Annotate with Me: If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

Happy Wednesday, everyone! I hope that you’re doing well and staying safe! This week, I’m bringing you another Annotate with Me post, and this time I’m highlighting my favorite book — If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio!

I did annotate a copy of If We Were Villains earlier this year, but I did so before I really started to develop my process for annotating, so, I wanted to try again with my more specific and detailed system. I also thought this was the perfect time to do so because I’ve (unintentionally) reread If We Were Villains on September 14th for the last two years — so it made sense to do a reread and re-annotation this month!

This post is basically all spoilers — I can’t really get into the nitty gritty parallels, influences, and foreshadowing without doing so — so if you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend reading it and then checking this post! Okay, it’s gonna be a long one, friends, so get comfy, grab some tea, and let’s get started!

Shakespeare has an immense influence on If We Were Villains, and really, he is the most important character in the book. One of my favorite things about the book is how seamlessly his works and language are woven into the story. Something that I think Rio did particularly well was using the four main Shakespeare plays mentioned in the book — Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and King Lear —- as mirrors and foreshadowing for the events of the book,  which is what I am going to be discussing and analyzing!

There is so much foreshadowing and so many parallels throughout the book and if I pointed them all out, I think this post would verge on Les Mis territory, so I’ll just be pointing out some of my favorite moments!

Julius Caesar

Obviously many Shakespeare stories are referenced in If We Were Villains and there are influences from all of them shown in the storytelling, but none more so than Julius Caesar — although as the title of the book comes from King Lear, you could also make an argument for Lear, but we’ll get there —- and I think if you know Julius Caesar well, you can really pick up much of the foreshadowing throughout the book.

The most clever use of foreshadowing, in my opinion, and actually my favorite piece of foreshadowing in the book comes on page fifteen. Our seven thespians are preparing for their Caesar auditions and speculating about casting when Alexander says that he can call the cast list before they’ve even auditioned. 

Alexander pushed his unruly black curls back from his face and said, “Well, obviously, Richard will be Caesar”

“Because we all secretly want to kill him?” James asked.

Richard arched one dark eyebrow. “Et tu, Bruté?”

“Sic semper tyrannis,” James said, and drew the tip of his pen across his throat like a dagger. This always to tyrants”

Alexander gestured from one of them to the other. “Exactly,” he said. “James will be Brutus because he’s always the good guy,”

Upon the first read, this seems like a completely innocent conversation. It’s a bunch of actors discussing casting possibilities, and friends (and sometimes rivals) making jokes with one another —, but if you take a closer look you realize that we’ve been told which character is going to die, and which character kills them. 

The first time I read If We Were Villains, the reveal that James was the one to hit Richard which led to his death shocked me. Then, I thought back to this scene and realized that we had the answer all along. I truly love this very subtle moment of foreshadowing that sets up the rest of the book.

I definitely have my fair share of issues with the teachers, Frederick and Gwendolyn, but another one of my favorite foreshadowing moments takes place in Frederick’s class. Frederick brings up a very important point,

“Which is more important? That Caesar is assassinated, or that he is assassinated by his intimate friends?”

That’s not only another clue as to what Richard’s fate is, but it’s also the question of the book. Is it more important that Richard dies, or that his friends (including his girlfriend) let him die? Richard dying at James’ hands while they’re performing Julius Caesar (as Caesar and Brutus respectively) blurs the lines between fiction and reality. It also causes many moments of turmoil, secrecy, grief, and madness, which are all central themes in most of Shakespeare’s plays, especially his tragedies.

Macbeth

One of my favorite scenes in the book is the Halloween performance of Macbeth in Act 1, Scene 12. Besides the fact that Macbeth is (probably) my favorite of Shakespeare’s tragedies and the fact that the entire performance is completely atmospheric, I also love it because it’s the scene that really sets the entire book’s plot in motion.

After they’re assigned their roles in Macbeth, Richard’s character completely shifts. Instead of getting cast in the title role as he expects, he’s cast as the Apparitions — typically they are three separate apparitions but in this case, all three apparitions are played by Richard. It’s a huge hit to his ego which causes him to lash out, both verbally and physically, at the other fourth years.

The Macbeth casting is a huge catalyst for Richard’s imminent death — and it’s a clever bit of foreshadowing in the Macbeth performance for him to play characters that haunt James, in addition to him playing Caesar, who also appears as a ghost, as he haunts them after his death.

Through his narration, Oliver says that James “was too spotless to talk or blood and murder”, which is why throughout the entire story, Oliver never suspects James of being the murderer until he finds the boat hook under his bed. He really puts James up on a pedestal and is so infatuated with him that he can’t picture him doing anything so cruel or violent. This small moment of Oliver saying that he couldn’t imagine James performing a speech like this is a nod to what’s coming. 

Additionally, James is cast as Macbeth, who has multiple fits of madness after the death of Duncan, which is a great foreshadowing of what he will go through from Act 3 through the end of the book because of Richard’s death.

