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For most of his life, Finn Collins believes he is a good person, who lives in a world that is bad.
The bad world neglects a raven-haired little girl, so the good Finn offers her a home.
The bad world gets Raven in trouble, so the good Finn takes her place.
Things change when he arrives on Earth, without Raven, but then Finn meets Clarke.
Clarke Griffin, flowing blonde hair, bright blue eyes, is a princess pulled straight from a fairytale.
Every princess needs a knight.
It’s scary how easily he falls in love with her, but this new world full of monsters is scary too, and Finn allows himself to imagine a life with Clarke.
Things change again when Raven arrives on Earth too.
Finn goes back to the side of the raven-haired girl, because it is the honorable, good thing to do, but a part of him still dreams of his princess.
But now the monsters that haunt Earth are attacking them, and Finn tries to make peace, because even he is smart enough to know they won’t win this battle.
His princess trusts Bellamy more, and soon peace is no longer an option.
He watches as Clarke lets a disease-infested Murphy crawl back to camp.
He watches as Raven makes bullets to fight the monsters.
He watches as they bomb a bridge and repeat their ancestors’ history.
Finn is kidnapped by the monsters then, alongside Clarke, but is saved by a monster who is good.
The good monster saves them, but there is one last bad monster, and Finn kills it.
His princess comforts him, saying he had to do it, but Finn wishes there were another way.
By now, he’s lost the love of Raven, and so he tries again with Clarke, but she rejects him too.
When they arrive back at camp, Finn learns that the raven-haired girl that he has been protecting for as long as he can remember has been shot.
For once, Clarke listens to him and not Bellamy, and they leave camp, marching towards the sea.
Then Drew is killed, and Clarke no longer listens to Finn.
He watches as Bellamy and Clarke plan the bloodshed, all of their strategies incomplete.
They are children playing at war, a battle they will most certainly lose.
Raven is dying from her gunshot, and so Finn runs, runs to the good monster that will give him the magic spell to save her. The good monster helps Finn bring bad monsters to fight the other monsters.
His princess is watching, and Finn chooses to be good, saving Bellamy’s life. This means they don’t make it inside the dropship, but Finn takes it in stride, knowing that this is not the end of his story.
The adults come down, and Finn almost weeps, knowing that these are grown-ups, who are mature enough to stop the war.
The adults don’t stop the war, and with the urging of the raven-haired girl, Finn leaves to find his princess.
This is not easy, and when he realizes that the monsters have taken her, Finn finally breaks, killing a monster in cold blood.
Bellamy gives up, goes back to camp with his sister, but the loyal knight pushes forward towards the monsters’ village.
Murphy tries to warn him, but Finn does not listen. He will find Clarke.
He does find her, after killing eighteen people, and then realizes that he was never really looking for the princess herself. To Finn, Clarke represents the innocence he lost so long ago.
Finn is no longer good.
Still, he wants to be someone worth dying for, and so he lets his friends try to protect him from the monsters.
When the raven-haired girl tries to sacrifice the same person who tried to stop Finn from killing all those people, he knows he is not worth it, and the knight gives himself up.
He thanks his princess when she kills him, because from the moment Jasper was speared, Finn has known he would not live very long on this planet.
Finn Collins does not die a good person, but his death does temporarily stop a war, and for a boy so tortured by a world without happy endings, that is enough.