How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories

“[E]ver since he had been sent from the palace in disgrace, Cardan had felt like the boy in Aslog’s story. His heart was stone.”

While Cardan initially considers Aslog’s story meaningless, it remains with him, even as Aslog herself fades from memory. Cardan’s desire to turn his heart into stone reflects his choice of stasis and a refusal to transform and grow. It is a precursor to his decision to embrace the false reputation thrust upon him. This connection also reinforces how stories, though fictional, reflect universal truths. Though the fairy-tale boy is fiction, the sentiment is rooted in fact.

“‘Humans are like mice,’ Balekin went on. ‘Dead before they learn how to be canny. Why shouldn’t they serve us? It gives their short lives meaning.’”

This quote establishes Balekin’s bigotry and belief that faeries are superior to humans. The dividing line is clearly drawn. Balekin’s perspective colors Cardan’s worldview for a long time, molding him into Balekin’s image. It is not until later that Cardan’s point of view begins to change and his character develops.

“It turned out that Cardan didn’t have a heart of stone after all. […]

Not a heart of stone, but a heart of fire.”

Though Cardan professes to desire stasis, he cannot help his gradual transformation. He may have numbed himself to his family’s neglect as a child, but Balekin’s violence against him, as well as their constant, close proximity, pushes Cardan into a new state of being—active hatred (fire). Cardan will transform as he finds fewer and fewer reasons to subscribe to Balekin’s way of life.

“For all the charm and distinction of his siblings, it was Cardan who won the Undersea’s favor. It was the first time he’d won anything.”

Cardan finally has his first taste of victory. Until now, he has been spurned and rejected, always coming last if he is included at all. Becoming Nicasia’s first choice in friends teaches Cardan that he does have value and is a turning point for his adolescent behavior. This also makes her eventual betrayal all the more heartbreaking and painful for him.

“Villains were wonderful. […] They indulged all their worst impulses, revenged themselves for the least offense, and took every last thing they wanted.

And sure, they wound up […] not just dead, but disgraced and screaming.

But before they got what was coming to them, they got to be the fairest in all the land.”

Cardan is eventually revealed to be a misunderstood antihero, but he sees himself as a petty villain. Forced into villainy when he was framed for murder, he chooses to embrace the role, seeing no other path or future for himself. This aligns him with Balekin’s influence and with the stone-hearted boy from Aslog’s stories. However, his villainy is only a veneer; Cardan builds up his vicious front to shield his vulnerable heart.

“‘You made Balekin a promise, a foolish promise, but a promise all the same. You deserve—’ He couldn’t get out the rest of the sentence. You deserved everything you got. That would have been a lie, and while the Folk could trick and deceive, no untruth could pass their lips.”

This quote alludes to the novel’s exploration of Truth, Lies, and Deceit, as faeries are physically unable to tell a lie. While Cardan professes publicly to share Balekin’s bigotry toward humans, his inability to express prejudice suggests his uncertainty perspective and future transformation. In this case, his worldview is made complicated by the fact that Margaret is the human Balekin ordered to beat him. This forces Cardan to ponder nuances that Balekin himself rejects.

“The sight of the human servants unnerved him. Their empty eyes and chapped lips. Nothing like the twins from the palace school.”

This quote further explores Cardan’s shifting perspective about the divide between fey and humanity. For most of his formative years, his only interactions with humans have been negative ones, such as with Balekin’s ensorcelled servants. His regular encounters with Jude and her sister, however, make him question the static social strata. This influences his decisions to rescue Margaret and marry Jude.

“‘I never wanted to…’ She let the sentence fall away, doubtless seeing the expression on his face. It had the unsettling effect, however, of mimicking how the Folk spoke when they began a sentence and realized they couldn’t speak the lie.”

Faeries, who cannot lie, are skilled deceivers despite a mistaken assumption that they’re being honest. Humans, meanwhile, are mistrusted because of their ability to lie to one’s face but conversely can be more directly honest than the fey. Margaret’s hesitation here blurs those lines, showing how faerie culture can influence her even if she is not physically limited. This foreshadows the nuances that Cardan learns later in the book.

