Rebel Witch: The Search for a Third Path Beyond Tyranny and Persecution
The Thematic Claim: A Third Path Beyond Tyranny and Persecution in Rebel Witch 2024, Kristen Ciccarelli, Crimson Moth #2. The novel stages a confrontation between two forms of oppression and then refuses to let either win. The New Republic's Blood Guard hunts, tortures, and executes witches in the name of order, while Cressida Roseblood's return to power replaces that persecution with an equally brutal authoritarianism—show trials, forced loyalty oaths, and summary executions for anyone who refuses. The novel's central argument is that neither path leads to justice. Instead, the book insists on a third possibility: a world where witches and non-witches govern together as equals, not as conquerors and conquered. This vision is articulated most explicitly by Gideon Sharpe in chapter 61, when he tells the skeptical group gathered at Bart Wentholt's house that the island has known tyranny for too long and that it is time to try something new—a world where everyone can live as equals. The rest of the novel tests whether that vision can survive contact with the fear, hatred, and trauma that both sides carry.
Part One: The Trap of Two Evils. The novel opens with Rune Winters trapped between the two options she believes are the only ones available. Her engagement to Prince Soren Nord is a calculated bargain: she accepts his proposal on the condition that he provide Cressida with an army to wage war on the New Republic. Rune's reasoning, laid out in chapter 10, is grimly pragmatic. If she does not help Cressida seize power, the Blood Guard will keep hunting witches until none remain. The alternative to Cressida, she tells herself, was witches being slaughtered until there were no witches left.
But the novel immediately complicates this calculation. Cressida's rule, once established, proves to be as brutal as the regime it replaces. In chapter 52, Cressida takes the palace and announces that anyone who refuses to swear fealty will be annihilated, with executions beginning at dawn. In chapter 53, the reader sees the consequences: soldiers dragging people from their homes, show trials at dinner, torture for those who refuse to talk, and execution for everyone regardless of whether they cooperate. Rune watches witches who were once hunted become hunters themselves, and she detects a growing unease even among Cressida's supporters.
Meanwhile, the New Republic's cruelty is equally on display. In chapter 31, the new Good Commander, Noah Creed, threatens to cut off a child's hand to force the captured sibyl Aurelia Kantor to reveal information about Cressida's plans. The scene is horrifying: a toddler is brought into the room, her hand pinned to a desk, while her mother begs for mercy. Gideon, himself a prisoner, can only watch. The novel thus establishes that both regimes are willing to sacrifice the innocent to maintain power.
Part Two: Articulating the Third Path. The third path is first named in chapter 61, in a scene that functions as the novel's ideological turning point. Gideon, recovering from gunshot wounds at Bart Wentholt's house, listens as Bart and Antonio describe their decision to live openly together despite the danger—Bart is the son of a retired witch hunter, Antonio is an acolyte, and their relationship would be condemned by both the Republic and Cressida's regime. Gideon responds with a question: What if you could live a full life as you are, without repercussions?
When Bart dismisses this as a fairy tale, Gideon presses forward. He argues that most people are sick of the options they have been handed and that neither a return to witch dynasty rule nor the Republic's authoritarian control is acceptable. Deep down, he insists, people are hungry for something else. Rune, still trapped in her binary thinking, calls him naive. She lists the two possible outcomes: Cressida wins and Gideon is killed, or the Blood Guard wins and she is killed. Those are the only possible outcomes, she insists.
Gideon's reply is the novel's thesis statement: There's a third possible outcome. He acknowledges that the path does not exist yet and that it needs to be forged. This is not naive optimism—Gideon knows the cost. He has spent years hunting witches, and he carries the guilt of his brother Alex's death. But he also understands that the old options have failed everyone. The third path is not a compromise between two evils; it is a rejection of both.
Part Three: Building the Coalition. The third path requires trust between people who have every reason to distrust each other. Chapter 63 dramatizes this difficulty in a single image: at a breakfast table on the island, an invisible line separates witches from patriots. The witches cannot be sure the patriots are not planning to arrest them; the patriots cannot be sure the witches are not secretly loyal to Cressida. Seraphine notes that Cressida's army is also in shambles—half of Soren's soldiers blamed Cressida for the prince's murder and left—but the mutual suspicion remains.
Gideon's strategy is to appeal to shared desire rather than shared history. He tells the group that he knows what the Blood Guard soldiers want, and he bets that the witches want the same thing: safety for themselves and their loved ones, freedom from tyranny and violence, and a world where they can live as equals. The scene is careful not to make this easy. Juniper asks the obvious question: why should witches trust a man who has hunted them for years? Bart raises the same concern from the other side: even if they win, what would stop them from returning to hating each other?
The novel's answer is that trust must be built through action, not promises. Gideon's willingness to risk himself for witches—and Rune's willingness to risk herself for patriots—gradually creates the conditions for cooperation. The alliance that forms is fragile and contingent, but it is real. Harrow, who once served as Gideon's informant and now works for the new Good Commander, embodies the difficulty of shifting loyalties: she has been betrayed by both sides and trusts neither easily.
Part Four: The Third Path Realized. The novel's climax and epilogue show the third path being realized, though not without cost. After Cressida's death, Laila Creed and her soldiers—now calling themselves the Cascadian Army—take control of the Rookery. Laila announces that all witch purging has been outlawed and that no one will be hunted for being a witch. The officers are given three options: enlist under Gideon Sharpe's command, surrender their uniforms and leave, or face imprisonment. The scene is notable for what it does not show: there is no mass execution, no revenge killing, no purge of the purgers.
