61 pages • 2-hour read
Fall of Ruin and Wrath
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, sexual content, sexual violence, and death.
The Clash Between Survival and Rebellion
The world of Fall of Ruin and Wrath centers around a rigid and brutal class hierarchy in which the upper classes wield power not only by virtue of wealth and status but by supernatural means; the Hyhborn are not humans but Deminyens, immortal beings whose abilities extend even to mind control. Against this backdrop, the question of whether to prioritize survival or resistance becomes urgent, with different characters choosing different responses.
Lis operates in a constant state of survival. She grows up impoverished after fleeing from an orphanage with Grady, spending her childhood trying to find food and occasional work to survive. These experiences so shape her perspective that, even after six years of living in comfort with Claude, she still recognizes her precarious position as his advisor and paramour. As a result, she makes significant sacrifices to remain in Claude’s favor, using her body and her intuition to gain information for him. Lis thus represents one side of this theme: She worries constantly about her own survival while ignoring the larger politics of the kingdom of Caelum.
Conversely, Grady is concerned with the growing rebellion within the kingdom and the role that he could play in it. He tries to discuss this with Lis, insisting that they should leave the safety of Archwood to fight in the rebellion: “We are basically just cattle for them, working in the mines, feeding them, keeping the realm running, and for what? So yeah, we have it better than we did before, but we don’t have it good, Lis. None of us do” (191). In other words, Grady believes that it is not enough to live happily and comfortably in Archwood: They are still dehumanized, and they are also ignoring the plight of the lowborn population living under worse conditions.
Grady’s words hint that the choice between survival and resistance is a false one: Short-term survival is not necessarily survival in a meaningful sense or in the long run, and it requires betraying one’s own humanity. Ultimately, Lis embraces this idea, as the brutality and violence that she experiences teach her that simply surviving is no longer enough. A turning point occurs when she is at the inn with Arion; there, she sees Hyhborn brutality in the mutilated bodies around her and in Arion’s manipulation of her own mind. Recognizing that the Hyhborn likely destroyed Archwood simply to stop the Iron Knights from obtaining it, she concludes that compromising with such a system is both morally and practically untenable and repudiates her earlier focus on self-preservation: “I hadn’t wanted to jeopardize my life and all the privileges I’d obtained, whether warranted or not. […] I was too wrapped up in my own life and my own fears. I could’ve done more” (412). This affirms what Lis has learned throughout the text: It is not enough to simply survive. Instead, she plans to fight for herself and others going forward.
The Struggle for Autonomy
Central to Fall of Ruin and Wrath is Lis’s journey to agency and self-determination. She strongly desires control over her own life, so she rationalizes obeying orders as a choice that she is making freely. Meanwhile, she grapples with her intuition and her ability to see the future, which call into question how much of her life is predetermined and how much freedom she actually has.
Lis’s relationship with Claude establishes both her desire for agency and some of the practical limitations on it. Initially, she insists in her conversations with Grady that she is happy with the life that she has. When he questions her about her spending the night with Claude’s visitors, she insists to him that she is choosing to do so—and that Claude would not force her to go against her will. Privately, however, she recognizes that she needs to be of value to Claude and knows that this shapes her decision-making: Although Claude may not force her to use her body to obtain information, that does not mean there would not be repercussions (including her dismissal from Archwood) if she went against Claude’s wishes. When Claude ignores her protests and willingly “gives” her to Thorne, she must grapple with the fact that her position grants her even less agency than she realized.
Given the Deminyens’ immense power, which is both societal and supernatural, Lis’s relationship with Thorne becomes a test case for just how much free will she has. Following Claude’s “gift,” Thorne simply picks Lis up and carries her to his room, insisting that her attraction to him implies consent. Through Lis, Thorne ultimately learns about the importance of allowing Lis to choose and subsequently gives her choices regarding spending the night in his room, bathing together, and having penetrative sex. In this way, Thorne gives Lis the respect and agency that she has always wanted, but the fact that he could easily override her free will if he wished frames this autonomy as conditional.
The evolving relationship between Lis and Thorne, like the depiction of free will in general, is further complicated by the novel’s depiction of fate. As a starborn, Lis was given her intuition and born as a caelestia to serve Thorne’s needs for compassion and humanity, which suggests that her love for Thorne might be destined. As her ability to see the future repeatedly shows, there is an element of predeterminism in the novel’s world, inviting the reader to question how much agency Lis, or even a Deminyen like Thorne, truly has.
Compassion as Vulnerability and Strength
Given the harshness of the society the novel depicts, it is an open question whether not only Lis and Thorne’s relationship but also love and compassion broadly can survive. Several of the novel’s speculative elements frame compassion as a potential liability in a dangerous world, yet Armentrout also insists on empathy’s value, positioning it as central to Lis’s characterization and Thorne’s arc.
The Deminyen see love and compassion as sources of weakness, working to remove them from their lives entirely. Because of their history of war with humans, the ny’seraphs exist to connect Deminyens to humanity, as Lord Samriel explains: “[T]he gods bond a mortal to a Deminyen at birth. […] [O]nce the bond is completed, the Deminyen gains their ny’chora—their connection to humanity. The ny’chora keeps them [compassionate]” (391). However, Samriel also claims that this connection can be fatal to the immortal Deminyens, who can be killed via their connection to the ny’seraphs. Deminyens therefore find their ny’seraphs and kill them, severing that connection to humanity out of self-preservation but also, it is implied, to exist more comfortably in their position as rulers; without compassion, the Deminyens are free to rule the kingdom in a way that keeps the Hyhborn in power and the lowborn under their control. The depiction of the Deminyens thus literalizes the risks of empathy—suffering and even a loss of self amid others’ pain—but also highlights the risks of avoiding empathy entirely.
Lis also experiences empathy partly as a liability via her intuition. This can be incapacitating, as she is so attuned to others’ thoughts that she sometimes finds it hard to keep hold of her own. Nevertheless, she embraces compassion. She has spent her life trying to protect Grady, giving up much of her autonomy in exchange for assurance that Grady can live safely and happily in Archwood. During the novel’s climax, she even gives herself up to the Hyhborn in exchange for Grady’s protection. Lis also risks her own life to save Thorne the first time that she meets him, even though she believes him to be a brutal Hyhborn lord. Such actions emphasize that Lis largely lives for others. As she explains after seeing the brutality of Arion in the inn, “I cared about others, but I obviously hadn’t cared enough. Because I never paid attention to Court politics whenever other barons visited with news and gossip. […] I used my abilities when asked, when it served me, or simply by accident” (412). In other words, even after she sees what the Hyhborn are capable of doing to her, she doubles down on compassion, insisting that it is what will bring about change in the kingdom. The question, then, becomes whether Thorne will kill Lis to eliminate his compassion or learn to be a compassionate ruler to change the kingdom of Caelum.
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