The Masks We Wear: Identity and Deception in The Devils

The Thematic Claim

In The Devils, identity is never a fixed, innate truth; it is a performance shaped by necessity, ambition, and audience expectation. Deception is not merely a vice but a survival skill and a mechanism of power. The novel argues that when enough people believe a lie, it becomes reality — sometimes with dangerous, sometimes with redemptive consequences. Through a cast of characters who hide, invent, or inherit false selves, Joe Abercrombie explores the transformative and corrosive power of pretending to be someone else.

Three Acts of Performance

1. The Princess from the Gutter

The most literal transformation belongs to Alex, first introduced as a swindler and thief fleeing debt collectors. Cornered in a fish market, her life is upended when Duke Michael declares her Princess Alexia Pyrogennetos, heir to Troy. She accepts her new identity in an instant — a survival instinct honed on the streets.

But this deception requires more than a title. In Chapter 22: The Magic of Deportment, Baron Rikard teaches Alex to walk, speak, and carry herself like royalty. He drills her on posture (head light, shoulders back, pelvis tilted), her voice, even her smile. “You are a swan, not a seagull,” he insists. Alex asks, “This can’t be natural,” and he replies, “Only because you… have been kept in a sack for seventeen years.”

The training works. During one session, Alex transforms her bearing and voice so convincingly that Brother Diaz is astonished. “I almost believe you myself!” the baron says. The line echoes the core theme: belief is the engine of deception. Alex’s performance becomes indistinguishable from reality. Later, she even lands a punch on the sorcerer Balthazar with “regal authority,” showing that the mask has begun to wear her as much as she wears it.

Yet the impersonation carries a cost. Alex struggles to remember who she was — “I’m shit at this!” she snaps, crumpling her handwriting practice. The performance demands constant attention, and the line between actress and princess blurs. She does not simply pretend; she becomes.

2. The Vicar of Expediency

Brother Eduardo Diaz, too, is a performer. In Chapter 1, he appears as a pious monk racing to the Pope, but his internal monologue reveals greed and lust. He prays only to save face. When Cardinal Zizka inducts him into the secret Chapel of the Holy Expediency in Chapter 3, Diaz must adopt a new role: the ruthless pragmatist who uses devils to fight devils.

He protests, “My thing is really … mostly … bureaucracy,” but Zizka ignores him. To fight evil, she says, you must use evil weapons. Diaz agrees with a watery smile: “To do good. Whatever the hell that means.” He is playing a part he does not believe in, yet the part demands action. He commands the congregation of misfits (Jakob, Baptiste, Balthazar, Alex) and is forced to lead them through violence and moral compromise.

Diaz’s deception is self-deception. He tells himself he is still a good man serving the Church, but the evidence — leading a team that includes a necromancer and a vampire, lying to allies, participating in a raid — shows otherwise. His performance as vicar reshapes his reality. By the end of the novel, in Chapter 71, Alex questions whether saints or devils saved her, and Diaz suggests the devils were tools chosen by Saint Beatrix. He rationalizes the performance to maintain his own identity.

3. The Sorcerer’s Subterfuge

Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi embodies the theme through magical deception. As a proud necromancer bound by the Pope’s spell (a red line on his wrist, seen in Chapter 25), he poses as a loyal member of Diaz’s team while secretly plotting escape. His ritual in the illusionist’s house in Venice (Chapter 23) is actually an attempt to break the papal binding, not to help the team.

Balthazar’s deception is twofold: he lies to others about his intentions, and he lies to himself about his control. When Alex punches him and forces his submission, his performance crumbles. “I obey, I submit, ever your humble servant,” he sobs, vomiting from the binding’s backlash. The person he pretended to be — the patient, clever wizard — is replaced by a desperate schemer humiliated.

The illusionist’s house itself is a metaphor for deception: a space folded upon itself, warded by flies and putrefaction, where the same dining room appears repeatedly. To navigate it, the team must identify the false pattern and break the illusion. Balthazar’s expertise with runes is useless because he cannot see his own self-deception.

