YMMV / Protector of the Small

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Kel believes Neal has no idea that during her page years she had a big awkward crush on him, and it's true that she's quite stoic and determined to ignore her feelings. But he's keenly perceptive of people and quickly picks up Cleon's interest in her when they're all squires, though he never comments, which seems odd because Kel often describes him as unable to hold his tongue or refrain from poking at people. He might have known and feigned obliviousness.
• Base-Breaking Character: Keladry herself tends to be either people's absolute favorite or least favorite. It's not that people hate her, but some find her personality dull compared to the more fiery heroines of the other books, and (immortal creatures aside) her foes aren't as fantastical. However, her fans love her for precisely those reasons, finding her struggles eminently relatable and admiring her intensely level-headed personality in the face of endless adversity.
• Complete Monster:
  • Vinson of Genlith was already a bully in Joren's gang, but we learn in Page that he's also a sexual predator, attempting to rape Lalasa. In Squire, the Chamber of the Ordeal forces him to confess to raping two commoner women and beating a third by inflicting on him the injuries he inflicted on them; the text describes numerous ugly cuts and bruises occurring on his body. Even then, he doesn't have any remorse and tries to blame them for somehow inciting him to attack.
  • Blayce the Gallan from Lady Knight is a small, cruel man with a magical aptitude in Necromancy. Booted from the City of the Gods by his superiors out of disgust for the way he used his talent, he turned to Tortall's northerly neighbor, Scanra, and swore himself to the newly crowned King Maggur. Offering his services in exchange for land and wealth, he hires a band of mercenaries to both protect himself and enforce his rule over the village overlooked by the keep Maggur gave him. Revelling in the power his position has given him, he goes a step further by having the villagers' children forcibly taken from their families, and flayed and tied to a wall until death claims them if they try to rescue them. When the children are brought to him, he has them bathed, touching them inappropriately, promises they will be given luxury and kindness under him only to have their souls sucked out of their bodies, entrapping them within monstrous mechanical devices that he provides to the Scanran militia. When Blayce runs out of children in his own backwater village, he resorts to having the Tortallan refugees sheltered under Keladry of Mindelan captured, intending to use their children to continue powering his devices. Blayce's monstrosity is highlighted in the disgust the villagers have for him, knowing that he specifically uses minors not out of pragmatism, but out of the enjoyment it gives him to manipulate their innocent naivety and the pedophilic undertones in his physical intimacy with the children. A remorseless, cowardly and sociopathic murderer, Blayce and the men he employs repulse Kel so much that she leaves their corpses to be desecrated by Stormwings, even when most enemies she'd faced had been given proper funeral rites.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the fourth book, Kel ends up the head of a combination refugee camp and fortress by the name of Haven. The camp is in a cold, mountainous region of the world, and is beset by fearsome, eldritch creatures. Come 2014, history repeats (up to and including random scenes of singing).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Squire hints that Kel will eventually have an honest duel against Joren, with the concept even being teased at Lalasa's trial. Nothing ever comes off it. Joren is killed by the Chamber of the Ordeal in the latter half of Squire with Kel getting over his death fairly quickly.

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