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

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Justice as Balance

Blunder and the events that lead to its liberation from the mist are best understood within an internal balancing system. Rather than undoing the injustices of history, the novel’s heroes seek to produce a counterweight to give that history meaning—whether through violent retribution (as in the grim demise of Hauth) or redemptive restitution (as in the Nightmare’s rescuing of Jespyr from the alders). Ione’s relationship with Hauth is a key expression of this theme. Hauth tries to murder Ione twice, but even more cruelly he dehumanizes her through the forced use of her Maiden Card. As she explains to the Nightmare, “I may not feel despair, […] but I am still lost. I have disappeared into the Maiden, just as Elspeth has into you. And I want to be freed” (100). Though Ione is able to act of her own volition and still retains her agency, Rachel Gillig notes that Hauth’s hiding of Ione’s Maiden Card has taken away her personhood—both internally and externally. As persistent use of the Maiden Card costs the user an absence of feelings, Ione has been alienated from her own emotions and personality. Likewise, though the Maiden Card has imparted invincibility and external beauty to Ione, her body no longer feels like her own.

To resolve this injustice and offer a counterweight to Ione’s suffering, the author orchestrates a poetic reckoning for Hauth in the final chapters of the narrative. Gillig deliberately constructs this retribution to mirror Ione’s experience: as Elm and Ione infect and sacrifice Hauth to finalize the Deck of Providence Cards, his use of the Maiden Card is made perpetual and ensures a continued dehumanization. Hauth, after all, had been using the Maiden Card when Elm and Ione stabbed him, which will ensure his body remains alive, but as the mist’s infection takes hold, Hauth is effectively alienated from both his mind and body: “He shook himself, running his hands over his face—his nose and mouth—as if he could drag the mist out of him. He was still beautiful—the mist had done nothing to erase the Maiden’s hold over his body— But his mind, the Spirit laid claim to” (361). Since Hauth’s Maiden is never shown to be disengaged, Gillig implies a terrible future for Hauth, one in which he is made to dwell forever in the alderwood’s valley of rotten corpses because of the mist’s control over his mind. This retribution mirrors what Hauth did to Ione—using the Maiden Card to rob her of control over her body, her mind, and her life.

The actions of the Nightmare show the more positive side of this vision of justice. Long ago, as Taxus, he sacrificed his sister to the mist in order to gain the power he thought he needed to save his kingdom. When he leads Ravyn, Jespyr, and Elspeth (whose body he inhabits) into the alderwood, the Twin Alders demand the same sacrifice of Ravyn. The moment acts as a mirror of the past, allowing Ravyn to demonstrate the folly of Taxus’s choice by choosing differently for himself and his own sister. When the Nightmare helps Ravyn to free Jespyr from the trees, he atones for the wrong he did in the past.

The Impact of Sacrifice

The idea of sacrificing for one’s goal is a central component to the Shepherd King series’ magical structure—that is, without Taxus’s barters with the Spirit of the Wood, the Providence Cards’ stable magical system wouldn’t exist, and the citizens of Blunder would still rely on the Spirit’s volatile brand of magic. But while Taxus is lauded for his Cards, Gillig exposes how the intent behind a sacrifice shapes its impact—more so than the cost behind the act of sacrifice. In the first book of the series, Taxus’s sacrifices for the Providence Cards were described in grandeur of his alleged noble spirit, and as Elspeth finds out while witnessing his memories, he had indeed initially haggled with the Spirit for the greater good of his kingdom. As he explains to the trees, his bartering looks to “the Spirit of the Wood to help [him] make Blunder a kingdom of abundance—of magic. That she might give [him] the tools [he] need[s] to shepherd the land and its people” (110). His intent, in other words, is for the betterment of society.