“The seeds of Prince Cardan’s resentment came full bloom. What was the point of her trying so hard? Why would she work like that when it would never win her anything?

‘Mortals,’ said Nicasia with a curl of her lip.

He had never tried like that for anything in his life.”

The novel explores The Class and Race Divide as Cardan observes Jude more closely. As a prince, Cardan is granted a high level of privilege, even if he has little political power. He takes much of this for granted and views himself as powerless. However, Jude, who is considered socially inferior because she is human, disregards her supposed disadvantage and seizes opportunities to advance herself. Nicasia represents the general faerie disdain for Jude’s efforts. Cardan is forced to re-evaluate his worldview, signaling another stage of his gradual transformation.

“Cardan tried to tell himself that he could grow used to the Undersea, that he would learn how to survive there, to make himself consequential, to find some pleasure. And if, as he had floated in the cold darkness, his thoughts had turned to the curve of an ear, the weight of a step, a blow that was checked before it could land, that didn’t matter. It meant nothing, and he should forget it.”

An alliance with the Undersea would grant Cardan significant power and influence in the faerie Court—power and influence that he has thus far never had. However, though Cardan does not see a clear future for himself, he is gradually learning what he cannot accept and rejects the “easy” path laid out for him. This hints at his changing thoughts about race and class and his thoughts of Jude and foreshadows Nicasia’s betrayal.

“‘Tut, tut, child!’ said the Duchess. ‘Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.’”

This quote is drawn from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass. It references how fictional stories contain truth and repeats the “moral of the story” discussions between Aslog and Cardan. Because the book is written by a human, it shifts Cardan’s stance about The Class and Race Divide and indicates the direction of his subsequent transformation.

“‘Boys change,’ she told him. ‘And so do stories.’”

Cardan is paralleled with Aslog’s tale about changing boys. This indicates Cardan’s lack of stasis, despite him believing otherwise. This is their second meeting and exchange of tales. The scene develops the motif of the rule of three, building toward a third and final climactic exchange later on.

“It’s simply this. A heart of stone can still be broken.”

Aslog’s tale emphasizes how stories are truth and foreshadows Cardan’s heartbreak. The broken stone indicates the end of a state of stasis. It suggests that transformation cannot be fully prevented, only slightly delayed. The stone-hearted boy felt nothing for a while, but his state would never be permanent. Similarly, Cardan’s public veneer only hides the changes occurring beneath it.

“Nicasia cut her gaze toward Cardan and said no more. Her expression was a careful blank. He marked that, when he wouldn’t have marked their words.”

This quote explores truth, lies, and deceit. While Nicasia is not directly lying to Cardan about cheating on him with Locke, their open flirtation, presented as a joke, is truer than it appears. Nicasia’s body language blurs the lines between honesty and deceit, though she never directly lies, nor does she openly admit her guilt.

“Cardan ought to have been the boy with the heart of stone in Aslog’s story, but somehow he had let his heart turn to glass.”

The above quote draws another parallel between Cardan and the fairy-tale boy. This would be the point at which the fairy-tale boy’s heart shatters. Uncovering Nicasia’s infidelity forces Cardan out of the stasis of the “easy” path presented to him, pushing him toward the king he will eventually become. The comparison between Cardan and the fairy-tale boy reinforces the symbolism of story as truth, recalling Aslog’s warning that even stone hearts can be broken.

“He could no more lie than any of the Folk, but stories were the closest thing to lies the Folk could tell.”

Locke epitomizes the blurred lines between truth, lies, and deceit. Though he, as a faerie, can’t lie outright, he is fixated on and fascinated by stories. Locke—a master of deceit—twists stories for his own benefit, attempting to remove himself from blame when Cardan discovers his and Nicasia’s secret affair. Though Locke cannot lie, he is the closest of the fey to a liar, reinforcing the Folk’s reputation for being capricious, cold-blooded tricksters.

“In the end, he supposed Balekin had been right. Her dalliance had been a mere nothing. Balekin was probably also right when he said that only with her by his side would Cardan have some measure of political power. If he lost her, he was only himself, the despised, youngest prince.”

