Two Twisted Crowns

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1

Part 2, Chapters 17-28

Part 2, Chapters 29-38

Part 3-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Court Attire

Court attire is a recurring symbol within Two Twisted Crowns and supports the overarching theme of Breaking the Cycle of History. Specifically in the case of Ione’s dresses and Elm’s outfits at court, their attire visually symbolizes their mutual struggle to claim their personhood and independence. In Elm’s case, his perpetual choice of black clothing marks him in stark contrast to the Rowans’ gold coloring. Elm’s choice is deliberate, as his conversation with Filick shows: “Filick peered over his spectacles at Elm’s black tunic. ‘I believe the traditional Rowan color is gold’ ‘So it is,’ Elm said to his sketchbook” (165). Many confuse his choice of black attire with his former membership in the Destriers, but Elm’s use of black harkens back to his time as a highwayman with Ravyn, where his will and independence were at their freest. It is a color, in other words, that denotes his willingness to help his cousins and to be more than the princeling his father wants him to be, thus making the color black synonymous with his attempt at carving his own path for himself.

In Ione’s case, her court attire indicates a path away from Rowan subjugation to her eventual freedom of self. With no control over something as basic as her own clothing, Ione is forced to wear high-collared grey, shapeless dresses, then a Nightmare-inspired red dress with the same type of tailoring to hide her body and choke her throat. The effects of the dresses are thus twofold: They are a visual reminder of the King’s intimate control over her body, and they compound her alienation from her own body in combination with her forced and continued use of the Maiden Card. With Elm’s help, however, Ione can reclaim this part of her identity with the richly colored and well-fitted Equinox dress that deliberately shows off her body, thereby denying the King’s control and letting her assert herself as she desires at court.

Masks

Masks are a recurring symbol that loosely supports the overarching theme of The Impact of Sacrifice. In Ravyn’s case, behavioral masks are synonymous with crafted personalities that he has cultivated as tools to protect himself and the ones he loves. As the Captain of the Destriers, he wears the mask of “the cold, unfeeling leader of Blunder’s ruthless soldiers” (59), as a means to make himself impenetrable to criticism and fearsome enough not to be questioned, despite losing the king’s favor. This mask is completely at odds with who he is as an infected person, given that the Destriers are meant to hunt the infected and either exile them for Blunder or see to their deaths. Though he abhors what the position implies, Ravyn has few options but to take on the role for the power and insight it provides him. His mask as Captain, much like his mask as a liar and highwayman, is, however, corrosive to his sense of self as it cages him in a position that requires constant sacrifice and endless endurance to bend to Quercus’s will. Thus, the Nightmare can ask, “Who will be waiting on the other side when the mask slips away? Captain? Highwayman? Or beast yet unknown?” (160), and Ravyn is never able to answer him. The bone masks also come to represent the treatment the infected receive from the Rowans. As these masks are made of animal bones and completely cover their faces, they become connoted with a sense of monstrosity, which Rachel Gillig implies is how the Quercus, Hauth, Destriers, and Physicians have made the infected out to be to the public—monsters.

Seashores

Seashores are a recurring symbol within the narrative that largely supports the overarching themes of The Impact of Sacrifice and Justice as Balance. In its first iteration, a seashore appears in Elspeth and the Nightmare’s shared darkness. As a space, the seashore is used as a repository of what Elspeth believes are all the Nightmare’s secrets, but factually, it is the collection of all of the Nightmare’s memories when he was still Taxus. Given that the Nightmare resided on the shore for hundreds of years, the shore comes to represent, in this case, an isolated location of grief and contemplation, wherein the endless sea encapsulates Taxus’s life and regrets—something Elspeth discovers when she plunges into the water. As a literary tool, the seashore communicates not only the depth of Taxus’s agony and fury against himself and the Rowans but also the loneliness his soul has had to endure prior to meeting Elspeth. In its second iteration, however, the seashore becomes a timeless meeting place, a neutral ground on which humans may confer with the Spirit of the Wood. The sea that graces that shore is one that contains all of time, which allows the Spirit to travel through its waters to any given moment. Gillig implies that this seashore is where all magic may reside, as seemingly it is the location the Spirit inhabits. As a literary tool, it comes to signify the perfect balance between humans and the Spirit of the Forest, wherein the humans are much the same as specks of sand and the Spirit, as endless as the sea. Both need one another to exist as a whole.