61 pages • 2-hour read
The Everlasting
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, suicidal ideation, cursing, emotional abuse, and sexual content.
The Power and Peril of Narrative Construction
Alix E. Harrow’s The Everlasting shows how stories shape reality with immense reach and steep human cost. Vivian Rolfe uses centuries of political power to bend history toward her own design, and Owen Mallory becomes the scribe who turns her inventions into the country’s official history. Ultimately, history becomes a contested space shaped by those who control authorship, exposing narrative historical construction as capable of legitimizing violence and erasing human truths while also inspiring hope.
Vivian, the novel’s primary antagonist, embodies this idea as she declares that there are “only two kinds of stories worth telling: the ones that send children to sleep, and the ones that send men to war” (161). This statement embodies the Everlasting Cycle itself, as she sees national identity as a narrative project that must be continually revised to ensure obedience and sacrifice. As both Queen Yvanne in the past and the Minister of War in the present, she uses myth as governance, engineering the founding legend of The Death of Una Everlasting as the story Dominion needs to form a nation born through noble suffering and justified bloodshed. Vivian’s success reveals how a carefully crafted story can build a collective belief and give violent acts the sheen of destiny.
As Owen writes Una’s legend, the novel exposes the idea of propaganda. He edits out moments that complicate her heroic image, deciding that there is “no need […] to burden the reader with unnecessary detail” (57). This rhetorical move mirrors real-world historical revisionism, where moral ambiguity and civilian suffering are erased to preserve myth. Una herself recognizes this erasure, accusing historians of turning her killing into glory and “pretty songs they sing at court” (42). The effects of these choices are directly reflected in Owen himself, who finds Una’s book and sees her poster at pivotal moments in his life, only to discover that they were carefully planted to direct him to Vivian. The power of Owen’s choices are reflected in the impact they have on himself in the future and on Dominion, while he experiences the disorienting effects of a manipulated history.
The novel exposes the danger of this kind of story-making by placing the official legend beside the harsher events it hides. The myth of Una the Virgin Saint wipes away the woman who carries the memory of the Black Bastion’s fire and who falls in love outside the limits of her public role. Similarly, the impact of Queen Yvanne’s actions are shown through the villagers that Owen encounters, as he is initially shocked by their disregard of and hate toward Una. While the legend portrays Una’s conquests as glorifying and nation-building, Owen recounts the reality as he sees the impoverished nation she leaves behind.
Ultimately, The Everlasting uses its fantasy elements to explore the negative impact of history construction and national mythmaking. Vivian’s success mirrors empire-building done by nations in the real world, as she constructs the empire of Dominion and maintains control for centuries. However, Una and Owen remind the reader of the individuals that are destroyed in the construction of narrative.
Personal Liberation Versus Imposed Destiny
The Everlasting depicts liberation as the act of rejecting a scripted destiny and building a self-directed life, particularly when that destiny is authored by institutions of power. Una and Owen begin the novel trapped within the roles Vivian Rolfe assigns them, with Una as the sacrificial hero whose death sustains a nation, and Owen as the obedient scribe whose pen legitimizes her sacrifice. However, they gradually push against those expectations, with their personal commitment and love ultimately outweighing the demands of a national myth crafted to control their identities.
From childhood, Una’s identity is subsumed by purpose, as she is wielded and controlled by Vivian. At the start of the novel, she runs from her grail quest and hides in the Queen’s Wood, a place “where there is no one to bid me rise or kneel” (47). Her retreat reveals how strongly she wants a life that does not hinge on constant duty. Given a name and a sword by Queen Yvanne, she becomes “Una Everlasting,” a title that denies the possibility of a future beyond service and death. Her heroism is an extraction, a role enforced through love, loyalty, and, ultimately, violence. She sees death by suicide as her only escape, underscoring her lack of autonomy yet also her desire for liberation.
