Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of child abuse, imprisonment, parental neglect, abuse, torture, and murder.

As the first installment in a spinoff of the Broken Kingdom series, The Ever King rides the coattails of the historicized violence in L.J. Andrews’s previous works, most of which involves the brutal war between the earth fae and the sea fae. Much of this history characterizes the premise behind The Ever King’s plot and creates the tension between the two main protagonists. By recreating the effects of this history in The Ever King, Andrews demonstrates that the cyclical patterns of violence are easy to fall into and difficult to break. Erik’s vengeance plot against Livia’s father, Valen, stands as a prime example of this dynamic. Erik’s childhood was steeped in violence, and he admits to being “born into brutality” and harboring early “memories are of blood and death” (290). He also admits, “Thorvald was not what I would call a gentle father […] and his greatest fear was producing a gentle heir. He had his ways of seeing to it his fears were never realized” (290). This understated description hints at the violence and abuse that Erik endures, and this issue is further compounded by the death of his mother, the torture he experiences at the hands of earth fae clans, the contempt and subsequent death of his father, and the public humiliation and brutalization at the hands of his uncle. He even suffers the betrayals from his own people.

Thus, with this barrage of injustices, Andrews suggests that this relentless violence afflicted Erik with a “darkness” that arises from the corrupted love between his childhood self and his abusive father. She also implies that the violence he experienced was dehumanizing and senseless to the point of confusion. For most of the narrative, the adult Erik enacts his own version of justice, basing it on the same cruel brutality that his father once used to sow fear, as this behavior is what the Ever society expects from its king. However, by adopting his father’s methods, Erik also perpetuates the cycle of violence that Thorvald initiated, especially when he finds himself determined to seek retribution from the one man who sought to protect him from it all: Livia’s father. Despite the abuse that he endured as a child, Erik still adopts his father’s war because these violent goals are familiar, and he also sees them as the only means by which he can have any value in his father’s eyes. Notably, Livia criticizes Erik’s twisted, maladaptive need to please his deceased father, stating that when Valen caused Thorvald’s death, he “[u]nknowingly […] robbed a heartbroken boy of what he saw as more chances to please a cruel father” (313). Thus, the history of the Ever kingdoms is fraught with cyclical violence. In this context, Erik’s desire for revenge is revealed as his most tragic flaw, for it is furthered not because of a righteous cause but because a gentle child’s need for paternal approval has been funneled into baseless hatred, pain, and continued violence.