Vicious

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, child abuse, bullying, ableism, and cursing.

“I like to fight. I like the pain. Maybe because it makes it so much easier for me to come to terms with the fact that I’m going to kill you one day. And I will, Daryl. One day, I will kill you.”

Vicious’s self-description in the early pages of the novel, before he and Emilia have even formally met, is only a partial representation of himself and his future. Though he claims to like pain, he gradually recognizes that this claim is a method of coping with physical and emotional abuse. He does, however, kill Daryl later on, just as he predicts here. Understanding his past without self-recrimination becomes a key aspect of Vicious’s emotional arc as he learns to move beyond letting his childhood abuse define him.

“Vicious was vicious. It was too bad that my hate for him was dipped in a thin shell of something that felt like love.”

Emilia reflects on the proximity between love and hate, which she sees not as opposites but as two different manifestations of passion. This logic underpins the trajectory of the bully romance. This understanding helps Emilia reframe Vicious’s actions during their adolescence as originating in obsession, not uncomplicated cruelty.

“She was going to stay small and insignificant. Uneducated and opportunity-less. And above all—mine.”

Teenage Vicious is willing to damage Emilia’s prospects in order to keep her reliant on him. This controlling behavior is characterized by the text as obsession, not love. When Vicious, at the end of the novel, refuses to ask Emilia to damage her career prospects and instead risks his own, it serves as an inversion of this controlling desire. This indicates that Vicious’s change is legitimate and that his love for Emilia is genuine.