The war five hundred years ago — humans and their Fae allies against Hybern and the courts that kept mortals enslaved, ending not in conquest but in a wall raised across the middle of the world.
The First War
Five hundred years before Feyre crossed it. Humans finally turning on centuries of Fae enslavement — and the Fae who couldn't stomach it, Cassian and Rhysand and Azriel among them, taking up arms on the humans' side against Hybern. It ended with a wall split through the heart of the land. We think about it more than is healthy.
Nobody won. They just built a wall and called it peace.
The conflict
The uprising
Before Feyre ever stepped over the line, that world was already tearing itself apart. Centuries of humans living under faerie rule, then finally turning on it — with the Fae who refused to keep them enslaved fighting at their side against Hybern. The High Fae just call it the war, like there was only ever one. The shadow it left over humans, the Wall, the old enmities that never cooled — that all started here.
The Wall
How the war ended
Nobody won, exactly. It ended in a treaty and in the raising of the Wall — an invisible magical barrier drawn across the middle of the land to keep faerie and human apart. Mortals got their territory below it; the faeries kept Prythian above. Not a triumph carved in stone. A border conjured to hold two peoples apart so the killing would stop. That distinction matters more than anyone admits.
Those who remember
Five hundred years of memory
The thing about long-lived High Fae is that the First War isn't history to them — it's lived memory. Cassian, Rhysand, and Azriel fought in it and still carry what they saw five centuries later. Not a date in a book. A thing they survived, the reason old wounds between faerie and mortal still ache, the measure every new threat of war gets weighed against. We see it in how they flinch.
Who fought it
The ones who were there
Swipe to meet them all
The File
- What
- War between the faerie courts and humankind, who rose against centuries of enslavement
- When
- Roughly five hundred years before the events of A Court of Thorns and Roses
- Duration
- Seven years of fighting
- Outcome
- A treaty and the raising of the Wall — a magical barrier dividing the faerie lands from the mortal realm
- Who fought
- Cassian, Rhysand, and Azriel among the faerie warriors who saw the war firsthand
We're Caffeine and Curses. The Library started as my design research — 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
Become a member
Join the Library.
Admit one obsessive reader.
You're on the list — welcome to the Library. ✦
For library updates and new releases.
Made by fans who never left.
These pages are fan-made. For officially licensed merch, see our shop.
A Court of Thorns and Roses, ©2015-2021, Sarah J. Maas.