This benevolent intention, however, soon engenders an obsession with Card production that not only isolates Taxus from every person he’s ever loved but also reveals his self-serving tendencies. He creates the Nightmare Card, after all, because he wishes to read his friend Brutus’s mind—regardless of how creating this Card costs him his soul. After sacrificing so much to make the Cards, Taxus does not feel the weight of his sacrifices as great personal losses anymore; they are simply just another occurrence in his life as “a never-ending barter” (270). As he tells Elspeth, “every terrible thing that happened in Blunder took place long before [he] handed Brutus Rowan a Scythe. It happened because, five hundred years ago, a boy wore a crown—had every abundance in the world—but always asked for MORE” (271). Though creating a wealthy kingdom for all was well-intended, Taxus’s intent is corrupted by an insatiable greed that, in the end, becomes the undoing of his initial wish. It is because of his newfound greed for Cards that the mist descends upon Blunder. In direct consequence, Blunder is cut off from the world and eventually drains its resources; the mist’s infection soon follows, and the infected are hunted; his sister Ayris is sacrificed to the alderwood; and Brutus Rowan begins his reign of terror and slaughters Taxus and his family—all of which makes Taxus’s personal sacrifices, despite being incredibly demanding, rather pointless. The author thus exposes how, when the good intentions behind a sacrifice become warped by selfish desires, the act of sacrifice itself loses its sense of purpose and often derails into detrimental consequences.

Breaking the Cycle of History

Part of what ails most of the characters in Two Twisted Crowns is the nefarious byproduct of cyclical history. In the alderwood, Ravyn is made to make the same sacrificial choice about his sister as Taxus did 500 years prior. Meanwhile, the Nightmare must confront his responsibility in the creation of the Rowans’ reign of terror. In the world of Two Twisted Crowns, history tends toward repetition unless forcefully broken.

Perhaps more than any other character, Elm knows the burden of such an unending cycle. For all his privilege as the second prince of Blunder, Elm’s royal lineage is an inherited legacy of pain that began when Brutus proclaimed, “[T]o command the Scythe is to command pain. What is commanding a kingdom to that?” (303). Because of Brutus’s perspective, the Rowan lineage and the right to rule became synonymous with not only dealing out pain to citizens through their exclusive use of the Scythe Cards but also normalizing violence within their household—what Elm calls an “education in pain.” Though Hauth and Quercus imply that this “education” is meant to fortify Rowans and dissipate their perceived physical and/or mental weaknesses, in truth, their predisposition to engage in violence has perpetuated a cycle of domestic abuse. Quercus tells Elm:

You think you’re special—that the hurt Hauth dealt you was personal. It wasn’t. […] What happened to you has happened to Rowan Princes for centuries. It takes an understanding of pain to wield the Scythe. When you have a son, he will learn as well (242).

For 500 years, therefore, surviving a childhood of violence and brutality is a rite of passage for all Rowan men, typically passed from father to son, but in Elm’s case, mostly from older brother to younger one. Rather than creating a sense of restraint in the application of pain born out of personal experience, however, Rowan men are incentivized to think of brutal violence as a demonstration of strength and authority. Thus, Elm’s disdain for senseless violence—what can be deemed the Rowan way of ruling—has always put him at odds with his family and the legacy they endorse. It also predisposes him to unravel said legacy. The Nightmare explains in his grand plan to make Blunder a better kingdom:

But poetry is as judicious as violence. And wouldn’t it be poetic to undo the Rowans from within? To take that legacy of pain, and watch one of their own grind it under his heel? To carve the way for a Prince who never used the Scythe for violence? Your cousin Elm has done more than Brutus Rowan or I ever could. He has looked pain in the eye—and refused to let it make a monster of him (319).

Gillig does not imply that Elm is not violent—after all, he does kill people throughout the book and notably attempts regicide against Hauth. Nonetheless, Elm’s fundamental compassion allows him to overcome the pitfalls of his family legacy. Despite the torture he experienced as a child, it is his strength to refuse and refute the Rowan way of ruling that allows him—and, extendedly, Blunder as a whole—to break the cycle of violence carved by both Taxus’s and Elm’s Rowan ancestors.