Kingdom of Ash characters

Appears from the start

Queen of Terrasen, held prisoner by Maeve for months, chained in iron and kept in an iron coffin that cuts her off from her magic. She is being systematically broken to make her surrender her blood oath, and she has refused every time. She measures her survival in very small units: what she can still think, what she can still refuse, and how much of herself is left when the lid closes again.

Appears from the start

A Fae prince of Doranelle, blood-sworn to Aelin and married to her, who has spent every day since she was taken hunting for the ship, the camp, or the road that will lead him to her. He has stopped sleeping and stopped negotiating. His magic is wind and ice, and his patience is gone.

Appears from the start

Queen of the Fae of Doranelle, who took Aelin at the coast and has held her ever since. She wants the blood oath and the Wyrdkeys, and she is prepared to spend as long as it takes. Her power works on minds as much as bodies, and nothing she says can be assumed to be the whole truth.

Appears from the start

A Fae warrior of Maeve's cadre, blood-sworn and therefore compelled to attend Aelin's confinement and do nothing about it. The oath rules his body; it does not rule what he thinks, and the strain of the difference is destroying him.

First appears in chapter 2

A Fae male in Maeve's service, given charge of Aelin's confinement, who treats the work as a craft and a privilege. He is cruel by preference rather than by order.

First appears in chapter 3

Lady of Perranth by right, travelling with Rowan's party in the search for Aelin. Raised locked in a tower and lame from a childhood injury, she has become the practical centre of the group, and she is still deciding what she thinks about the man who betrayed them all.

First appears in chapter 3

A five-centuries-old Fae warrior, once Maeve's most lethal servant, now cast out of Aelin's court for the betrayal that led to her capture. He is helping to find her anyway, tolerated rather than trusted, and he does not defend himself to anyone.

First appears in chapter 4

A Fae warrior of Maeve's cadre known as the Lion, quiet and steady, still bound by his blood oath and still searching for Aelin alongside Rowan. Aedion Ashryver is his son, and the two of them have never managed a conversation about it.

First appears in chapter 5

General of the Bane and Aelin's cousin, holding Terrasen's northern defences with too few soldiers and a queen who is not the queen. He is grieving, furious, and running a war he was never given the resources to win.

First appears in chapter 5

A shapeshifter wearing Aelin Galathynius's face day and night to keep Terrasen from collapsing, which means being looked at, obeyed, and hated as Aelin while having no power to back it up. She has been at it for months and there is very little of her own life left in it.

First appears in chapter 6

The senior lord of Terrasen's council, who denied Aelin her crown and now finds himself defending Orynth alongside her court. He is pragmatic to the point of ruthlessness and is preparing for a siege he does not expect to survive.

First appears in chapter 3

King of Adarlan, alone, moving toward Morath with a plan he has told no one. He has magic he has finally learned to shape, including the ability to change his own form, and he intends to walk into Erawan's fortress and take the last Wyrdkey out of it.

First appears in chapter 3

The Valg king, master of Morath, whose armies, wyverns, ilken, and witch-forged siege engines are moving north to finish what his kind began a thousand years ago. He holds the third Wyrdkey.

First appears in chapter 4

Outcast heir of the Blackbeak clan and daughter of the last Crochan Queen, riding into the Western Wastes with the Thirteen to ask the witches her clan spent five hundred years hunting to follow her into a war for a continent none of them care about.

First appears in chapter 4

Manon's Second and cousin, the finest rider in the Thirteen, who has followed Manon out of the Ironteeth and into exile without once asking her to justify it.

First appears in chapter 12

An elderly Crochan witch, keeper of the hearth and of the old rites, and Manon's great-grandmother. She is the first Crochan willing to take Manon's claim seriously, and she is under no illusions about how hard the rest will be to convince.

First appears in chapter 10

Matron of the Blackbeak clan and Manon's grandmother, commanding the Ironteeth host for Morath, who murdered her own daughter and raised the child as a weapon. She intends to take the Wastes back by force and considers Manon's defiance a defect to be corrected permanently.

First appears in chapter 40

Hand to the King of Adarlan, healed and walking, arriving from the southern continent with the khaganate's armies at his back. He has spent the voyage preparing for a war and dreading a homecoming, because the fleet's landing site is the mountain city his father rules.

First appears in chapter 40

A healer of the Torre Cesme and Chaol's wife, whose magic does not merely resist Valg corruption but destroys it. She is the only weapon on the continent that Erawan has no answer for, and everyone who knows it wants her somewhere different.

First appears in chapter 40

Captain of Adarlan's Royal Guard, now flying with the rukhin of the southern continent, bringing sky-riders to a war fought largely in the air.

First appears in chapter 40

Prince of the rukhin and son of the khagan, leading the ruk riders north to fight beside Terrasen.

First appears in chapter 70

Queen of the Western Wastes, red-haired and unrepentant, who once betrayed Aelin badly in a desert and has spent the years since running a kingdom. She owes a debt and has come to pay it.