44 pages • 1-hour read
How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories
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Character Analysis
Cardan
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child abuse, and bullying.
Cardan is the youngest prince of Elfhame and later the High King. As a child, he is unloved and neglected by his biological family; one brother frames him for murder, while the other beats and reluctantly raises him. With his reputation tarnished, Cardan embraces villainy and eventually uses it as a protective shield. While he considers himself a hedonistic, petty villain for most of his life, he is portrayed as something closer to a misunderstood antihero.
Cardan initially surrounds himself with terrible influences and a posse of toxic “friends,” all of whom encourage him to be awful and teach him to view humans as inferior. Nicasia and Locke, in betraying him, teach him faeries’ capability for deceit. His few positive influences are sporadic and distant—Aslog’s stories teach him how to think for himself, and his exposure to Jude changes his perception of humans.
Cardan’s character development mostly happens in secret, deceiving even himself. As an adult, he tries to openly play the hero to prove himself and protect Jude. However, he realizes that he prefers subtlety, displayed by his final story to Aslog, over the brash openness of Jude’s warrior heroism. He learns to view faeries and humans as equals and thus achieves his fairy-tale happy ending. His life lesson is that there is never just one right answer.
Aslog of the West
Aslog is a troll woman with three golden wart hairs. She serves as Cardan’s main foil in this book, or a character who illuminates another character through contrasting qualities. She is also a marker that measures his character development and maturity.
Aslog was once in the service of Queen Gliten, who rules over a lower faerie Court within Elfhame’s jurisdiction. Aslog worked as a miller for the queen, who promised her a reward after seven years of service. However, the queen tricked Aslog to get out of the bargain, and Cardan’s father, the High King of Elfhame, refuses Aslog’s petition for justice, leaving her bitter and angry.
Aslog nurses her grudge throughout the book, angering Queen Gliten by killing the queen’s lover and feeding her the bones. Aslog also becomes a solitary fey and terrorizes humans in the mortal realm, leading to her final confrontation with Cardan, which petrifies her into stone. Aslog is associated with stone, reflecting her static and unchanging nature. At the same time, her storytelling inadvertently pushes Cardan to transform. Through her stories, she is something of a mentor to Cardan. In the end, he surpasses her by adapting to his circumstances; he is willing to forgive and move on, something she is never able to do.
Nicasia
Nicasia, Princess of the Undersea, is faerie royalty from the marine Court neighboring Elfhame. The two Courts have a tense, contentious relationship. Though Nicasia is fostered in Elfhame, she remains disdainful of it; neither humans nor Elfhame will ever surpass her homeland.
Elfhame gentry, including Balekin, seek Nicasia’s friendship in order to ally with the Undersea; Nicasia chooses Cardan as a friend specifically because he refuses to be impressed by her. She is Cardan’s first friend and the one he opens up to the most. She is also his first lover and the first to break his heart. She is a heartless princess. For example, Nicasia cheats on Cardan with Locke but also asks him to seek revenge for her when Locke breaks up with her.
Jude Duarte
Jude is a human girl, raised by faerie gentry. She has an identical twin sister, Taryn; they are both classmates to Cardan and Nicasia. Locke is fascinated by them, Nicasia hates them, and Cardan becomes obsessed with Jude in particular during his childhood and adolescence; she will later become his love interest, wife, and the first mortal High Queen of Elfhame. Jude’s story is told in greater detail in the main trilogy.
Jude is an anomaly. She is a human, which already makes her different, but she has also been raised to the level of faerie gentry. Moreover, she refuses the respect normally afforded to someone of her status. She hates Cardan for his privilege and his terrible personality and makes her hatred very clear. She is bullied and treated poorly by Cardan and his posse but works harder than any of them to achieve her goals.
Jude is the moral center of the novel: She values hard work and disdains superficiality and cruelty. She piques Cardan’s interest (and his derision) but also triggers his gradual change in attitude toward humans and the mortal realm. Jude and her eclectic, diverse family offer Cardan an alternate worldview, as well as the loving family he never had as a child.
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