Mercer in Greymoor Academy: The Queen's Son

This Mercer in Greymoor Academy analysis covers chapters 1–273. Full spoilers. Note: the text calls him Mercer Kane, Koen and Black in different chapters; we simply call him Mercer.

Mercer is the first of the four to speak to Maisie with open contempt and the last to forgive her for things she never did. He is also the one who gives the book its best love speech. Everything about him comes back to one relationship: his mother.

The Queen's son

In chapter 24 the book reveals that Mercer is Queen Lysandra's son. The Queen never acknowledged him, and the court called him a bastard; Jericho explains in chapter 38 that he was conceived through a crime against his mother, something the book handles with care and so do we. The court bullied him. Soren's backstory shows him offering Mercer a place at his side when no one else would.

The result is a man trained as the crown's enforcer, loyal to a mother who barely looks at him, and permanently braced for rejection.

Cruel words, careful hands

Early Mercer calls Maisie a wretched Omega who reeks, and says choosing her is charity. But the book keeps showing the other side of him in small actions. After a sparring blow goes too far in chapter 38, he leaves a tin of salve and a note: "For the bruise. It won't happen again." During the heat he refuses her while she is not herself, because it would make him feel too much like his own father. In chapter 62 he stays behind to fight so she can run.

The onion speech

Chapter 154 is Mercer's peak. After the Hunt, still hurt himself, he talks Maisie through treating his wound, then tells her that people have layers like an onion. Some are worth the tears, some are not, and she gets to choose how deep to dig. He wants all of her, her chaos included, or he wants her to leave while he can still let her go. He will not be her distraction.

It is honest, funny and a little frightening, which is Mercer in one scene.

After Samhain

The time skip is hardest on Mercer. He believes the forged letter, which called him his father's son. He believes she ran, and that she ended a pregnancy that might have been his. When he catches her in Utah he is colder than we have ever seen him, and the interrogation in chapters 224–228 is his worst stretch. In the Queen's court he becomes the perfect son again, and appears at events with Tessa on his arm.

The book is clear that he is wrong. It is also clear why he is wrong: he has spent his whole life waiting to be abandoned, and the lie was built for him.

Chapter 271

Everything Mercer has refused to see arrives at once. In chapter 270 he hears Maisie's Lycan tell the Queen she was behind the loss of his child. In chapter 271 he goes to his mother for answers. She cries, tells him she loves him, for the first time in his life, and lies to his face about the Munich doctor who treated Maisie. Mercer knows what she looks like when she lies. He turns on her, and it takes a small army of guards to drag him away.

After 270 chapters of choosing between his mother and his mate, he has chosen.

Our read

Mercer is the most painful of the four to read and, for us, the most rewarding. His cruelty is never excused, but it is always explained, and his tenderness is always real. The question now is what he does with the truth, and whether Maisie can forgive the months he spent believing the worst. We think his reunion with her is the scene the whole book is building towards.

Read more in Queen Lysandra explained, our Soren Black analysis and Recap Part 7.