Published on November 11, 2025 5:09 AM GMT

In Rudyard Kipling’s “Wee Willie Winkie,” Winkie is a six-year-old British boy and the son of a Colonel posted in colonial India. His highest ideal to become an honorable man. He strives to be just, prudent, and loyal, in the ways a six-year-old believes these things can exist as true, real things. Not as means for some other end, but as ends in themselves. He lives with his whole heart, and he has a six-year-old’s lisp, and it’s easy to fall in love with him in just a couple thousand words.

By promising to keep a soldier’s engagement secret, he finds himself with a feeling of responsibility for that soldier’s betrothed. In the climax he sees her foibleing into danger, and rushes after her to help. By the time he catches up to her they are deep in enemy territory, and soon surrounded by one of the clans that are unhappy with the British presence. They’re about to be kidnapped and likely killed.

Winkie orders the raiders to bring word to the British outpost that they need help, and promises them they’ll be rewarded. The raiders laugh at first, until one of them recognizes the boy.

“He is the heart’s heart of those white troops. For the sake of peace let them go both, for if he be taken, the regiment will break loose and gut the valley. Our villages are in the valley, and we shall not escape. That regiment are devils. They broke Khoda Yar’s breast-bone with kicks when he tried to take the rifles; and if we touch this child they will fire and rape and plunder for a month, till nothing remains. Better to send a man back to take the message and get a reward. I say that this child is their God, and that they will spare none of us, nor our women, if we harm him.”

Canonically, Harry Potter was protected from the Killing Curse because his mother loved him so darn much. It’s a common fantasy trope, to the point of being a cliche. I read another protected-by-love and I roll my eyes. Usually.

Here, however, a helpless boy is protected by the power of the love of the local regiment of soldiers. The threat of them boiling over in murderous vengeance is a shield more effective than a dozen rifles and a cannon. The soldiers have created the real magic that these wish-fulfillment fantasy stories dream of. With their love. And the raiders know this, because they also understand love.

The power of love is that you don’t have to make any threat, it is inherent in the display of love. Those who are being deterred don’t need to judge how serious you are or what other political or practical considerations may sway you, they only need to be aware of the depth of your love. The Afghan raiders in Wee Willie Winkie don’t need to weigh the political situation of the British outpost and how retaliation will affect their strategic position in the wider area. They just need to know that the soldiers there absolutely adore Winkie and will rage like a thousand suns if he’s killed, all other consequences be damned. This is the shield that protects the boy.

In the modern world this is unacceptable. To say that I feel it’s good that these soldiers would raze an entire valley if their Winkie was killed is borderline psychopathic. But my heart feels this is good anyway. I don’t think you can have love without this drive to smash egregious violence into the bodies of anyone who would kill your loved one.¹ I don’t think it’s good to pretend otherwise. Recognizing that you would hesitate to go on a vengeance rampage is a sign that you aren’t truly in love with the person you’re with. Maybe people avoid looking at that because realizing they aren’t in love with their partner would be very inconvenient.

In fact by strangling this desire in ourselves and burying it deep inside, we may be damaging our ability to feel true love at all. When your body isn’t allowed to feel this drive to do violence for the memory of your loved one, it doubts you love that person at all. Instead of love you get a warmed-over Liking. Maybe you even Like Like someone. But love? You can’t isolate the love from the willingness to do violence. They come as a pair.