Spoiler Alert! Why did you do *that* in The Saint?
Stop if you haven’t read The Saint!
Monica has received a handful of emails wondering why William Gordon (aka Templar) had to die in The Saint. This is adapted from a few of her responses:
Although like most readers, I love romance for the escape, the stories I enjoy and those I want to write have to be grounded in reality. I want to feel as if this *could* really have happened. Given that this was an incredibly long and bloody war–and that these warriors would not just have been in the thick of it, but doing the most dangerous jobs possible–it felt too improbable to me that all of them would escape unscathed. No matter how extraordinary they are as warriors, they aren’t supermen. I think it was Magnus who points out that Gordon’s death reminded them that they were not invincible.
Black powder would have been a very inexact and dangerous science at the time, so I actually planned for Gordon to be “the one” from the beginning. But that being said, when the time came it was much harder to do than I expected. Writing those scenes was really tough. I wanted to take the easy way out and have him miraculously survive, but it wouldn’t have been true to the story. A large part of what makes these guys such amazing heroes to me (like all soldiers, firefighters, first responders, etc.) is the level of risk/danger they take on, and I felt like these guys, like all teams of warriors, deserve a story that does the danger and difficulty of what they do justice.