King Canute

Canute is the younger son of King Sweyn, a delicate, prayerful boy dragged along on a Viking campaign more as a hostage against his own father than as royalty. Soft-spoken and easily frightened, he is dismissed by the mercenaries around him as fragile, useless, barely worth guarding.

Kensho Ono plays him as almost translucent at first—flinching, hollow-voiced, more comfortable praying than speaking—so that every flicker of steel underneath registers as a small shock. The writing stacks humiliation after humiliation onto him, and Ono makes you feel exactly how much is being absorbed and stored.