Alexander strove to create women characters who were more than a passive trophy for the hero. Rodney Fierce, a history professor, analyzes Eilonwy's agency and character over the five books in the Prydain Chronicles. While she is independent and assertive in "The Book of Three", other characters disapprove of her adventuring in "The High King" as unladylike, consistently dismissing her useful advice. Taran only becomes attracted to her when she is wearing fancy feminine clothes, while Eilonwy's affections do not rely on Taran being luxuriously accoutered. In "The Castle of Llyr", Taran commands her not to leave the castle but cannot tell her why leaving readers to feel that his controlling behavior is noble. His secrecy is only vital to make Eilonwy a helpless victim, which will in turn allow Taran to rescue her. In fighting the enchantress who conquered her ancestral home in Caer Colur, Eilonwy destroys her and the castle that would rightfully be hers. After the destruction of her home castle, Eilonwy's desire shifts from being focused on her own development to waiting to marry Taran. Even though Taran decides he would rather stay in Prydain than be with Eilonwy, Eilonwy gives up her magical power to marry Taran and stay with him in Prydain. Fierce concludes that, unlike other women in fantasy fiction, at least Eilonwy made the decision herself to lose her magical powers. Sullivan noted how Taran's rise to power symbolizes an "age of male dominance," contrasting Prydain's previous age of women in power. In 1985, Lois Kuznets argued that the Prydain chronicles do not achieve American ideals because Taran becomes a king rather than a president, and Eilonwy does not "achieve womanhood." Alexander's biographer, Jill May, rebutted this argument, stating that when Alexander wrote the books in the 1960s, his audience was just beginning to accept feminist ideas, and his works need to be considered in their historical context. One critic, John Rowe Townsend, disliked the "two-dimensional" and "predictable" characters of Taran and Eilonwy.