Warning: SPOILERS for Shadow and Bone season 1 and the books ahead.
Shadow and Bone's General Kirigan, a.k.a. the Darkling, has had a long a shadowy past and both his origins and history as the Black Heretic must be explained. Based on Leigh Bardugo's best-selling Grisha trilogy and Six of Crows duology, the Netflix adaptation of Shadow and Bone has done a fantastic job of weaving multiple stories and characters together. While the world of the Grishaverse crisscrosses an ocean and involves multiple countries and kingdoms, the main story is centered around and in the kingdom of Ravka, a Tsarist Russia-inspired nation of war, religion, and strife.
The main source of that strife is the Shadow Fold, a swath of near-impenetrable darkness that splits the kingdom of Ravka in two, a fathomless black void like a scar across the map. Making it worse is that the Fold is populated by volcra, ravenous flying creatures with jagged talons and leathery wings that are ready to pick off any people attempting to brave crossing the Fold for supplies and messages. With the Shadow Fold choking off the majority of Ravka from the port cities to the west, the country is slowly dying.
Hastening that downfall is the fact that Ravka is also at war with Shu Han, a country to the south, and occasionally skirmishing with Fjerda, the country to the north. Both countries circle Ravka like vultures, sensing weakness. Ravka is on the brink of collapse politically, but both countries also want something Ravka has – or at least had – in excess: Grisha, people who are able to practice the Small Science and manipulate matter at the smallest level, like magic. The Shu want Grisha to dissect and experiment on for their scientific research, and the fearful, superstitious Fjerdans feel all Grisha should be rounded up and executed for witchcraft.
Trying to keep his country protected and Grisha safe is General Kirigan (Ben Barnes), also known as the Darkling, one of only two known Shadow Summoners in the world and the most powerful Grisha that exists. As the commander of Ravka's Second Army forces of Grisha, much rides on Kirigan's shoulders. His desperation and despair mount as he sees Grisha dying and Ravka slowly losing the war against the Shadow Fold, against foreign enemies, and even against its own people to the west who are threatening civil war. But to all, Kirigan is an intimidating, even terrifying figure. No one knows much about him or how old he is, only that his cruel reputation and awe-inspiring powers are reasons to speak of the Black General in hushed tones. But, as with everything involving the Darkling, there is far more to him than meets the eye.
Kirigan's Origin As The Black Heretic Explained
No one currently alive knows much about the Shadow Fold or how it was created, only that it was supposedly made hundreds of years ago by a Shadow Summoner known as the Black Heretic. As a direct descendant of the Black Heretic and a fellow Shadow Summoner, Kirigan claims to feel a responsibility to destroy the Fold and bring liberation to the people of Ravka, thus atoning for his ancestor's crimes. Now that he's found Alina, his Sun Summoner, he hopes to destroy it together – so he says.
In reality, Kirigan is the Black Heretic; he's lived many lives and had many names over the centuries, his long life a byproduct of his Grisha power. Netflix's Shadow and Bone season 1 reveals that centuries ago, he was just a powerful Grisha working for the then-Ravkan king, leading his armies and helping to push back Ravka's enemies. But as the king saw how the Darkling's power grew and how his charisma made people follow him, the king grew paranoid the Darkling would soon wield more power than he did as the king. So the king branded him a dangerous enemy and demanded he and all Grisha were to be hunted down. It sent Kirigan down a dark path in his attempt to be strong enough to withstand the king's forces and to protect his Grisha.
In the books, his story is slightly different. He's already born at a time in which the Grisha were feared and persecuted so he and his mother, Baghra, moved from place to place, never staying in one place long, living in secrecy and swapping identities for fear of being discovered. As Shadow Summoners, not only were they Grisha, but they were the rarest of Grisha and thus the most feared. Despite these powers, young Aleksander used to be afraid of the dark and was nothing more than a bright, inquisitive boy. But that changed when he was 13. For a time, they were at a Grisha camp and Aleksander even made some friends. When his friends found out he was an amplifier, however, they tricked him and tried to drown him in the lake to murder him and take his power for themselves, desperate to become stronger. From that moment on, Aleksander vowed to do whatever it took to become strong enough to protect Grisha and create a world where they could live without fear. Unfortunately, his desire to protect turned into a thirst for power, and by the time he created the Shadow Fold, he was already lost to darkness. Since then he's lived countless lives and served countless king, leaving and returning under a new guise every time, always claiming to be the ancestor of the Black Heretic while never revealing he is the Black Heretic who created the Shadow Fold centuries ago.
