Matthew West

One of the characters in the Hidden Angels Series uses the name Matthew West from the year 1700 until 1778. This character is the primary causation for the series, and many readers are dissatisfied that I do not have much more about him in the first book. Part of that may come from a misconception that the book is a novel and that Matthew West is the protagonist, or at least the main character. The book was never intended to be about him, but rather about his family members. To put it bluntly, he’s the sperm donor for the series. His main purpose is to spread his genetically engineered seed all over the place and to use his powers to provide advantages for his children and family.

In writing and developing the series over more than seven years before the book was published, I had several friends and relatives read the manuscript. Many of them wanted more of Matthew West. The initial plan for timing of the first four chapters was 1700, 1764, 1767, 1775. The first chapter was “Fallen Angel (1700),” which is much-modified but still exists in the first volume of the series. The next chapter was the chapter in which Enoch West catches the lightning and discovers his power. The third chapter was where Enoch is training his powers and thinking about his siblings’ powers. The fourth chapter was the first battle of the American Revolution where the “Angels” take out a British platoon and capture the rest of the company. Again, this series of short stories within a family saga frame was intended to highlight Matthew West’s descendents, not him.

Why is that? Mainly because he makes a really horrible character from a writer’s perspective. Good characters are supposed to change and grow within a story. Good characters have to get into dilemmas. If a character is practically immortal with eternal youth, already very old, and having personal protection fields that render him invulnerable to outside forces, what’s to make him change or grow? If he’s a million or more years old, is he really likely to change? Wouldn’t he have already grown up and faced his demons as much as he could? So, there cannot be any real physical or outer challenges to him as a character. He’s just too powerful. He does seem to show some internal conflicts. He has a code of ethics, even if it is nothing like most people’s personal codes. In the story “Stasis (1755),” he really hates that it is best for the most people and the world for one of his grandsons to die. He could have saved Saul FitzGoliath (Born James Abraham West), but realizes that such action would take future history on a dangerous path. Instead of letting history take its course and watching his grandson killed through torture, he takes a hand and kills Saul FitzGoliath and several others through a small direct conversion of mass to energy. That is about as conflicted as he gets. Still, I did add more about him and more about what he is doing for his family since the readers wanted it. Yet, readers are still not satisfied.

So, you want to know about Matthew West? In his own mind, he is very logical in his actions and is a nice enough guy. Were you playing poker with him, you might also think he’s a very nice guy. But he does have flaws. One of the flaws is that he is easily bored. This is brought out early in the first volume in “Intrusion (1711).” Something comes up and he decides to meddle in the situation mainly because he’s bored. A second major flaw is that he is not above playing judge, jury, and executioner, as he does in several chapters, such as “Indian Wars (1711)” or “Pirates and Pirate Treasure (1717).” He kills the Creek warriors who were involved in killing the traders in the town of Ocmulgee. He makes it seem as if it is some sort of contest, but think about his powers. If he can withstand falling from the sky in a metal meteoric shell, a knife or axe blade is nothing to him. Who appointed him to judge others? He did, just because he could. He is also manipulative. Some manipulation is to be expected, and there is the old phrase about power corrupting. But are there examples of his using his powers to manipulate people for his own convenience? None that are explicit. On the other hand, what’s really happening in “Fallen Angel (1700)?” Molly notices that every time he touches her, she feels better. Why would a pretty young girl need to feel better? Maybe because her father just died? Maybe because she was not over the death of her mother or any other siblings she may have had earlier in her life? Maybe because the whole village of Native Americans who lived near her have died? As an author, I don’t want this stuff too explicit in the stories, but Matthew West is manipulating her. Yes, he is helping to heal her emotional hurts from being around death her whole lifetime. It is not explicit in the version that was finally published, but he helped her overcome shock, too. But is he doing it for her and her soul growth? Or is he doing it because he would rather be around a smiling, happy, pretty girl rather than a fountain of tears. Another case is where he allows a manipulation in his favor that he is not causing directly. One of his descendants who is an Angel has a power of super-luck, which allows him unconsciously to manipulate his environment in an extreme way for his betterment. When Matthew West is trying to buy an immediate domain and title as Fürst within the Holy Roman Empire, this grandson’s super-luck has manipulated things to make it much easier for Matthew West to get more than he wanted and get it inexpensively. Does he do anything to change this situation? Nope. He rolls with it.

