despite being a book that features magical forests, dreams being brought into reality and demons among other fantastical elements, the least realistic thing about the raven cycle is ronan not attending adam’s graduation. a major theme during the four books that make up the raven cycle is the development of the relationship between the two boys and the ways in which they come to support and lean on each other; the narrative choice to have ronan not attend in support of adam is at odds with this. during the books we are shown the many ways in which they open up to each other and come to depend on each other, examples of which are ronan’s continued defence of adam and his help in securing the apartment at st agnes as he knows the importance of independence for adam. we see adam reciprocate this support and understanding; he is the first person to find out that ronan dreamt cabeswater and is who ronan turns to for help with both getting rid of greenmantle and solving the issue of how to wake dreams up. when ronan loses his mother it is largely adam who supports him. given that adam has worked so hard to reach graduation and the event is of great importance and significance to him it is unbelievable that ronan wouldn’t want to be there to cheer him and his accomplishments on. furthermore, as we know that adam invited his parents there especially appears to be a contradiction in ronan’s decision to bypass the event. previously we have seen how protective ronan is of adam with regards to his parents, evidenced when ronan beats the living shit out of robert parrish, his attendance in court, and later his displeasure when adam inadvertently directs them back to the trailer park and we learn of ronan’s anger towards robert’s lack of punishment for hurting adam. it therefore seems unlikely he wouldn’t want to be there on the off chance adam’s parents did decide to attend, even if it was an unlikely scenario. in this essay i will