How Kirigan Created The Shadow Fold
While incredibly powerful, on his own, Kirigan as the Darkling was not strong enough to create something like the Shadow Fold. In the books, the creation of the Shadow Fold is vaguer. All that is really known is that the Darkling's thirst for power led him down a path of experimenting with dark, corrupt magic, known as merzost in order to create the Fold. In reality, merzost is forbidden for a reason, even if only the most powerful and rarest of Grisha can achieve it. While their usual practice of "magic," known as the Small Science, is simply a rearranging and a manipulation of the natural order of the world, merzost is a corruption of the natural order of things, science pushed beyond its limits. There is always a boomerang effect with merzost; either it takes something vital from the one who uses it or it creates an unwanted side effect. In the Darkling's case, he wanted the Shadow Fold alone; he also got volcra in the deal, his great vehicle for vanquishing his enemies now unusable.
The Netflix series gives a more sympathetic origin for the creation of the Shadow Fold. During the time the king's men are hunting down Grisha and searching for Kirigan, they finally catch up to him and murder the woman he loves in front of him. He then turns to merzost, just as he does in the books, but the TV series frames it as an act of desperation to save his persecuted and dying people rather than purely for the sake of power. Likewise, the Shadow Fold's creation seems to be perhaps accidental; when the king's men surround him, the Darkling calls upon merzost but it seems to be unclear what exactly the consequences will be. In that moment, black, shadowy power explodes from him, forming the Shadow Fold and turning the king's soldiers into the first volcra.
Kirigan's Powers As The Darkling
Even without the Shadow Fold, the Darkling's powers are vast. Firstly, he is a Shadow Summoner, one of the rarest of all known Grisha. In all of history that people can recall, only three people have ever been known to be Shadow Summoners: The Black Heretic, the Darkling, and his mother, Baghra. Seeing as how the Darkling is the Black Heretic, and his mother rarely uses her powers, Kirigan is essentially the only Shadow Summoner ever truly known to exist.
As the Shadow Summoner, Kirigan can do exactly what his name suggests, namely, he can summon and manipulate shadow and darkness. That can be as simple as calling the shadows to him and making a room or a field go completely dark in the middle of the day. But the Darkling has learned to use his powers in other, darker ways. He often uses shadows to torture his captives, leaving them alone in seemingly living darkness to make them go insane, wrapping shadows around their face and blinding them, both literally and figuratively. He can also use a skill known as The Cut, in which he shapes shadows into a blade of pure darkness that can slice through anything. Most terrifying of all, the Darkling also later gains the ability to create nichevo'ya, creatures made of pure shadow that do not fear sunlight and can hardly be killed; they are the shadow creatures seen emerging from the Fold with him at the very end of season 1. Their bites brings excruciating pain, black scars that will not heal, and, if the Darkling wills it, a slow transformation into a nichevo'ya as well, trapped halfway between being human and a monster.
Interestingly, Kirigan is also a living Grisha amplifier, able to increase the power of a Grisha just by touching them. Like their Shadow Summoner powers, only he and Baghra are known to be living amplifiers. It's just one more reason he's both respected and feared, even by other Grisha.
Kirigan's Plan For The Fold & Future
Whether an intentional creation, as in the books, or potentially an accident, as in the Netflix series, the Darkling's plans for the Shadow Fold are much more sinister than he initially explains to Alina and the other Grisha. In reality, he doesn't want Alina's Sun Summoner powers to destroy the Fold, merely to destroy enough of the volcra to make it safe for him to enter; the volcra, as it turns out, are attracted to his presence most of all. With Alina to keep the volcra at bay, Kirigan can finally use the Shadow Fold as he had always intended, weaponizing it against their enemies. At his command, he can expand the Shadow Fold at will or move it to new locations entirely, swallowing up entire cities to the darkness and the ravenous volcra. Thus, he needs to find the amplifiers for Alina in order to increase her powers; not so she can use them, but so that he can use them through he once he binds her to him against her will.
While the Darkling believes he is doing it for the good of his country and to protect the Grisha from their enemies – and perhaps he still is – the reality is that he's been too far corrupted to see the line anymore. Like any dictator, he will murder the innocent by the thousands and call it peace, will paint his allies as enemies the moment they disagree with his methods and truly believe he's doing it for the greater good. The Darkling has been alive for hundreds of years and will arguably be alive for centuries more and his isolation and longevity have made it impossible for him to understand the difference between protecting his people and destroying the rest of the world, the quintessential villain who believes himself to be a hero.
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There is much more to the Darkling's story that is left to tell, both from the books and potentially brand-new additions to his history that the Netflix series will create. Should Netflix greenlight Shadow and Bone season 2 – and audiences can only hope it will – more pieces of the mysterious puzzle that is General Kirigan, a.k.a. Aleksander, a.k.a. the Darkling, a.k.a. the Black Heretic, will fall into place.