The epilogue, set three months later, shows the institutional form of the third path. Rune has been elected as a parliamentarian in Cascadia's House of Commons, where thirteen officials were elected—six witches and seven non-witches. The numbers are not accidental: the novel imagines a government where neither group holds a majority, where cooperation is not optional but structural. Rune's anxiety about the role—her fear of disappointing the people who elected her—is a reminder that the third path is not a destination but an ongoing project. Gideon's reassurance, and their shared memory of the casting scars from their wedding, suggests that the personal and the political are intertwined: the same trust that built their relationship is what makes the new government possible.
Character and Symbol Connections. The third path is embodied in the novel's central relationship. Rune and Gideon begin as enemies—she is the Crimson Moth, the witch who rescues her kind; he is the witch hunter who once handed her over to be purged. Their journey from mutual suspicion to partnership mirrors the larger political journey of the novel. When Gideon tells Rune in chapter 3 that the Crimson Moth is no caged thing, he is recognizing something in her that refuses to be defined by either regime's categories. The Crimson Moth itself functions as a symbol of this refusal: a creature that moves between worlds, belonging fully to neither.
Cressida's brand and the true love's curse represent the marks that persecution leaves behind—on bodies and on souls. The novel does not pretend these marks can be erased. But it suggests they can be transformed. The casting scars that Rune and Gideon share at the end of the novel are a different kind of mark: not inflicted by an enemy but created together, through an act of mutual trust.
Dawn's Aria, the song written by Alex Sharpe that plays at the novel's opening, carries a double meaning. It is a song of grief—Rune cannot bear to hear it without breaking down. But it is also a song of hope, associated with the possibility of a new beginning. Alex's ring carries a similar weight: it is a reminder of loss, but also of the promise Alex made Rune keep—to tell Gideon that Alex loved him. That message, delivered at last in the novel's final act, is itself an act of bridge-building across the divide that separates the living from the dead and the witch from the hunter.
Complexity and Contradiction. The novel is careful not to present the third path as easy or inevitable. Rune's skepticism in chapter 61 is not merely stubbornness; it is the hard-won wisdom of someone who has seen both regimes up close. She has watched a mob cheer her grandmother's death, and she has felt Cressida's whip on her own back. Her fear is rational. The novel honors that fear even as it asks her to move beyond it.
There is also a troubling question the novel does not fully resolve: what happens to those who refuse the third path? The epilogue's treatment of Noah Creed—imprisoned, not executed—suggests a commitment to something other than revenge. But the novel does not show what justice looks like for the many people who participated in the purges, or for the witches who eagerly served Cressida. The third path is forged, but its long-term viability remains an open question.
The novel also acknowledges that the third path requires a kind of faith that can feel like naivety. When Gideon says the path does not exist yet and needs to be forged, he is asking people to risk everything on a possibility rather than a certainty. The novel's answer is that the alternatives—Cressida's tyranny or the Republic's persecution—are certainties of a different kind: certainties of suffering. The third path is the only option that offers any hope of something better.
Study Questions and Answers. 1. What is the third path that Gideon proposes, and how does it differ from the two options Rune initially believes are the only possibilities?
The third path is a world where witches and non-witches govern together as equals, rather than one group dominating the other. Rune initially believes the only options are Cressida's authoritarian rule or the New Republic's witch purging. Gideon argues that both are forms of tyranny and that a third possibility—cooperation and equality—can be forged, even though it does not yet exist.
2. How does the novel use the relationship between Rune and Gideon to dramatize the difficulty of building trust across the witch/patriot divide?
Rune and Gideon begin as enemies: she is the Crimson Moth, he is the witch hunter who once handed her over to be purged. Their relationship develops through a series of betrayals and reconciliations, mirroring the larger political challenge of the novel. The breakfast table scene in chapter 63, where an invisible line separates witches from patriots, shows how deep the mutual suspicion runs. Their eventual partnership suggests that trust can be built through shared risk and action.
3. What role does the epilogue play in showing the third path's institutional form?
The epilogue shows the third path realized as a political structure: the House of Commons with thirteen elected officials, six witches and seven non-witches. The near-even split means neither group holds a majority, making cooperation structurally necessary. Rune's anxiety about her new role, and Gideon's reassurance, suggest that the third path is not a finished achievement but an ongoing project requiring continued effort and trust.
4. How does the novel complicate the idea that the third path is simply a compromise between two existing positions?
The third path is not a middle ground between Cressida's rule and the Republic's persecution. It is a rejection of both, based on the recognition that both regimes are willing to sacrifice innocent people to maintain power. The novel shows this through parallel scenes of cruelty: Noah Creed threatening a child in chapter 31, and Cressida's show trials and executions in chapters 52-53. The third path is not a negotiation between these evils but an alternative to them.
5. What does the novel suggest about the cost of forging a third path?
The cost is high. Characters die, including Alex Sharpe, whose death haunts both Rune and Gideon. Rune is imprisoned, whipped, and nearly killed. Gideon is shot and captured. The novel does not romanticize the struggle. But it also suggests that the cost of not forging a third path is higher: the continued cycle of persecution and revenge that has defined the island's history. The epilogue's fragile new government, with its six-and-seven split, is presented as a beginning rather than an ending.