Robin Jarvis’s witchmaster Nathaniel Crozier: Part I

Nathaniel Crozier is a key character in A Warlock in Whitby, the second volume of Robin Jarvis’s wonderful Whitby Witches trilogy. 

He is the husband of the witch who called herself Rowena Cooper, but was really Roselyn Crozier (called Roslyn Crosier in The Whitby Witches). He is not a witch exactly, but he is a black magician and he does control a group of witches. 

He is a person of interest because some of the things he and his followers say and do are very familiar.

An introduction to Nathaniel Crozier
Nathaniel Crozier casts a dark shadow ahead of him: he is briefly mentioned in The Whitby Witches, where he is introduced as Roselyn’s God-awful husband. They performed foul ceremonies together in Africa. They are described as a hellish pair who deserve to hang. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

The prose gets purple in A Warlock in Whitby:

“Nathaniel Crozier: historian, philanderer, warlock, high priest of the Black Sceptre and the unseen hand behind countless unsolved burglaries of religious relics from around the world…the most evil man on earth.”

There is nothing on this earth that he cannot make yield and bow before him.

How strange that such a man should wear worn and shabby clothes and be unable to enter a dwelling without an invitation! 

He seems to have very little to show for all his studies, efforts, powers and stolen magical artefacts. 

Robin Jarvis’s Whitby Witches: Rowena Cooper

When I first started to get my thoughts about modern-day fictional witches down on paper, I made a list of books from the past to re-read and mine for information and ideas. 

Although I enjoyed renewing my acquaintance with some old friends, the stories were incidental this time around. I wanted examples of various types of witch; I was looking for patterns and features in common in the witches’ lives, personalities and eventual fates; I was looking for fictional characters who reminded me of real people I had known or encountered along the way.

I remembered some relevant scenes and characters from Robin Jarvis’s wonderful Whitby Witches trilogy. The first book in the series is The Whitby Witches. 

Jennet and her little brother Ben, two children who are core characters, remind me of Gwendolen Chant and her little brother Cat in Charmed Life. They too are orphans whose parents died in an accident and they are much the same ages.

The villain of the story is a middle-aged woman who first appears under the name of Rowena Cooper. Just like some of the other witches I have written about, she is desperately and obsessively looking for something and will do whatever it takes to get it. She is the most ruthless of the bunch: anything or anyone who stands in her way will be removed. 

She attempts to manipulate people with threats and promises. She is described as having a black and rotten heart and being full of evil. She is eaten away with her lust for greater power.