Few things in the history of Darkover have ever surprised me as much—no, that’s not true; everything about the Darkover books has surprised me, but few things have surprised me as much as the popularity of Dyan Ardais. He was invented for the commercial rewrite of the original Sword of Aldones, in which, running the whole thing hurriedly through my typewriter, I invented him by combining three of the spineless villains I invented for Sword, and I have now totally forgotten what the other two were like—even their names. I can only imagine my readers thought Dyan was enough villain for three.
His ghost persisted in walking; first in “The Hawkmaster’s Son,” which I still think better than the original book in which Dyan appeared. This story was written after Dyan made a small but memorable appearance in the rewritten Bloody Sun.
“Oathbreaker” was written to study an always unanswered question about why Dyan Ardais had been dismissed from a Tower. “A Man of Impulse” arose out of a phrase in Sharra’s Exile, in which Dyan, informing Danilo of the existence of his son, justifies himself by saying Danilo had always known he was a man of impulse.
And finally, I think “The Shadow” is the finest of my own short stories; I generally am not infatuated with myself as a short story writer. I wrote this story to tell myself how it was that Danilo and Regis had gone from the affectionate but ambiguous relationship depicted in Heritage to that in Sharra’s Exile. So I could not resist the temptation to present it here.
Dyan has been by far the most popular character I ever invented. Like Spock in Star Trek, fans have been unable to resist the impulse to write stories bedding him down with everybody except the Terran Legate—and I’m not too sure I didn’t read one or two of those in the slush sometime. The popularity of the “Relationship” story in Star Trek fandom was once compellingly explained to me by Diana L. Paxson as the temptation “to be the perfect man and make love to the perfect man.” But then, what is the explanation for all these Dyan Ardais stories? To be the worst man making love to the worst man? Not that Dyan—or even Dom Gabriel Ardais—is the worst.