Similarly, Owen is bound to the legend of Una, forced by Vivian to ultimately write her story for the benefit of Dominion. Initially, this fact is unclear, as he seeks belonging through the patriotic myth of Una. He is haunted by his father’s pacifism and his own wartime trauma, with his reverence for Una’s legend initially giving him purpose and validation. However, when he encounters the living woman behind the story, his faith in Dominion’s narrative fractures, as he has a growing awareness that history itself is unstable.
Despite being seemingly tied to their imposed destinies, Owen and Una both achieve liberation through acts of resistance. Owen breaks from Vivian’s script when he saves Una at Cavallon Keep, choosing a private truth over the tragedy the history books expect. Una later mirrors this turn when she abandons her plan for revenge and chooses an uncertain future with Owen. Their escape through time, made possible by the destruction of the book that holds their story, marks their refusal to remain inside the roles of hero and scribe. They walk away from legendary status and step into a life without a predetermined ending.
Freedom for both Una and Owen emerges through their relationships. Owen’s final act of choosing death to break the cycle destroys the logic of Vivian’s story precisely because it is an act she cannot turn into narrative. Similarly, when Una declares “That is not my name” (296), she severs the last tie between herself and the legend imposed on. In turn, Una and Owen create their own story, emphasizing their personal liberation through their escape from stories told by power.
The Personal Cost of Heroic Myths
In The Everlasting, Alix E. Harrow dismantles the idea of the flawless national hero and traces the pain and moral compromise that lie beneath celebrated legends. Through Una Everlasting’s legend, the novel reveals how heroism is constructed out of political necessity, glorifying violence through the erasure of its human cost.
Una’s public reputation as the Virgin Saint, the Red Knight, and the Dawn Blade of Dominion stands in stark contrast to her lived experience. Conversely, villagers in the Northern Fallows call her the “Knight of Worms” (74), a name that marks her as a butcher rather than a liberator. Bards praise her victories in the First Crusade, yet Una carries the weight of the Black Bastion’s destruction and has nightmares that push her to flee her duties. Her internal turmoil echoes the anger of those she conquers. When Una is confronted by a man in an impoverished northern village, Owen is shocked by his brazen grabbing of her hair and assault. For Owen, he has only ever heard the myth of Una, believing she will be revered and failing to see how she is viewed in the north as a conqueror. The villagers’ views reveal how the heroic story depends on the erasure of the conquered community’s grief. Her nightmares and suicidal ideation expose heroism as a burden that corrodes the self, rather than ennobling as projected through her heroic stories.
Harrow broadens this critique through Owen Mallory’s medal and the rhetoric of Dominion’s leaders. Owen receives the Everlasting Medal of Valor after his commanding officer attempts to kill him for desertion. He privately calls the ceremony a “complete fucking farce” (10), which exposes the gap between the state’s claims of honor and the violence beneath those claims. Colonel Drayton heightens this gap when he describes an invasion as a noble “Last Crusade” (21). Vivian Rolfe then extends the same logic by framing generations of conflict as necessary sacrifices for Dominion. Her willingness to repeatedly kill Una underscores the novel’s argument that heroic myths require deaths, erasing the truth of the story while inspiring others to sacrifice for the nation. Vivian doesn’t just ignore human suffering; she uses it to build and maintain control of Dominion.
Owen’s Everlasting Medal of Valor, bestowed under false pretenses, erodes his sense of self, just as Una’s image as a hero and martyr causes her pain as it clashes with the reality she knows. Through these parallel stories, the novel dramatizes the personal anguish that comes with embodying a myth that one knows is untrue, ultimately arguing that true heroism lies in refusing to perpetuate harmful stories, even when those stories promise immortality, honor, and national salvation.
Unlock every key theme and why it matters
Get in-depth breakdowns of the book’s main ideas and how they connect and evolve.
- Explore how themes develop throughout the text
- Connect themes to characters, events, and symbols
- Support essays and discussions with thematic evidence