Hemlock & Silver

These concluding chapters cement the novel’s deconstruction of archetypes through the lens of The Ambiguity of Morality Beyond Fairy-Tale Binaries. The narrative function of the mirror-gelds is key in this respect. Initially depicted as monsters, their actions directly contradict their frightening appearance. Their decision to rescue Anja and Javier is empathic as well as strategic—a response to a common enemy that reveals their capacity for reason and cooperation. Moreover, Anja’s observations of the mirror-gelds, including their apparent communication with one another, imply that they have a complex society of their own, further subverting the classic fairy-tale trope of the mindless monster. By aligning the story’s most “monstrous” beings with the protagonists, the narrative severs the link between physical appearance and moral character.

The motif of poisons further evidences the theme. In the classic story, the antagonistic stepmother is the figure with the knowledge of poisons, which she uses to place Snow White in her deep sleep. Elements of this remain in the Mirror Queen’s “poisoning” of Snow, but it is Anja, the protagonist, who has a deep knowledge of herbal lore. What’s more, it is her knowledge of poisons that ultimately saves Snow, underscoring that an apparent evil may serve a good end.

The resolution of Nurse’s storyline offers a final commentary on the ambiguity of morality. Her complicity is revealed to be the result of psychological manipulation, not inherent malice. Anja’s decision to allow Nurse to depart quietly, rather than face official justice, is an act of mercy rooted in this understanding. It is a verdict based on evidence of intent and mitigating circumstances, directly contrasting with the king’s rash execution of his wife at the story’s outset. This conclusion eschews the simple, punitive justice of traditional folklore, suggesting that true justice may lie in compassionate understanding.

The culmination of Princess Snow’s character arc adds similar complexity to her characterization. For much of the story, Snow is a passive victim, her illness a manifestation of her manipulation by the Mirror Queen. However, when Anja presents her with the truth of her sister’s murder, Snow undergoes a rapid transformation from pawn to agent, articulated in her declaration, “I’ll kill her! […] She lied to me” (314). This moment marks her decisive break from the Mirror Queen’s false narrative. She weaponizes her understanding of the mirror-world’s rules by deliberately ingesting a near-lethal dose of mirror-apples, accumulating the power to physically expel the Mirror Queen from that reality. Snow’s final act of tackling the fragmented Mirror Queen through the portal is the ultimate assertion of her reclaimed agency.

In the aftermath of the central crisis, the consummation of Anja and Javier’s relationship provides a thematic resolution to The Unstable Nature of Identity. Their partnership is forged not via a conventional courtship but amid the strangeness of their experiences in the mirror-world, and its formalization represents the creation of a new, stable identity built upon that shared experience. Having been forced to abandon their prescribed roles—Anja the detached scholar, Javier the loyal royal guard—they choose not to revert to their old selves. Instead, they negotiate a new arrangement, with Javier leaving the king’s service to become Anja’s personal guard and partner. Their relationship serves as a microcosm of the novel’s larger exploration of selfhood as fluid and contingent. Just as a reflection can awaken and covet a new reality, Anja and Javier have awakened to new facets of their own characters and choose to embrace them, finding stability not by restoring an old order but by constructing a new one.

The resolution of the theme of Questioning Scientific Authority and the Pursuit of Truth is more ambivalent. On the one hand, the novel vindicates a quasi-scientific approach to the mirror-world, as the central conflict is resolved not through arbitrary magic, but through the logical application of the world’s established physical laws: the positioning of two mirrors to create an infinite reflection that deconstructs the Mirror Queen’s physical form. This event relies on the assistance of the mirror-geld, a creature born of this same reflective phenomenon. The climax is therefore a closed logical loop, with every element—from the mirror-geld’s aid to Snow’s apple-fueled strength to the Mirror Queen’s final dissolution—arising directly from rules detailed earlier in the narrative. This reinforces the novel’s overarching rationalist ethos, demonstrating that even in a fantastical setting, solutions are found through observation, experimentation, and an understanding of cause and effect. As symbols, mirrors thus function dually as a portal to the uncanny and as a tool governed by consistent physics.

At the same time, Anja’s final conversation with Grayling embodies the novel’s core tension between scientific rationalism and folkloric magic. His existence provides a physical, cause-and-effect explanation for the story’s inciting incident—a stray strand of his mirror-cat hair contaminating food—but he himself resists explanation. By claiming, “I am more a cat than I am anything else” (353), he situates himself within a tradition of enigmatic, speaking fairy-tale beasts whose wisdom operates outside human logic. Anja’s acceptance of this paradox marks the culmination of her intellectual journey. The skeptic who once dismissed unproven theories now concedes that she has “missed some things, by not listening to fairy tales” (353). This ending does not ask her to abandon her methodology but to practice it with humility, recognizing that rational inquiry and the metaphorical truth of myth are complementary tools for comprehending a complex universe.