Romeo and Juliet

When you think of Shakespeare and a tragic love story, the first show to come to mind is Romeo and Juliet — and you could absolutely call the love story between Olivier and James tragic. I love how throughout the story, the characters have realizations and epiphanies while listening to or speaking Shakespeare’s words. One of the best examples of this is during the Christmas Masque (another Dellecher event that I would love to participate in) performance of Romeo and Juliet at the end of Act 3.

As a reader, it’s fairly clear to us all that Oliver is in love with James — it may be more clear to me as I’ve read this book around 15 or 16 times at this point, but I do remember believing this the first time I read it as well — and the other characters know it as well. The only people who don’t know it are Oliver and James, but the Romeo and Juliet performance changes everything.

One of my favorite moments in this scene is when James first enters as Romeo and Oliver is simply mesmerized. He says that he feels this strange sense of pride and possessiveness and he feels as though he needs to keep James’ attention throughout the entire scene, and that he’ll somehow lose him if he loses his attention. It’s not dissimilar to Benvolio in the sense that Benvolio is trying to get Romeo to stop going on and on about a new girl (because Romeo is totally the dude who falls in love with a new girl every few weeks), but the difference is that Benvolio is doing so because it’s tired of Romeo’s antics and figures he’ll have moved on to a new girl next week, Oliver is doing so because he doesn’t want James to focus on anyone other than him.

The context of “be ruled by me, forget to think of her” here is completely different from its original context, and not only because Oliver said the lines too soon. You see the importance of that line at the end of the scene when he’s watching James and Wren as Romeo and Juliet — side note, Wren playing Juliet is what she deserves. As Oliver watches James and Wren, he finally admits to himself (or at least starts to) what he’s been denying for so long. His feelings for James go deeper than friendship and I think it’s brilliant that Rio had this revelation happen through and during Shakespeare’s text.

Okay, I’ll be completely honest, I’m probably reaching a bit on this one, but I do think that there is a small parallel between Meredith playing the Prince of Verona, and the James and Oliver comparison to Romeo and Juliet. When you really think about it, Meredith is the one in the middle of Oliver and James’ relationship — Oliver never can seem to decide between Meredith or James, and it ends up hurting them all. You could compare that to Verona being caught in the middle of Romeo and Juliet’s love story and how at the end of everything, Verona is still standing, but Romeo and Juliet are no longer able to be together.

Additionally, the last line in Romeo and Juliet is said by the Prince, and that line is “Never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” 

Again, I could be completely reaching, but I think intentionally or not, there is a little parallel there that I didn’t pick up on until my reread back in May.

King Lear

In Act 1, Scene 11 James admits that he fully immerses himself into a character when he’s playing them but sometimes can’t leave them behind and has a hard time finding himself again, this is never more evident than when he’s playing Edmund in King Lear and I loved the use of Edmund’s character as a way to reflect what James was feeling and going through. There is also a small parallel between James/Oliver’s relationship and Edmund/Edgar’s, which I thought was really well done. 

This Edgar monologue that Oliver is rehearsing is very representative of what James was going through. The weight of keeping the secret of what he did to Richard is really starting to weigh on him — and as he is partially a method actor, Edmund’s ambition and manipulation tactics are messing with his mind. James’ suffering is magnified by the fact that he’s keeping the truth to himself; sure, Filippa knows, but he’s still keeping it a secret from Alexander, Wren, Meredith, and most importantly, Oliver. 

To me, this is one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the book, as we really see how tortured James is by what he’s done. He uses a mash-up of different lines from Lear to try to tell Oliver what he’s going through without saying it outright — using the Fool’s line from Act 1, Scene 4 and then skipping ahead to a scene between Edmund and Edgar. Do I think that James is positive that this will get through to Oliver and he can inadvertently tell him the truth? Not necessarily, but I do think that this is James revealing as much as he can at the time. 

This scene isn’t only significant because this is when the book title appears, but it’s also important because this monologue really sums up the book and one of its important questions. Do things happen to us because of fate or free will? In this monologue, Edmund is not only acknowledging that we have free will, but also that we alone are responsible for our actions. Throughout the course of the novel, the six of them try to brush off some of the responsibility for Richard’s death by making it clear that they didn’t kill him, they just let him die. I love that this scene takes place after Oliver has found the boat hook, but before he’s heard the full story from James.

Throughout King Lear, Edgar is fooled by Edmund because his honesty and dignity prevent him from believing that his brother would ever lie to him, just as Oliver believes the same of James. So, at this moment, since Oliver has found the boat hook but has not heard the full story from James, he doesn’t know how to handle this horrible truth that he’s discovered. The realization that James is not the epitome of goodness and gentleness that he has believed him to be. Additionally, I love that Edmund’s death scene also works as an apology from James to Oliver for keeping this secret from him — it’s all so well done, and I love how intertwining James’ confession and apology with the scenes from Lear adds another layer of complexity.

I well and truly could talk about this book for hours and what I really love is that no matter how many times I’ve read it, I find new things in the story, and see things from a new perspective. I loved working on this post, and if you’ve stuck around and read the whole thing, thank you so much!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on If We Were Villains — share them in the comments!