Khagan

Two envoys and a queen's chest of gold couldn't buy his armies for the war. One healer saving one of his daughters did it in an afternoon.

The Khagan — Urus — is the emperor of the Southern Continent, ruling from Antica, from Throne of Glass — father of Sartaq, Hasar, Kashin, Arghun and Duva, and the man Chaol and Nesryn are sent across the sea to pull into a war he's certain is already lost. He won his throne by killing his own brother, and it takes the death and near-loss of his daughters to change his mind.

At a glance

KIND: Human — Urus, emperor (Khagan) of the Southern Continent
SEAT: The ivory throne at Antica — and no crown at all
WON IT BY: Killing his brother Orda in a six-hour succession fight
FATHER OF: Sartaq, Hasar, Kashin, Arghun, Duva — and the lost Tumelun
COURTED BY: Chaol and Nesryn, for the war against Erawan
REFUSED: The alliance, and Aelin's gold — while he mourned
MOVED BY: Yrene Towers healing the Valg out of his daughter Duva
COMMITTED: Healers, a thousand ruk-riders, a thousand ships — Sartaq his heir

His heirs

The ones who will follow.

Swipe to meet them all

Sartaq SartaqHis son — the ruk-riding prince.Enter Sartaq →

Kashin KashinHis son — the soldier-prince.Enter Kashin →

Hasar HasarHis daughter — the sharp one.Enter Hasar →

Nesryn Faliq Nesryn FaliqThe rukhin's champion, and more.Enter Nesryn Faliq →

The one they faced.

The one they faced

The enemy whose war finally reached the khaganate's proud skies.

Swipe to meet them all

Erawan Valg king of MorathErawanHis ilken crossed the sea and hunted their skies — the war that pulled the southern continent in.Enter Erawan →

What he loves

Late in a long reign

The khagan has ruled longer and wider than anyone alive, and he has buried the woman he ruled it beside. He holds an empire at peace and watches his children measure themselves against the throne he'll leave behind — no blood in the halls, by his design, only the long question of which of them it will be. He carries all of it. He has carried heavier.

His empress
He ruled beside her for a lifetime; now he rules without her. Of everything the empire asks him to hold, that is the one weight none of it can take off his hands.
His children
Sartaq, Kashin, Hasar and the rest — heirs, rivals, and his the whole way through. He does not love them less for making them compete for it, and he will love the ones who lose just the same.
The empire, at peace
The largest realm anyone rules, and no war inside its own walls worth the name. He built that. Keeping it quiet is a thing he does every single day — not a fact that settled, a peace that is held.
The order he built
A throne handed on by worth instead of by knives. Courts that answer to a crown instead of to whichever army stands nearest. He means to pass all of it on whole — which is the harder half of a great reign, and the half nobody sings about.

The empress

He rules the last of it without her

Everything he holds he built beside her — the peace, the reach, the long calm most realms never manage. She isn't here to hand it on with him. He does it anyway: the last stretch of a great reign, carried alone.

The long versionRead his whole storyEverything, in one place.Enter the full story

The Khaganate The Southern ContinentLonger and wider than any realm a living soul has crossed — steppe and aerie and the white spires of the Torre, held under one rule. He chose his heir the way the old khagans did, by worth and not by birth, and he keeps the whole of it at peace. He built every mile of it beside her, and she is not here to see it hold.Enter The Southern Continent

We're Caffeine and Curses. The Library started as my design research — I can't put Manon on a shirt without knowing which way the iron teeth snap — so we keep the notes here where everyone can use them. The pages are fan-made, not official; the licensed designs are in the shop.

Officially licensed