So, what are some of his other traits? Many of these stem simply from his extreme age. As people get older, they tend to become more and more themselves. They stop worrying as much what other people think, and do what they think is right or what pleases them. Being millions of years old, Matthew West is a character, strongly individualistic, and when it comes down to it, doesn’t care much what other people think about him. Part of this is not worrying about status. While he achieves high status, he doesn’t need the trappings of that status. When Strachan and Locker realize that he is the Duke of Avalon, they start to rise. He waves them back down. Likewise he passes this disregard for status on to most of his progeny, so when initially confronted with Strachan and Locker, Tobias West, who is not only by courtesy a British Marquess using his father’s subsidiary title but also a hereditary immediate prince within the Holy Roman Empire, again due to his father’s positions, not only does not mention this, but makes tea for them himself.

As mentioned above, Matthew West does have his own code that he lives by. Much of that code is informed by his past experience. He passes some of these rules onto his progeny as well, especially those descended from him on both sides who are the “Angels” of the series and volume titles. A large part of this code is based around rules that keep him and his powers from being directly noticed by normal people. He tries not to do anything unexplainable in front of others, although he fails at that a few times, such as in “When the Hearth Burns Wild” in the second volume. He puts out the fires and heals the burns of the British military contingent, although he denies having had anything to do with it. He blames it on some unseen “Angel” or Angels who are watching him.

Perhaps this is the first characteristic I should have mentioned, but it’s obvious that this is not his first rodeo. Even in the first chapter, he realizes “that it has happened again.” He has a pattern that establishes itself due to his nature as an extremely hard to kill and powerful eternal. As mentioned in more than one chapter, those with eternal youth have episodes of mental adjustment. The human brain is not made to live for thousands or millions of years. Every once in a while, it needs to reorganize and from the outside it often appears that the individual has gone mad. Most eternals have these episodes on a periodic basis that may be from about 500 to 7,000 years depending on several factors. Intelligence and mental agility contribute to an individual’s having a longer period between episodes. Mental organization is another factor. People who are extremely organized and logical are going to have longer periods between episodes than flighty, sloppy thinkers. Mental organization helps to keep the accumulating information in check. The character known as Matthew West is extremely mentally organized. This is not just because of his age, either. He was born as an outlier, not necessarily a mental mutant, but definitely at the far end of the bell curve. His periodicity is 50,000 years. The episode lasts approximately 2% of the period, so each of his episodes are 1,000 years. He is a very powerful Angel with a wide range of powers. He is very difficult to subdue during his periods, and it usually takes at least 250,000 years in any given universe that he is in before there are enough powerful “Angels” to overpower him. As observed in the very first chapter, when he is overpowered, he has a defense mechanism that will blow him into another place and time, another parallel universe. In some of these universes, treatments are developed which can postpone episodes. So, some universes that he has existed in, he has lived in the same universe for millions of years before something went wrong. Others, such as the one he was blown out of in the first chapter, it was early in his fifth episode (250,000 years) when he was overpowered. Although I do not know if I shall ever get it done and published, I have one volume of the series set almost 100,000 years forward on another planet where he had spent his first episode in this universe and where they are trying to determine if he still exists and will have another episode and come back as “The Mad King” again. He has been resident in at least a dozen universes, most of which have had an Earth and in which he has landed and effected changes to the history we know. In the beginning of the second volume, he dreams about one of these when he showed up in China in 4,000 BCE. In the beginning of the third volume, he’ll be seen in another universe where he changes the outcome of a famous English battle.

Going back to his code of ethics, he does try to avoid killing people. The exceptions are where he is playing judge, jury and executioner, as previously mentioned and in battles. But in incidents with General Woodward or Captain Fox and his crew, he finds ways to avoid actually killing them. A related matter is that he believes in reincarnation. Partially, this helps him assuage his guilt for those he does kill. But he at least believes that he has encountered the same souls multiple times in their incarnations. So, where he does kill in battle or kills a pirate or other criminal, he knows that they are only harmed in the physical world; whereas, their spirits not only survive, but they’ll be back.

Finally, he has an odd and playful sense of humor. It is often also delivered deadpan, so Thomas Ramsey does not know whether West is only making up the story about telling the Appalachee chief about the vampire horses, whether he did tell the chief but was not serious, or whether he was serious about breeding vampire horses. There are several other examples throughout the series where West may be pulling someone’s leg with his stories. Characters are not necessarily to be trusted, especially when they have much to hide.