The Heroic Legend of Arslan vol. 13

How go the adventures of King Andragoras, currently the most interesting character in the series?  Well, there’s nothing as interesting here as his escape and reunion with his *ahem* loving wife Tahemany in the previous volume.  Andragoras still cuts an imposing figure here as he broods upon his throne and makes life miserable for the captive Duke Guiscard.  Innocentis, Guiscard’s brother and self-centered king of Lusitania, gets the bright idea of dueling Andragoras for Tahemany’s fate, but… it goes about as well as could be hoped for him.  This leads the Parsian King to use Guiscard as a bargaining chip to get out of the capitol and to hook up with his son Arslan and his army.  The thing is, this is all part of the duke’s plan.  Guiscard has seen how Andragoras isn’t exactly happy with his son’s successes and he figures the best way to fracture the Parsian army is via a family reunion.

While this series has made “outsmarting the enemy army” its focus over the past twelve volumes, I have to say that the tricky family drama that has played out over these last two has been a real high point.  There’s an unpredictability to it that plays off of some very human emotions and that has served to really energize the plot.  More so than the threat of the Turanians as the Not-Mongols bear down on Arslan’s forces at Peshawar castle.  Even more so than Gieve trolling Hilmes in a very random encounter as the royal also known as Silver Mask comes across a sacred sword that might also be sealing away a very angry snake god.  Magic and fantasy have been nipping at the fringes of “Arslan” up to this point, and it looks like the stage is set for the narrative to dive headfirst into these elements at some point.  I’m fine with that, so long as it has some of the high emotional drama that is currently flowing through the best parts of the series right now.