King Maddox Kyronan, or “Ky”, is one of the three main characters in the 2025 elevated romance-fantasy book Warrior Princess Assassin by Brigid Kemmerer. It is the first book in the Braided Fate trilogy.
Ky is the King of Incendar, a warrior and a fire mage desperate to make a pact with neighboring country Astranza in order to gain access to their food supplies to feed both armies for impending war against the territory Draegonis. When meeting to confirm a political marriage to Astranza’s Princess Marjoriana (Jory) to ensure alignment between their nations, he and Jory are kidnapped by Jory’s childhood friend, an assassin named Asher, who reveals that there has been a bounty put on both their heads by an unknown source. This results in an adventure across the continent full of intrigue, hope, faith, and lust.
Ky is an incredibly well-developed character. While he is rumored to be ruthless in battle and uses his fire magic to burn troops alive, in reality he is an intelligent, thoughtful and often selfless man, well-trained in both political intrigue as well as warfare, and wields his deadly magic carefully. He is strong, strategic, smart, observant, protective, loyal, compassionate, and kind both towards his soldiers as well as Jory and Asher. That said, he is not a perfect man. Due to his many years on battlefields and some PTSD, he can be too rash to default into killer warrior mode if someone moves in his vicinity as if they are even remotely about to attack him, so sometimes he does not think things through in the heat of the moment or fully assess a situation before acting.
The reveal and development of Ky’s bisexuality throughout the text is an interesting one. Kemmerer makes the strong choice to have chapters rotate to first-person narratives for each character, so we are reading their innermost and most undeniable thought patterns. This takes the guesswork out of the characters’ attractions to each other. From his earliest meetings with Jory, Ky’s attraction to her beauty and her spirit is readily apparent from the earliest chapters. An easy example of this is in Chapter Nine, which is written from Ky’s point-of-view:
She [Jory] reaches out to trace a finger along the buckle of my bracer. Even through layers of leather and steel, I swear I can feel her touch, and it sends a pulse of warmth throughout my body. I suddenly feel the need to adjust the lacing of my trousers. This is terrible – I need to get it together.
But we also learn in Chapter 16 that Ky is recognizing and acknowledging his attraction to both Jory and Asher as the story progresses:
I need her [Jory] to trust me, because I don’t want her to hate me. It’s more than that, though. It’s about Asher, too. I don’t know how to explain that I simply couldn’t leave him there. Just like I couldn’t leave her there. Individually or together, they’re both intriguing. Compelling. Striking, if I’m being honest with myself. But they’re also exasperating. Complicated. Messy … Something about these two makes all of my protective instincts flare … It settles something inside me to know that I have them both in the carriage, safe and sound.
We also learn in this same chapter that queerness is known, normalized, and accepted amongst Ky’s Incendarian regiment:
I’m not even sure what part of that little bickering match sparked it [my command to stop]. Callum flirts with anyone, and he’s attracted to everyone … Those two [bickering soldiers] will end up grappling in the snow in a moment. They might share a bed together later, but they’ll try to kill each other first.
In Chapter 20, Ky also briefly notes he has had a same-sex lover in the past as well as female lovers, so bisexuality is not new to the King’s psyche or identity.
Then in Chapter 24, Ky notes how his attraction to both Asher and Jory lives in the same space in his heart:
I don’t want to touch him [Asher] again, because I know it makes him anxious. Despite how badly he seems to want it … I think of the slow drag of her [Jory’s] fingers through the scruff of my chin, the way it was almost inquisitive. It stirs something inside me, and I’m surprised to realize it’s not different from how I felt about doing the same thing to him [Asher.]
So in Ky we have a rarity in the romance-fantasy genre — not only a bi man, but a bi man who is secure in his bisexuality, lives and moves in a world where queerness is known and accepted, and respectfully expresses his desires and attractions to both his male and female love interests.