There are three major centers of power in the novel, each based in a different country: Araluen’s king, Skandia’s system of jarls and the Oberjarl, and Gallica’s cruel baronies, with Deparnieux serving as their representative. These power centers all serve as generalized antagonists to the protagonists: Halt faces off against Araluen to save Will, Will and Evanlyn suffer under the system of slavery in Skandia, and Lord Deparnieux threatens Halt, Horace, and everyone in his barony. Each of these systems of government casually dehumanizes those under it, no matter how good any intentions are, demonstrating that systemic power has a dehumanizing effect on both the powerful and those they rule.

The settings of Gallica and Skandia parallel each other, demonstrating how power operates in similarly dehumanizing ways across superficially different systems. Skandians rely on enslaved labor to run their society; it is unclear how widespread the practice is, but most of the enslaved people appear to have been claimed through raids or warfare and forced into service. Gallica, meanwhile, does not have slavery in a formal sense, but Halt describes how farmers are pressed into military service at random, and the servants in Deparnieux’s household have no freedom to leave or seek other employment even though their lives are at constant risk to his cruel whims. In both situations, the ruling class (the Skandians or the barons) benefits from the suffering of an oppressed class (the enslaved people or the peasants). Those with the power to change the system have no motivation to do so, while those who are motivated to change the system are deprived of power. By conceptualizing those they oppress as less than fully human, the ruling classes maintain their power without guilt.

This dehumanization, however, takes many different forms throughout the book. Araluen’s system is the least oppressive: The King treats the Rangers as pieces on his chessboard, but he still deals with them fairly and justly, even if he does not recognize their individual needs and desires against the needs of the kingdom. At the other end of the spectrum, Deparnieux is deliberately cruel and vindictive, dehumanizing and torturing his victims for no reason other than his own satisfaction. While oppressive systems in Araluen and even in Skandia can be justified as necessary for social cohesion, Deparnieux has no values beyond his own personal power. As such, he embodies the danger of power for its own sake. He dehumanizes others without purpose or meaning, and he is thus presented as the most violent and malevolent figure in the book. Despite this apparent difference, Deparnieux is not meaningfully distinct from the book’s other rulers—he simply shows what power looks like without the fig leaf of an ideology to cover its violence. No matter how theoretically “positive” these systems are intended to be, they all rely on the sacrifice and suffering of others to function, even if they protect others in the process.