“One does not know what to expect when becoming a leader. To embark on the leadership path is to set onto a blood-soaked arena, unaware that you are a gladiator.”
The War of Leadership, p. 3
Often, when you are writing a long-form piece of work, you don’t always see or know the themes that are being explored. You think about character and plot and what kind of story you want to write. You think about the beats and the structure and the twists.
Only after the work is done and you can digest it as a whole as a thing external to you, can you recognize the themes that are within. Sometimes it’s another person’s evaluation of your story and their comments that help you see the thematic elements you have been exploring all along, unbeknownst to you.
When I finished The Earthmight War and The War of Leadership, two themes emerged that were pretty clearly in there, but that were so intuitive on my part that I didn’t recognize them as explicit themes: leadership and grief.
This prompted an idea from my marketing consultant to write a series of emails and posts that explore the themes of leadership within both my fiction and my non-fiction books. This is the first in that series that was shared via email and, on a smaller scale, on social media in the Spring of 2026.
And as I thought about that, I also recognized the themes and exploration of grief in both books. In fact, we have sometimes called The Annals of the Last Emissary “a meditation on grief.” I shared some of my reflections on that topic in that email series as well.
Aenguz in The Annals of the Last Emissary and the Narrator/Author in The War of Leadership are both thrust into the world of leadership. One in a fantasy realm and the other in the phantasmic world of modern-day leadership.
Both find themselves as fish out of water. Both are overwhelmed with their sudden responsibilities. And both are confronted by a grief for the life they left behind.
Both are sent on an unconscious quest to get back their lost life by building something new that resembles it in the new world. Along the way, they both find that they cannot evade the inherent grief built into that search.
How have you experienced or witnessed grief as a part of leadership?
Grief can be an inherent part of leadership. Make sure you have spaces and people with whom you can process this as you continue your own journey.
Join Fantasy Fridays (also accessible via the Linktree in my bio) and receive chapter one of Ruinwaster’s Bane: The Annals of the Last Emissary Book One: https://j-jason-hicks.kit.com/177dac1e75
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