Suriel (also Azuriel; in his terrible face “Abaddon, the exterminator”) is the outgoing Horseman of War, who renounced the title and sought to destroy his own sword; Auro succeeded him.
| Type | Character (Horseman of War; fallen paladin) |
| Sword | Lament of the Faithless |
| Successor | Auro |
| Spanish entry | Azuriel |
Identities
Androgynous, a “fallen paladin”, he carries a chain of identities read as a single unending life: Alfred the Great → Richard the Lionheart → John Hawkwood (the condottiere Giovanni Acuto, transcribed “Jacques Hock”) → archangel of death. While his sword exists and is wielded, war has direction. “I was a king, I was a lionheart, I was a captain of fortune, I was the angel who rides war. Now I want to give back the sword.”
History
- Moved by the example of Luca, the paladin who entered hell uncorrupted, he renounced the title, stole his own sword and made a pilgrimage to the summit of Mount Analogue to destroy it, knowing the vacancy would be filled by someone worse (Charon’s contest). In the daemonic landing on the Mount’s beach he surrendered to Auro and offered him the sword.
- His other narrative half is Alfredo: War as a blond former putto “who bites”, who took the sword of the omen and rode to the Alps, a black angel with black tears, caged in Imola, charging fees of 1,200,000 souls. At the end-of-season judgment in Florence (c. 1498 A.D.A.) War was redeemed as the child Alfredito — innate evil reconverted — and the sword ascended to the heavenly garden to be sublimated. Destroyed there, war was left without a helmsman until someone reforges it.