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"Mature Content Warning!" |
Sand dan Glokta is a recurring character in The First Law, a fantasy book series written by Joe Abercrombie. He appears as one of the main protagonists in the original trilogy and as a recurring character in the Age of Madness trilogy.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Heinous?[]
- He was an arrogant noble, a jerk and a womanizer before the torture he experienced where he would date many different women and then leave them, not caring how it would reflect on their reputation in society and would often act in an abusive way to people he doesn't like.
- Before the events of the first book, he has already worked for the Inquisition for 6 years which makes him responsible for the oppression, torture and murder of many people.
- He is a serial torturer who tortures his prisoners by using tools such as pliers, clamps, hammers and chisels, nails and screws, knives, choppers, needles, acids and oils, iron sticks which he can use to heat up to and burn the flesh of his captives and many more.
- After his captives confess to the crimes he wants, Glokta sends them to labor camps where they live and work in miserable conditions, are exploited for labor and abused by the people running the camps and many of them die due to starvation, exhaustion or because of the cold weather since all of the camps are located in the northern land of Angland. He also sends their entire families there including the children. Many of the captives who are sent there are actually innocent but were framed by Glokta for crimes they didn't commit.
- Glokta starts his first scene by torturing Rews into giving a confession for hiding taxes and then he sends him to a camp in Angland.
- During an exchange with Practical Severard, it is revealed that Glokta sometimes drowns his prisoners in the sewers depending on his mood. The only reason why he spares Rews' life is because he wants him to suffer in a camp.
- Under Arch Lector Sult's orders, he tortures an innocent man into confessing that he is hiding taxes by cutting off the fingers of one of his hands with a chopper. After this, he sends him to a camp along with his wife and children.
- He tortures a contract killer by pulling out some of his teeth to give a confession.
- He kidnaps a wealthy merchant by killing one of his bodyguards and threatens him with torture unless he gives a confession for hiding taxes and gives a testimony in front of the Court.
- Because of his actions, all the members of the Guild of Spicers are arrested to be tortured by the Inquisition, the entire Guild is dissolved and their wealth is taken by the Inquisition.
- When his boss, Arch Lector Sult, wants to find a way to get rid of Bayaz and his companions, Glokta suggests that they should kill them and make it look like an accident which Sult declines.
- In Dagoska he tortures Inqusitor Harker to test if he knows anything about the murder of the previous Superior of Dagoska. He pulls out his nipples with pliers and threatens him with even more torture.
- When Glokta arrests the conspirators, he decides to torture one of them, Korsten dan Vurms, to death and then puts his head on a spike.
- He cuts off the ear of a Gurkhish embassador he had captured and threatens that he would cut off every single body part unless he gets the information he wants.
- He tortures a teenage Eater, Shickel, and then burns her alive. However, in this case, she tried to eat him before that and she is also immune to pain, so she didn't feel any pain from Glokta's torture.
- When the King and his son die and the nobles of the union need to vote for a new King, Glokta visits a lot of them in order to get votes for his boss, Arch Lector Sult. He threatens them, blackmails them and bribes them to ensure their votes for the elections. On one occasion, he threatens a man that the Inqusition would investigate his illegal activities and then he and his entire family along with his three teenage daughters would be sent to a camp. Glokta also mocks him at the prospect that his daughters would be raped by the other inmates at the camp.
- He kills a lawyer who was also trying to win votes for his boss, Marovia. Though in this case, the lawyer was the one who tried to kill Glokta first.
- He tortures a Navigator, Brother Longfoot, to answer his questions. He threatens that he would crush both his legs with a hammer repeatedly unless he answers to the questions and he would continue with the upper part of the body and he crushes one of Longfoot's feet twice when he tries to lie.
- Under the orders of his booss, Arch Lector Sult, he tortures an embassador into giving a false murder confession by piercng his body with hot needles. The embassador is subsequently executed in a torturous way after said confession.
- When Arch Lector Sult starts prosecuting all the Gurkhish popuation of the city during the war with the Gurkhish Empire, Inquisitor Glokta joins the event to pretend that he is doing some work. He would torture a random person and then force him to name 5 random people as spies. then Glokta would kidnap those 5 random people as well and torture them into confession and then force each of them to name 5 more people. For only a few days Glokta has tortured so many people that he has an entire bucket full to the brim with human teeth.
- He kills his two Practicals, Frost and Severard, after torturing the later by chopping off the fingers on one of his hands.
- He nails Goyle's hands to a table by using nails and hammer. He then forces information out of him by threatening that he would put nails in the space which is located between his two legs and between his ass and penis because it's very painful. He then sacrifices Goyle's life to save himself by pushing on the path of a crossbow arrow.
- After he discovers that Queen Terez is a lesbian and doesn't want to sleep with her husband or give him any heirs, Glokta kidnaps her lover and threatens Terez that he would allow his men to gang rape her unless she starts sleeping with her husband.
- After arresting his former boss, Sult, Glokta decides to keep him alive in the dungeons beneath The House of Questions to torture him for entertainment and for revenge.
