and despite her cynical opinion of her place among the Dragonets of Prophecy, she protected them at any cost.
When she finally meets other RainWings, she learns they act like the stereotype she had been accused of being. The RainWings were not what she had hoped for. She began to despise her people. But she learned the truth about what it meant to be a RainWing and eventually becomes proud of them and of herself for being one of them.
But she has a character change arc journey first.
She tended to be a loner and always wanted to do things for herself with no help because she had to prove she was more than what the stereotype said she was. This caused her many problems. But when she learned her people were threatened, she was willing to do anything to protect them. Initially she tried to do it alone. Her upbringing had made her different from other RainWings. When the NightWings captured her and considered her not to be a threat because she was a RainWing, she thinks, “They’ve never met a RainWing like me.” Sure enough, they end up regretting underestimating her. Still, her attempts to do it all alone did not go well. Ultimately she learned the lesson that she needed others and she embraced the help given to her by others.
Across the first four books of the Wings of Fire series — The Dragonet Prophecy (Wings of Fire Book 1), The Lost Heir (Wings of Fire Book 2), The Hidden Kingdom (Wings of Fire Book 3), and The Dark Secret (Wings of Fire Book 4) — she goes from a despised and neglected replacement dragonet who everyone thinks will amount to nothing to being the respected and feared Queen Glory of the RainWings and NightWings.
And that is the reason Glory is compelling. She was broken, damaged, and downtrodden, yet her experiences, determination, and personality, with the help of her friends and her people, enable her to overcome her personal problems and to ultimately prove she had been great all along.
Glory is a lesson in how to write a compelling character.