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Consider the following sentence I wrote myself:

Kumbhakarn then pierced Hanuman's chest with his spear due to which Hanuman was seriously injured.

If I replace 'Hanuman' with 'he', the sentence becomes:

Kumbhakarn then pierced Hanuman's chest with his spear due to which he was seriously injured.

Which sentence is preferable?

I posted a similar question an hour ago, but this one has an additional conundrum: if I do the pronoun replacement, 'his' would refer to Kumbhakarn whereas 'he' would refer to Hanuman. Is this acceptable in English?

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    ...due to which he was seriously injured isn't very natural. Consider replacing with something like ...seriously injuring him or ...which seriously injured him.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Aug 6, 2023 at 12:39
  • @FumbleFingers Thanks!
    – Shoes
    Commented Aug 6, 2023 at 13:32
  • Not necessarily better, but another option: "...with his spear, seriously injuring the latter" ("the latter" indicates the person mentioned last).
    – Biblasia
    Commented Aug 6, 2023 at 14:55

1 Answer 1

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It is fine to have two pronouns with different antecedents. In this case it should not be confusing because the person who is injured by a spear is usually not the person wielding the spear.

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