52 pages • 1 hour read
Ana HuangTwisted Games
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Bridget von Ascheberg
Bridget von Ascheberg is one of the protagonists and narrators of Twisted Games. She is a senior at Thayer University and is studying international politics, but she is also a princess who is second in line for the throne of her home country of Eldorra. Despite her royal status, Bridget leads a relatively normal life in America, avoiding the high-profile and extensive pressures that she faces in her hometown of Athenberg. Though she was raised as a princess, she never expected to become queen because her grandfather, father, and brother come before her in the line of succession. However, after the death of her father and the abdication of her brother, Bridget’s world is thrown into chaos when she learns that she will soon have to become the queen of Eldorra.
As a public figure, Bridget has always known that she has little choice over what becomes of her life. In her more discouraged moments, she dismally notes that she has no “Love. Passion. Choice. Things no amount of money could buy” (17). Most of her actions reflect her idea of what she believes a royal should do or be. However, this changes when she meets Rhys and begins to consider her own thoughts and feelings worthy of consideration. At the beginning of the novel, Bridget is very stubborn and strong-willed in spite of her restrictive lifestyle, but her sense of propriety and duty shifts when she becomes romantically involved with Rhys. Yet despite her strength and courage, Bridget is ruled by her fear and social norms throughout much of the novel, and these intangible influences lead her to blindly follow her Eldorran advisors.
Bridget is also heavily influenced by her guilt. Bridget’s mother died while giving birth, and Bridget came from an unplanned pregnancy. Due to these factors that were entirely beyond her control, Bridget secretly believes that she killed her mother and believes that she should have been the one to die. This grievous source of guilt and insecurity complicates her feelings about becoming queen, for she knows that her mother would have taken on this role if she had survived. As Bridget tells Rhys, “I think the reason I’m so scared about being queen is I’m afraid of not living up to my mother’s legacy [...] She would’ve made a great queen. Better than me. But I killed her” (286). She also feels guilty for her father’s death and her grandfather’s illness, irrationally believing that her selfishness somehow caused these things. Although Bridget holds onto this guilt throughout most of the novel, Rhys’s decision to share his similar feelings of guilt helps her to see that she is not responsible for the tragedies that shadow her past.
One of the major problems that Bridget must overcome is her hesitance toward becoming queen and her misguided belief that she is not capable of doing the job. Although the restrictive life that she has led as a royal has tainted her view of the monarchy, she begins to reconnect with her responsibilities as she meets the people of Eldorra. Far from being enamored with the superficial side of her duties, Bridget is determined to positively impact the lives of her people, for she states, “I didn’t want to spend my life just smiling for the cameras and giving lifestyle interviews. I wanted something more” (252). Ultimately, Bridget must find a way to blend these responsibilities with her own interests when she finds herself confronted with the destruction of her public image due to her relationship with Rhys. She struggles to determine how this development will affect her ability to be queen, but by showing herself as a sympathetic human rather than a detached and indifferent royal, Bridget is able to convince the people of Eldorra that she can still be a successful monarch even if she goes against the Royal Marriages Law. Although Bridget is forced to decide between her own life and her duties as a future monarch, she finally devises a way to honor both her public persona and her private life.
Rhys Larsen
Rhys Larsen is the other protagonist and narrator of the novel, and although he is Bridget’s love interest, his background highlights the social restrictions that beset Bridget, given her status as a public figure. Rhys’s life is drastically different from Bridget’s despite the similarities that bring them together. Unbeknownst to Rhys, he is the son of an Eldorran nobleman, who had an affair with his mother, an American woman named Deirdre Larsen. The nobleman is later revealed to be Lord Erhall, the Speaker of Parliament for Eldorra. Erhall left Deirdre when he discovered that she was pregnant, for he knew that the news of this affair would ruin his reputation. After Rhys’s birth, Deirdre blames her son for his father’s disappearance, and because of his father’s actions, he grows up thinking of Eldorra as an equally magical and sinister place. Deirdre physically and emotionally abuses Rhys, who is also exposed to her addiction to drugs and alcohol. Rhys is also exposed to death and violence in his neighborhood as a child, leading him to feel guilty for the people he could not protect or help. When he is 11, he discovers that Deirdre has died of an overdose. Even so, the long-term effects of her abuse compel him to clean up the house and set everything right before calling 911.
Due to his upbringing, Rhys feels an extreme amount of guilt over his past. To make up for this, he joins the Navy SEALs and faces even more death and violence. Rhys has complex PTSD. As the novel explains, “Unlike regular PTSD, which was caused by a singular traumatic event, complex PTSD resulted from long-lasting trauma that continued for months or even years” (169). His actions in the military—particularly during an event in which several of his friends are killed due to a preventable mistake—compound with his childhood traumas to harden him to the world and prevent him from feeling worthy of love. This internal obstacle becomes an issue when he meets Bridget, and he frequently repeats his belief that he is not good enough for her. Though he sees that they both feel alone in the world, Rhys remains convinced that “women like Bridget weren’t meant for men like [him]” (233).
