The Court of First Light · One of the Three Solar Courts
Dawn Court
“It was the clouds I saw first. Enormous clouds drifting in the cobalt sky, soft and magnanimous, still tinged by the rose remnants of sunrise, their round edges gilded with the golden light.”
A Court of Wings and Ruin, Ch. 42
A sunstone palace in the clouds. A thousand sunrises held inside the stone. A High Lord who glows brighter than all the rest. Of course we wanted to live there.
Prythian's court of healing and renewal — and, in the war against Hybern, the neutral mountaintop where the seven courts finally united.
At a glance
The Dawn Court
What it is
The perpetual sunrise made architecture
The court of first light. One of Prythian's three Solar Courts, set high in the mountains near the neutral Middle — and the palace sits so high it's literally among the clouds. Sunstone: a near-opalescent golden stone that holds the gleaming of a thousand sunrises inside it. Steps and balconies and archways and verandas and bridges linking towers and gilded domes, periwinkle morning glories climbing the pillars to drink in the gilded mists. Far below, verdant countryside speckled with red-roofed villages and broad sparkling rivers. Dawn-pale wisteria off the bridges. Urns overflowing with lavender. Wine-coloured peonies under a mild, magnanimous sun. The Court of Nightmares got moonstone. This one was made of light. We know which side we're on.
Who rules it
Thesan, and the people of the air
High Lord Thesan. Slender, brown-skinned, his hair kissed with gold as if sunrise had permanently gilded it, his upswept eyes the rich gilded brown of freshly tilled fields. He glows the brightest of all the High Lords — and when the seven remade dying Feyre into High Fae at the close of A Court of Thorns and Roses, his drop of power was the one to heal. Among the gentlest and most level-headed of them, and openly, quietly devoted to the captain of his guard. We noticed. We approve. His people are the Peregryns — humanoid fae with bird-like wings of vibrant, tropical feathers, golden armour, male and female alike serving as Dawn's aerial legion the way the Illyrians serve Night.
What happens there
Where the seven courts became one
Dawn's moment peaks in A Court of Wings and Ruin. With Hybern invading, the seven High Lords convene at Thesan's palace — closest to the Middle, good neutral standing — to decide whether Prythian stands together or falls apart. Wing-shaped oak chairs ringed around a circular reflection pool of fish and water lilies, and that's where it all happens: Feyre revealed as High Lady of Night, Tamlin confronted over his alliance with Hybern, and the courts finally agreeing to unite. It's also where Thesan presents Nuan, his Dawn Court alchemist, and her antidote to faebane — Hybern's magic-smothering poison — already being mass-produced for the war. The soft court of healing, where the war was won before it was fought. Underestimate Dawn at your peril.
Relics & features
Within the cloud-palace
The marks of the sunstone court. We'd take all of them.
Doors
People & places of the Dawn Court
From the page
Dawn, in Sarah J. Maas's words
“The dewy freshness of morning lingered in the balmy air as we peered up at the mountain-palace spiralling into the heavens above. If the palace above the Court of Nightmares had been crafted of moonstone, this was made from... sunstone.”
A Court of Wings and Ruin, Ch. 42
“I didn't have a word for the near-opalescent golden stone that seemed to hold the gleaming of a thousand sunrises within it.”
A Court of Wings and Ruin, Ch. 42
“Steps and balconies and archways and verandas and bridges linked the towers and gilded domes of the palace, periwinkle morning glories climbing the pillars and neatly cut blocks of stone to drink in the gilded mists wafting by.”
A Court of Wings and Ruin, Ch. 42