SPOILERS FOR THRONE OF GLASS
CHARACTERS:
Celaena Sardothein
Dorian Havilliard
Choal Westfall
Nehemia Ytger
Kaltain Rompier
Duke Perrington
Cain
Elena Havillard
Philippa Spindlehead
Nox Owens
Brullo
Queen Georgina
Queen Elena
Pelor
Grave
STORY:
Dorrian Havillard, the Crown Prince of Adarlan, and Chaol Westfall, the Captain of the Royal guard travel all the way to a prison camp in Endovier to propose something to an inmate. That inmate is Celaena Sardothein, the most infamous assassin in Erilea, and they tell her about a chance to earn her freedom: work for the King of Adarlan for six years and in return, after those six years she will have her name cleared. There is a catch: the title "King's Champion" isn't going to be given freely to her. She has to earn it in a competition. The competition has a series of Tests and at the end of each test, a Champion would be disqualified and would be sent packing. Either to home or back to the prison they came from. After bargaining with the prince, Celaena reduces her work under the King (if she wins) from 6 years to 4, and she agrees.
After traveling for a couple days, they arrive at the castle gates. Celeana is shown to her room (which is the size of a small house) where she meets Philippa Spindlehead, the maid that is assigned to her. She goes to meet with the King, and Dorian and Choal debrief her on her new alias: Lillian Gordaina, a jewel thief from Bellhaven, a city in Fenharrow. Celaena is less than happy about this, as she doesn't want to be overlooked. She starts training under Chaol and Brullo (the weapons master) and befriends another Champion: Nox Owens, a thief from Perranth, a town in Celaena's home country, Terrasen. Cain, Duke Perrington's Champion, torments Celaena any chance he gets.
Right before the first test, champions start getting murdered. Dorian is handed a list of marriable women and Kaltain keeps trying to ensnare Dorian. Celaena finds a secret passage behind a tapestry in her bedroom. Curious, she opens it and finds a door. She goes exploring, and after finding a tunnel that leads to the dining hall where the feast is taking place and heads back to her room. Just in time for Choal to come by with an Amythest ring. After he is gone, Celaena has a dream of visiting the tomb and running into the first queen of Adarlan, who gives her two quests: find the evil in the castle and kill it and become the King's Champion. That queen, Queen Elena, gives her a necklace called the Eye of Elena and says that it will help ward off evil. Celaena wakes up in her bed, but she realizes it wasn't because she has the Eye of Elena in her palm.
Celaena become close friends with Nehemia Ytger, the Princess of Ellywe, one of the only countries left challenging the King of Adarlan's rule. Nehemia only communicates in her native tongue, and Celaena had learned Ellywe through the peasants in Endovier while she was there. They have lessons every night the hour before dinner where Celaena teaches Nehemia the common tongue and Nehemia teaches Celaena the proper Ellywe. Celaena becomes more and more curious about something called the Wyrdmarks. Nehemia tries to dissuade Celaena from looking into them, however, she continues to do so, believing that the Wrydmarks are connected to the Evil in the castle that Queen Elena mentioned. Four more Tests happened, and one of them is a climbing competition. Nox loses his footing and Celaena launches herself from her position in attempt to save him and succeeds. Neither of them gets disqualified.
Celaena takes to the library to study the Wyrdmarks and finds out more about the history of Erilea. Things spice up between Dorian and Celaena at a friendly game of billiards. Celaena passes another Test. During the Test that involves discerning poison and sorting it from least lethal to most lethal Celaena passes with the help of Pelor, and Kaltain tries to get into Queen Georgina's good graces. Kaltain finds out who Celaena really is and hatches a plan with Duke Perrington to poison her before she gets too close to Dorian. Celaena meets Dorian's hounds and notices a certain puppy that refuses canine or human touch. Celaena begs Dorian to not kill it, and he agrees (reluctantly). Dorian choses to give the dog to Celaena, and she names it Fleetfoot.
