Unlikely Heroes – Adrina, Seth, Vilmos & the Power of Change
By Robert Stanek
In every story worth telling, the characters come first.
They are the soul of the world. The heartbeat beneath the plot. The ones who don’t always know what they’re doing, but keep going anyway—because they must.
When I created Ruin Mist, I didn’t want perfect heroes. I didn’t want destined champions or flawless swordsmen. I wanted people—flawed, uncertain, powerful in ways even they didn’t understand yet.
So I gave the story to three of them:
Adrina. Seth. Vilmos.
And they’ve carried it ever since.
Adrina – The Princess Who Refused to Stay Silent
Adrina is the kind of character traditional fantasy didn’t want in 2001.
She’s royal, yes—but not safe. Not docile. Not decoration.
When we meet her, she’s grieving the loss of her mother and drowning in expectations she never chose. Her world tells her to marry well, smile often, and stay out of politics.
She chooses none of it.
Instead, she listens. Questions. Learns. Then acts—on instinct, on empathy, on truth.
What makes Adrina revolutionary isn’t that she breaks the mold—it’s that she outgrows it. She doesn’t need a sword to be strong. Her power is in her heart, her mind, her refusal to accept silence as safety.
And yes, she makes mistakes. She gets hurt. But she doesn’t stop.
In many ways, she was the first fantasy heroine I’d ever written that I believed in—not as a symbol, but as a person.
Readers—especially young women—found themselves in her.
That’s what scared the gatekeepers the most.
Seth – The Guardian Who Saw Too Much
Seth was never meant to be a hero. Not in the traditional sense.
He isn’t noble. He isn’t righteous. He isn’t even sure he wants to be on the side he’s on.
Seth lives among the Elves of the Red Order, sworn to protect the Queen Mother—but loyalty to power has never sat easy with him. He knows what others refuse to admit: that things aren’t as they seem. That kingdoms lie. That loyalty has a cost.
He’s a rogue not by choice, but by necessity.
And that’s what makes him dangerous.
Seth doesn’t fight because he believes in a grand cause. He fights because he sees the truth—and once you see it, you can’t go back.
Readers loved him for that. Not because he was flawless, but because he carried the burden of knowing. In a world built on secrets, Seth was the one who saw the cracks—and stepped through them anyway.
He’s not a knight. He’s not a prince.
He’s something rarer: a reluctant hero with nothing to prove but everything to protect.
Vilmos – The Boy They Feared Before He Spoke
Vilmos is perhaps the most personal character I’ve ever written.
He’s young. Isolated. Raised in a village that barely tolerates him. His father is gone. His future is unclear. His mind burns with something he can’t explain.
Sound familiar?
He doesn’t know he’s magical.
He just knows that he’s different—and the world hates him for it.
That’s not a fantasy plot. That’s real life for too many kids.
Vilmos doesn’t want power. He wants to feel safe. He wants to belong. He wants to stop being afraid of what he is.
But Ruin Mist won’t let him hide. It forces him to confront who he might become—good or bad—and whether he’ll have a choice in the matter.
Vilmos resonated deeply with readers because his power wasn’t heroic. It was honest. It scared him. It scarred him. But it also let him dream.
And in a world that outlawed magic, dreaming was rebellion.
The Thread That Binds Them
What ties Adrina, Seth, and Vilmos together isn’t destiny. It’s resistance.
- They resist what the world tells them they have to be.
- They resist roles that don’t fit.
- They resist silence, shame, and surrender.
And in doing so, they give readers permission to do the same.
Adrina shows us that leadership isn’t about lineage—it’s about voice.
Seth reminds us that seeing clearly is dangerous—but necessary.
Vilmos teaches us that fear and magic often live in the same room—and both deserve respect.
They aren’t tropes.
They aren’t placeholders.
They are people—written with care, trauma, growth, and love.
They didn’t come to save the world.
They came to survive it.
And maybe—if they’re lucky—to change it.