However, Rhys is a dynamic character who changes drastically throughout the novel, particularly as he begins to fall in love with Bridget, for the two help each other grow as individuals as they grow closer. Not only does Rhys break many of his personal rules about being a bodyguard, but he also begins to see how his past is tarnishing his present opportunities to be happy. Despite his belief that he doesn’t deserve Bridget, he pursues her anyway and realizes that she ardently returns his affections. Unlike others in Bridget’s life, he sees her as a person rather than as just a princess, and this allows him to recognize that he can be worthy of her. After Rhys meets Erhall and recognizes the impact that the idea of his absent father has had on his relationships, Rhys begins to see that his past should not define him. Toward the end of Twisted Games, Rhys begins to feel like he has a family for the first time, because he is finally surrounded by people who care about him. This is a drastic change from earlier in the novel, when Rhys is surprised to discover that Bridget actually cares whether he lives or dies after the shooting at the park. In the end, Rhys refuses to let his guilt about the past control his life, and he instead accepts that he is as deserving of love as anyone else.
The Royal Family of Eldorra
Bridget’s family—those who are both alive and dead—have a major impact on her life and her choices. Bridget is wracked with guilt over her parents’ deaths because she mistakenly believes that she is the cause of these tragedies. This belief leads her to constantly frame things from the perspective of what her parents would do. She therefore fears the idea of becoming queen because she feels that her parents would have made better monarchs. However, Bridget keeps these feelings a secret until she meets Rhys, whose life has also been defined by guilt over his past. King Edvard acts as a parent to Bridget and Nikolai after their parents’ deaths, yet Bridget still feels that something is missing. She fears that those around her see her as a princess rather than as a person.
Though Edvard is Bridget’s grandfather, she thinks of him primarily as the king of Eldorra, and he likewise tends to treat her as a princess rather than his granddaughter. It is only toward the end of the novel that Bridget begins to see him as her grandfather. This breakthrough occurs when he opens up to her about his own fears of becoming a monarch. This moment also represents a major shift for Edvard, who tells her, “You are my granddaughter, and I want you to be happy [...] Do what you have to do“ (387). In this way, he lets Bridget know that he cares more about her happiness than about propriety, and he implicitly urges her to choose love and family over duty. He also shows her that both can coexist together.
Prince Nikolai von Ascheberg is another important influence on Bridget, for his decisions show her that her life can be different. Though Nikolai is raised with the expectation that he will become king, Bridget grows up with no such expectation, and she therefore finds his choice to abdicate even more surprising. Nikolai is representative of the choice between love and duty: the same choice that Bridget and Rhys must struggle with. However, Nikolai does not believe that he can honor both, so he chooses love by marrying Sabrina, an American flight attendant, and abdicating, leaving Bridget to inherit the Eldorran throne. Bridget initially blames Nikolai for being selfish and is angry with him for leaving her to maintain the family’s legacy. Yet by the end of Twisted Games, Bridget can sympathize with her brother’s situation. As the “spare,” Bridget feels that she cannot let down her family, but she comes to realize that they do not want her to give up her happiness for the sake of the crown.
Prince Andreas and Lord Erhall
Toward the beginning of the novel, Prince Andreas is implied to be the villain of Twisted Games and an antagonist to Bridget, but as it turns out, this impression is a bit of a red herring. Positioned immediately behind Bridget in the line of succession for the throne, Andreas appears to be motivated by his chance at becoming king, so his actions toward Bridget are portrayed as being entirely sinister. For example, Bridget immediately assumes that Andreas is the one blackmailing her, and Rhys believes that Andreas wants Bridget to abdicate like Nikolai. However, it is later revealed that Andreas is a much more complex character. Though he has fears about Bridget becoming the monarch of Eldorra, he admits that he enjoys his private lifestyle too much to be king. He is also certain that he could not handle the level of pressure that Bridget must endure. Andreas sees his treatment of Bridget as encouragement to become a better queen, even though his motivations don’t always align with his actions. Despite their initial differences, Andreas is revealed to have a lot in common with his half-brother, Rhys. Both have no family but each other, and Andreas admits that he wants a familial connection. Although Andreas antagonizes the main characters of Twisted Games, it eventually becomes clear that the real antagonists of the novel are the social and political pressures that beset the main characters.
Like Andreas, Erhall is shown to be more complex than he originally appears. When Rhys confronts him about his mother, Erhall tells him, “Arranged marriages aren’t only for royals, Mr. Larsen. People have been forced into loveless marriages long before Her Highness was born“ (427). This bleak statement implies that he wanted to do better for Deirdre but was restricted by his own culture’s expectations and rules. However, Erhall’s previous actions prove him to be much more malicious than his other son, Andreas. As a whole, Erhall is an avatar of the forces that work against Bridget and Rhys’s relationship. He represents the archaic and useless traditions of Eldorra and believes that it is not a woman’s place to rule a country. Additionally, he feels that people of lower birth have no place in running a government. He is one of the few characters in the novel who does not receive a happy ending, for his failure to secure his reelection to Parliament can be read as a form of cosmic justice for his past misdeeds. Bridget, who has high moral standards throughout the novel, has no qualms about blackmailing him due to his previous actions. Although Huang includes a sympathetic twist to Erhall’s character toward the end of the novel, he is highly representative of the negative forces at play throughout Twisted Games.
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