- After Glokta takes over the Inquisition, he continues to torture, kill and send to labor camps many people to preserve his power. Glokta also starts working for the First Magi, Bayaz, and enacts his will as his agent even though he knows that a lot of the bad things that have befallen the Union were caused by Bayaz.
- Thirty years later, Glokta creates two movements called the Burners and the Breakers and inspires unrest among the common folk to create an uprising which would allow him to put his daughter on the throne. Said uprising devastates the entire Union and causes the deaths of thousands of people.
What Makes Him Inconsistent?[]
- He has a Freudian Excuse because during a war with the Gurkhish he loses his entire squad that he was leading and he gets captured alive by the enemy and was brutally tortured for over 2 years and this is portrayed sympathetically by the narrative. Due to the brutal torture he has lost his job as a Colonel and all of his friends abandoned him and he suffers from depression. The only friend who hadn't truly abandoned him is Colonel West, but Glokta's mother who doesn't like West, sends West away when he comes to visit Glokta and then she lies to her son that West never visited him which makes Glokta even more bitter. He also suffers from many handicaps due to the torture - half of his teeth are missing, he is limping with one of his legs and needs to use a cane, he has a hunch and he constantly feels pain on different parts of his body. Aside from physical tortures, there were also instances where Glokta was forced to lie in a hole with limited space and the guards pissed over him and forced him to drink it. His Freudian Excuse is brought up a lot by both himself and the text and he has many insecurities stemming from it to the point where he wouldn't qualify as NPE even if that was his only prevention. While it is shown that he was a jerk to many people and a womanizer even before his torture, he wasn't a torturer and didn't murder people, except enemy soldiers during war, thus his Freudian Excuse still holds up strongly. Many characters in-universe feel sympathy for him over his torture and the miserable life he is forced to lead as a result of it and everyone agrees he didn't deserve it.
- He suffers from insecurities due to his life experience. He doesn't trust other people because he thinks they would betray him and doesn't make friends for that reason, he thinks of himself as a "monster" because of his overall appearance and the things he has done and thinks he doesn't fit into society, feels pity and loathing for himself and also believes that Ardee West deserves someone better than him.
- He cares for a number of people in his life:
- He cares about his two Practicals, Frost and Severard, and sees them as the closest thing his has to friends. When the two of them turn against him and Glokta kills them, he is still sad over their deaths and wonders why they would do something like that.
- Glokta cares about his friend, Colonel West. He is genuinely sad when he thinks that West has abandoned him like his other friends. When he finds out his mother had lied to him, Glokta is relieved and restores his friendship with West and promises to look after his sister, Ardee West. Glokta is also sad when his friend dies from a desease.
- Glokta starts caring about Ardee West, falls in love with her and proposes a marriage to her to save her life from the assassins that might try to kill her otherwise.
- He starts caring about Ardee's daughter, to see her as his own daughter, saves her life while she is still unborn, teaches her how to be more ruthless and even helps her win the throne.
- He sometimes feels deep remorse about his actions and even considers redeeming himself and becoming a better person even though he never actually redeems himself.
- He has a lot of Pet the Dog moments throughout the books such as:
- He sympathizes with the plight of the people of Dagoska and tries to improve their lives. Even if it's mostly done for self-serving purposes because he needs their support to hold the city, it's shown that he still feels disgusted by how the rich people treat them and when he has to flee the city and thinks the Gurkish are going to slaughter them, he feels responsible for their fate and blames himself.
- He spares the life of Carlot dan Eider on two occasions even tough on the first occasion he risks his own life. The reason for this is because he has a crush on her.
- He allows Vitari to go with him and saves her life because he feels bad when she starts crying. When he learns that she has little kids she cares about, Glokta drops a few tears.
- He feels bad when the Council decides to leave General Vissbruck behind and defend Dagoska against the Gurkish and gives him advice to end his life instead of allowing himself to be captured by the Gurkish and be tortured.
- When his boss orders him to torture an innocent man, Glokta feels bad about the deed and vouches for the man. He still ends up torturing a false confession out of the person but feels bad about it.
- When he is about to torture the dentist who tried to fix his teeth several years prior, Glokta changes his mind at the last moment and allows him to confess without the use of torture which is something he rarely does and this could indicate that Glokta is grateful to the dentist for his effort to fix his mouth.
- He allows Longfoot to go free after he gets the information he needs from him because he doesn't need him anymore.
- Even though he hates Jezal, he is still sympathetic to him on a few occasions and gives him some good advice.
- Even though he was the one who sent Rews to a labor camp, he still shows respect to him when Rews reveals himself to have survived and tries to kill Glokta. He even offers Rews a job at the Inquisition.
- He gives advice to Vick dan Teufel not to blame herself for betraying her brother's prison rebellion to buy her own freedom when he sees that she is tormented by that.
- In general, whenever Glokta is suffering in the story or faces any challenges, it's played for sympathy. He often faces people who are presented as jerks, unsympathetic or downright villainous by the text like Arch Lector Sult to make Glokta seem more likeable in comparison.