During Yulemas, Celaena has suspicions that Nehemia is behind the killings after she caught Nehemia in the library reading above her level in the common tongue and her knowledge of the Wyrdmarks. After crashing the ball, Celaena realizes her suspicions were wrong. She is attacked by a demon summoned by Cain called the ridderak in the tunnels connected to her room. After being healed by Nehemia, she tells Nox to get the hell out of the castle.
The duel comes. Choal offers her his sword, but Nehemia offers Celaena her iron-tipped wooden staff. Celaena chooses the staff. She beats Grave, her first challenger, under two minutes. Her and Cain are given wine before their duel starts, Celaena's being spiked with bloodbane (the poison that she missed in that one Test) and the duel gets off to a rough start. The bloodbane allows Celaena to see through the veil from this world to other worlds and sees demons trying to attack her. Cain reveals he knows everything about Celaena's past and how her parents died. Elena comes to her rescue and clears the poison from her system. Celaena beats Cain, and when Cain tries to kill her with her back turned to him, Choal runs him through with his sword.
Celaena heals from her injures and breaks up with Dorian. Nehemia tells Celaena about the Wyrdmarks, and in her last meeting with Elena, Elena informs her that she "could rattle the stars."
"'You could rattle the stars,' she whispered. 'You could do anything, if only you dared.'"
Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass, Page 371.
CHARACTER ANALYSIS
(Celaena Sardothein)
When first pulled from the prison camp Endovier, Celaena is malnourished and haunted. Having survived a year in the prison when the normal life expectancy is one or two months if you are lucky, she had to repeat "I will not be afraid" over and over in her head to survive. "When she awoke every morning, she repeated the same words: I will not be afraid. For a year, those words had made the difference between breaking or bending. . ." (Page 2). Prior to her capture, she had lost someone she cared about a lot, so when she starts out in the book, she is full of rage. After watching Adarlan take over her country, the loss of her parents, being taken under Arobynn (the King of Assassins) to her enslavement at Endovier, she had every right to be. She swore to hate the royal family.
By the time she had made it to the castle and had an audience with the King she is overwhelmingly terrified of him. "It made her bones crack and splinter, made her feel the astonishing cold of a winter long since past." (Page 67). While she does not fully shake her fear of the King, she manages to warm up to Choal and Dorian, and gain an overall healthier routine. Celaena is able to get her physical health back up (an admirable feat) and she ends up winning. By the end of the book, while she may not have let go of the rage, but she has hope, something that was squandered in her stay at Endovier.
"Alone, Celaena looked to the window and put a hand on her heart, whispering the word to herself again and again. Free."
Sarah J Maas, Throne of Glass, Page 395.
(Dorian Havillard)
Crown Prince of Adarlan, Dorian starts out the book as a prince who is too afraid to question the King. He knows what happens to the people the King doesn't like, and he doesn't want to end up like him. After meeting Celaena however, that changes as he begins to fall in love with her. He wants to be able to become a good man, one that his father never was. He finds the courage to rebel against his father as much as he can, and by the end of the book he is able to stand his own against his father. After demanding the King to not charge Choal with murder and to stop Perrington's plans of using Princess Nehemia to get Ellywe to surrender.
"He loved her, and no empire, no king, and no earthly fear would keep him from her. No, if they tried to take her from him, he'd rip the world apart with his bare hands."
Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass, Page 371.
(Choal Westfall)
Captain of the Royal Guard, Choal is extremely loyal to the crown. More specifically to Dorian, so when he accompanies the prince on a trip to Endovier, Choal is rightly cold to and suspicious of the arrogant, infamous assassin they pull out of the salt mines. He begrudgingly trains Celaena, but overtime grows to trust her. By the end of the book, he kills Cain to save Celaena.
"Chaol couldn't stop staring at his blood-soaked hands. He killed him."
Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass, Page 370
(Kaltain Rompier)
Unlike the rest of the crew, Kaltain has a negative character arc. She starts off the book, having tricked Perrington into bringing her into Rifthold so she could get closer to Prince Dorian. Her goal is simple: to marry him. She goes to court to try to get Queen Georgina to think of her as a good bachelorette for the prince and attending all the events, planning every move so perfectly to get the prince's attention, but it is all for nothing. Struggling with headaches and an opium addiction, her condition worsens as the story progresses. She eventually finds out who Celaena really is. When Kaltain's murder attempt doesn't work, she's dragged to the dungeons shouting at the king that it was Perrington's idea but no one believes her. She is left to rot in a cell under the castle.