Rejecting Nicasia means that Cardan is rejecting the “easy” path set before him, the path his siblings vie for: political power and contending for the crown of Elfhame. Cardan has been separated from this path from birth due to the prophecy associated with him. His rejection of Nicasia further transforms him into the king he will become. It sets the stage for his eventual romance with Jude, foreshadowing his changing stance on the class and race divide.

“It shouldn’t matter. The human girls were insignificant, nothing. In fact, he ought to feel delighted that Nicasia had such swift cause to regret what she’d done. And if he felt even angrier than he had before, well then, he had no cause.

[…]

‘Punish them.’ She took his hands, expression fierce. ‘Punish all three of them. […] Make them suffer.’

‘You should have led with that,’ Cardan told her, getting to his feet. ‘That I would have agreed to just for fun.’”

Cardan is given a test and fails. Locke has deceived Nicasia, who, in true faerie fashion, scapegoats the humans, reinforcing bigotry. Cardan is unconsciously beginning to question common prejudices, indicated by his inexplicable anger at Locke’s pursuit of the human girls. At the same time, he has not changed enough to openly reject Locke and Nicasia’s behavior. Instead, he joins them, believing that wickedness is better than justice. This further aligns him with the stone-hearted boy in the fairy tale. He mimics the boy’s continued misbehavior, even with a stone heart.

“But the contempt made him feel as though she saw beneath all his sharp and polished edges. It reminded him of how his father and all the Court had seen him, before he learned how to shield himself with villainy.”

Cardan’s interactions with Jude parallel the stone-hearted boy’s nights with the cursed monster girl, furthering how stone represents stasis and monster transformation. While Cardan deceives himself and everyone around him by using his villainy as a cloak, Jude—the supposedly untrustworthy mortal liar—sees through him. She openly expresses her true feelings of hatred and contempt for him, contrasting with the stereotype of her race.

“‘You told me that stories change,’ he says. ‘And boys along with them. We are both different than we were at our last meeting.’”

The book utilizes a circular method of storytelling, in which various elements are repeated and changed in order to further the story. Here, Cardan references Aslog’s lesson that stories are truth. He admits that he has transformed, shifting his alignment from the stone-hearted boy to the shape-shifting monster girl. This implies Aslog’s alignment with static stone.

“Cardan tries not to let his nerves show. ‘Because stories tell a truth, if not precisely the truth.’”

Cardan and Aslog discuss the connection between stories and truth. They address how stories blur the distinctions between truth, lies, and deceit: While stories are fiction (lies), they can still express truth and be used to deceive.

“He had begged for the heart of stone, but for the first time, he felt the weight of it in his chest. He wondered if he ought to be afraid of what was to come. He wondered if there was something profoundly wrong with him that he could not.”

Cardan’s fairy tale explores his own journey of transformation—while a stone heart clearly leaves the boy in stasis, only rarely does he think to question the wisdom of it. The boy’s choice to turn his heart into stone reinforces the idea that transformation is an active choice. It signals that Cardan no longer embodies the passive villain persona he once cultivated.

“Cardan stands, too. ‘Everyone finds different lessons in stories, I suppose, but here’s one. Having a heart is terrible, but you need one anyway.

‘Or here’s another: Stories can justify anything. It doesn’t matter if the boy with the heart of stone is a hero or a villain; it doesn’t matter if he got what he deserved or if he didn’t. No one can reward him or punish him, save the storyteller. And she’s the one who shaded the tale so we’d feel whatever way we feel about him in the first place.’”

Cardan reinforces how stories embody truth, but with a twist—there is no rule that stories can only have one truth, an assumption previously implied by Aslog in their previous exchanges. Cardan’s use of “her” to refer to the storyteller is ambiguous—he could be referring to Aslog, rebuking her for her own biased tale of woe, but he could also be referring to the author, Black. By extension, Black could be using him as a mouthpiece to refer to herself. By writing this book from Cardan’s perspective, Black changes her depiction of him from the main trilogy, transforming him from petty-villain-turned-love-interest into a misunderstood antihero who matures into a just—if capricious—High King.