In Shawn Michael O’Brien’s The Immortal Game: King’s Gambit, readers are thrown into a world where cities wage war not through chaotic bloodshed but through a ritualized system that mirrors the game of chess. Every move is a matter of life, death, and destiny, with pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, and queens all taking their place on a living battlefield. Yet at the center of this grand spectacle stands an unlikely protagonist, Corso, the Messenger. Bound by the ancient System to carry messages between Solaris and Drakhelm, Corso is both indispensable and invisible, essential yet expendable. His neutrality is his shield—but also his burden.

The Messenger’s Burden

Corso’s life is defined by the mark on his wrist: an intricate sigil that grants him safe passage across contested lands. He is neither soldier nor citizen, neither here nor traitor. His role is deceptively simple: carry orders, deliver strategies, and bear witness. However, neutrality in a world at war is no blessing—it is a sentence. Corso cannot fight, cannot warn, and cannot intervene, even when the lives of people he knows are at stake. He is condemned to watch the game unfold, piece by piece, knowing he cannot alter the rules.

This forced impartiality exacts a heavy psychological toll. Corso is not immune to human emotion—he feels fear, sorrow, even love. His bond with Thea, a Solaris soldier, intensifies the conflict inside him. To be neutral is to bury parts of himself, to smother the instinct to protect, and to silence the voice that urges him to choose a side. Every message he delivers is another reminder that his hands are tied, not just by ink and sigil, but also by fate itself.

Neutrality as a Curse

Neutrality in The Immortal Game is not freedom; it is restraint. Corso’s oath forces him into the role of a ghost—present but powerless. He watches battalions march toward certain death, hears soldiers’ last words, and delivers commands that set entire provinces ablaze. He cannot plead for mercy, cannot temper cruelty with compassion. The System demands not only his service but also his silence. The toll is clear: he wrestles with guilt, doubts his purpose, and wonders whether neutrality makes him complicit in the violence he cannot prevent.

The haunting example of Seren Valkyr—the Messenger Who Chose—looms over him like a shadow. Seren once broke her oath, warning Solaris of a devastating checkmate, and was punished by being entombed in crystal, trapped in half-existence for eternity. Her story is a constant reminder of the cost of rebellion. For Corso, neutrality is not just law; it is survival. Yet his humanity makes obedience nearly unbearable.

Witness to the Game

What makes Corso compelling is that his neutrality does not strip him of perspective—it sharpens it. Because he cannot intervene, he sees the war for what it truly is: a brutal spectacle dressed up as strategy. To kings and queens, pawns are numbers. To Corso, pawns are people. He hears their laughter before a battle, sees them carve their names into tokens so they are not forgotten, and carries their final words across enemy lines. He is the war’s memory keeper, its chronicler, and its unwilling historian.

Through his eyes, the reader perceives the paradox of the System. On one hand, it prevents all-out annihilation by imposing order. On the other hand, it turns war into a performance where sacrifice is inevitable and expected. Soldiers drink the night before knowing they will fall, commanders debate moves as though lives were just pieces on a board, and the gods remain silent as humanity dances to ancient rules. Corso’s neutrality allows him to witness these contradictions with piercing clarity.

The Emotional Conflict

Corso’s neutrality is constantly tested. His affection for Thea tempts him toward breaking his oath, his memories of past messengers warn him of the dangers of bending the rules, and his own conscience gnaws at him each time he carries a message that condemns thousands. His internal conflict becomes the true battlefield of the story. While Solaris and Drakhelm clash on the Divide, Corso battles within himself, torn between obedience to the System and loyalty to his own sense of humanity.

This struggle makes Corso relatable. Who among us has not felt trapped between duty and desire, between what is required and what is right? Corso’s neutrality magnifies this universal dilemma, amplifying the cost of inaction and the weight of silence. His journey is less about the moves on the board and more about whether he can endure the role the System has forced upon him—or whether he, too, will eventually choose.

Neutrality and the Larger Themes

Corso’s role as the neutral messenger touches the larger themes of O’Brien’s book. It asks readers to consider the price of order, the morality of systems that value rules over lives, and the fragility of human conscience when tested by impossible choices. Neutrality, in this context, is not an absence of opinion but a crucible in which character is tested. Corso embodies the question at the heart of the novel: can one remain human while serving as a cog in an inhuman machine?

In a world where kings and queens play their gambits, where pawns march to die, and where cities rise and fall like pieces on a board, Corso’s neutrality becomes the story’s emotional anchor. He is not the strategist or the warrior; he is the witness. In addition, in witnessing, he forces us to see war not as a spectacle of moves but as a tapestry of sacrifices, regrets, and choices denied.

Conclusion: The Power of Bearing Witness

Corso may never swing a sword or cast a spell, but his role is no less vital. By carrying messages, he carries the weight of the war itself. His neutrality is both his curse and his gift: it prevents him from shaping the outcome, but it also positions him as the only one who sees the full picture. In Corso, O’Brien gives us a character who embodies the cost of neutrality in a chaotic world. He reminds us that sometimes the most challenging role is not to fight, but to watch—and to live with what we’ve seen.

In The Immortal Game: King’s Gambit, neutrality is no refuge. For Corso, it is the battlefield.