The Ballad of Never After

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussions of manipulative or abusive relationships and violence.

The characters of The Ballad of Never After manipulate one another and various situations for their own ends, whether through interpersonal interaction or the effects of curses. Most of the secondary characters in the book manipulate Evangeline, though Evangeline is not always aware that it’s happening. However, after the events of the prequel, Evangeline is predisposed to believe that Jacks is manipulating her. Garber explores the dynamics of manipulative relationships through Jacks and Evangeline such as when he isolates her from others or uses her to open the Valory Arch. In Chapter 10, when Evangeline struggles not to turn into a vampire, Chaos tells her that Jacks wants her to remain human, but Evangeline states that Jacks “just want[s] her to think that he worried as another way to manipulate her” (76). Her explicit awareness of this is unique in the book, which serves as a marker of Jacks’s and Evangeline’s interrelated character developments. Elements of victim blaming are implicit in Jacks and Evangeline’s romantic arc. The novel implies that, when Jacks doesn’t live up to Evangeline’s expectations, Evangeline blames him for not doing something that he never said he would do.