OP: My antagonist is an abusive father. There are two innocent eight-year-old changelings whom he has beaten, emotionally manipulated and attempted to kill. However, he only does this because he really fears that have done something terrible to his real sons, and he thinks this is the way to save his real children as he is desperate to bring them back.
Me:
If they are two innocent eight-year old changelings that he's raised since infancy, THEY ARE HIS CHILDREN. It doesn't matter that they're not of his blood.
Analogy: A divorcee, a single father, has been raising and loving his child for eight years. Suddenly, he finds out that his child is in fact the result of an affair between his wife and another man and that, furthermore, his wife, who was secretly pregnant during the divorce, is raising his child by blood with the other man.
He starts to beat up the child that he has raised and loved all these years, and then he sends photographs of the abuse to his wife saying "Give me back my REAL child or I start mailing you fingers of this child that is not mine."
Me: (cont'd)
As a father and a teacher, I will say this:
There is no betrayal greater than to hurt and abuse those who look to you for love and care and protection. And if your antagonist is reduced to hurting those he raised as his own children to get back his "real" children that he has never seen, then he is a monster.
And if he does this because this is the only way he can think of to recover his "real" children, then he is a pathetic scrap of a man.
Fairies took your children? Then take iron and fire and music and tear down their halls and bring your children back. If someone took my child, I would not stop until my child was back or, if that were impossible, that the person who took my child died. And I would fight heaven and hell and everything in between until I could do no more.
But if all a man can do to rescue his children is hurt the innocents who have every right to trust in his love, then not only is he a monster, but he is pathetic.
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