Symbols of Concealment and Reveal

Several symbols reinforce the identity-and-deception theme:

The Papal Binding (Red Line on Wrist): The brown streak on Balthazar’s wrist, singed when he tries to break it (Chapter 25), represents the constraint of his true nature. It is a mark of servitude that he must perform loyalty to survive. The binding’s physical pain when he lies underscores that deception is not free — it comes with consequences.
The Split-Coin Pendant: Although not directly quoted in the supplied evidence, this symbol (listed in the symbols page) likely represents the two-faced nature identity: two halves that together make a whole, but each half is incomplete. It works as a metaphor for Alex’s divided self — thief and princess — and for Diaz’s priestly facade versus his ambition.
The Magic of Deportment: Not a physical object but a symbolic practice. Baron Rikard’s lessons treat identity as a set of mechanical adjustments — head, shoulders, voice — that can be learned. The process makes explicit that identity is manufactured, not found.
The Illusionist’s Warding: The fly-based folding of space in Venice (Chapter 23) stands for the lies we tell to protect ourselves. The team must break the enchantment to reach the truth, just as each character must strip away their own performances to confront who they really are.

Complexity and Contradiction

The theme is not presented as simple “be yourself” morality. Performance can be both liberating and corrupting. Alex’s impersonation gives her power she could never have as a street thief — but it also saddles her with imperial responsibilities and dangers. Diaz’s hypocrisy allows him to act in a corrupt system, yet he suffers crises of conscience. Even the honest characters — like Mother Beckert (introduced in Chapter 72) — are shown as rigid, and their uncompromising stances may cause harm.

The greatest contradiction lies in the ending: after all the deceptions, Alex visits Father Diaz in the chapel and suggests that perhaps the devils were chosen by Saint Beatrix. If a saint can work through lies and sinners, then deception itself may be a holy tool. The novel refuses to condemn performance; instead, it asks what a performance achieves.

Study Questions and Answers

How does Alex’s impersonation of Princess Alexia transform her sense of self? Does she lose her true identity? Alex begins as a survival liar, but the training in deportment and the reactions of others reshape her. She adopts the princess’s mannerisms so thoroughly that she even thinks and acts with “regal authority.” However, she never fully forgets her origins; her moments of doubt and her final question to Diaz suggest that identity remains a tension between performance and memory. She does not lose a fixed self — she gains a new one, built on the ruins of the old.
Brother Diaz prays for deliverance but also schemes for advancement. Is he a hypocrite or a pragmatist? Both. Diaz is a hypocrite in that he claims piety while acting from ambition, but he is also a pragmatist who accepts the Chapel of the Holy Expediency because he sees no other choice. The novel does not let him off easily: his final rationalization (that devils may be saints’ instruments) shows a man who has learned to justify his lies to himself. He is a cautionary example of how performance can corrupt the performer.
Balthazar’s attempt to break the Pope’s binding fails when he vomits and submits. What does this say about the limits of deception? The binding is a physical mark of a larger truth: Balthazar cannot escape the consequences of his past crimes and his reliance on others. His deception — pretending to be a loyal tool — fails when his body rebels. The scene shows that some lies are too heavy to sustain alone, especially when power structures (the Church, the binding) enforce a form of honesty through pain.
How does the illusionist’s house represent identity as a performance? The house is a physicalized lie — a space that loops back on itself, disguising the same room as many. The flies and rotten food are sensory tricks that cause the characters to perceive a false reality. To navigate, they must see through the deception, just as they must see through each other’s masks. The house is a metaphor for the world of The Devils, where every identity is an enchantment.
Does the novel ultimately celebrate deception or condemn it? It does neither simplistically. Deception is shown as a necessary skill in a corrupt world — Alex uses it to survive, Diaz uses it to maintain power, Balthazar uses it to attempt freedom. But there are costs: pain, humiliation, loss of self. The ending, with Alex and Diaz in the chapel, leaves the judgment open. The only certainty is that performance matters. Reality is not given; it is made, moment by moment, by the roles we choose to play.