It is also important to note that in a scene with just the duke and the king they mention a mysterious power that they have tested on Cain (the physical effects) and Kaltain (the mental effects) on page 388.
"Kaltain kicked and thrashed against the guards' grip, but the king's table became smaller and smaller. As she reached the doors to the castle, the duke grinned at her, and her dreams shattered."
LIGHTNING SYMBOL ANALYSIS
page 348, Celaena gets offered Choal's sword and Nehemia's iron tipped staff "let the wood of Ellywe beat the steel of Adarlan"
page 239, Celaena fails to identify bloodbane, and then gets poisoned by it at the final duel
page 32 has flowers being laid at her bed while in Brannon's forest suggesting there is more to her than meets the eye
throughout the book, it always illustrates Celaena that she has more to her than meets the eye
the tie to Celaena and Elena when she says "blood ties can't be broken" on page 400
THEORIES: spoilers for the rest of TOG, ACTOAR, and CC (prior to the release of CC3). Read at your own risk.
Was the Asteri ever apart of Alein’s world?
Has Sarah J. Maas been planning this since the publication of TOG?
What is the history regarding Asteri and ACOTAR?
If Bryce was able to communicate with Rhysand using the Ancient Fae language does that mean all Fae in this universe came from the same place? Would it be the same for TOG?
Ever since I finished reading HOSAB, I started to re-read ALL of the series that Maas has made, (and though I’m not finished) I decided to highlight anything that caught my attention.
All of these series have something in common: they deal with other realms/worlds. In TOG, it’s the whole Valg stuff using Wyrdkeys and stuff like that, and one line in the book states this:
“Wyrd is the force that holds together and governs erilea—and not just Erilea! Countless other worlds too!” Said by Celaena, page 207.
We can assume that this means that multiple Wyrdgates are in other worlds, but why was there (so far) no mention in either ACOTAR or HOSAB? Do they go by a different name?
The answers to these questions may elude me and I hope we can all out our heads together to find something, but I at least think I’ve got the answer to the very first one: was the Asteri ever in Alein’s world?
To that I say yes.
On page 207-208, Celaena is explaining to Choal what books she’s reading and how this world happens.
To summarize, The Mother Goddess (creator of Eriela as we know it) was just a spirit from another realm and stumbled upon Alein’s world by chance. When she got there there was no life and decided to give it some.
“Some theories suggest the Mother Goddess is just from one of these other worlds, and that she strayed through something called a Wyrdgate and found Erilea in need of form and life” (page 207).
"There’s an idea that before the Goddess arrived, there was ancient life—an ancient civilization but somehow, they disappeared. . . Ruins exist—ruins far too old to be of fae making” (also page 207)
At the time she says these things, they are marked off as outlandish theories and nothing more than that. But with HOSAB coming out, that sheds new light on the matter and once irrelevant sentences prove to have more meaning. What my theory is, is that the ancient life was destroyed by the Asteri.
In the HOSAB, Bryce is found in the Asteri archives and finds a map of all conquered worlds. Alein’s world could be among the conquered ones—the Asteri could’ve (and I honestly to think they did) wiped the ancient civilization clean, the one Alein speaks of, and then a benevolent spirit decides to give that world life.
If you read the acknowledgements in TOG, Throne of Glass took ten years to make. It’s hard to say if Maas planned all the series right with that one book and if she knew what she was writing down, If she knew it might lead to something HUGE. If she had this planned ever since the beginning, that's MARVEL level stuff. What did Maas do in the 10 years she was writing the book? I think Cresent City has the potential to be the End Game of books.
(That or I’m giving Maas too much credit.)
NOTE: It is also worth mentioning that there is a quote on page 327 that says, "There was something brewing, a cauldron that the king had journeyed to stir." Perhaps referencing the well-known Cauldron in the ACOTAR series.
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