King of Adarlan · The full story
The king who was a cage
For four books he is the great evil of the age. He is also, the entire time, a man screaming inside his own body with no way to be heard.
On sight
What he looks like
- Build
- Broad-framed — the exception to a House that runs tall and lean. His younger son Hollin takes after him; Dorian doesn't, not at all.
- Hair
- Dark, like all Havilliard men.
- Face
- A round face, craggy features, sharp eyes.
- The scar
- One brow scarred.
- The black ring
- A simple band of smooth, obsidian Wyrdstone on his hand — the mark of the Valg power he commands.
His palette
- havilliard dark
- glass-throne clear
- wyrdstone black
- craggy stone-grey
- starless void
THE CRYPT HE OPENED
As a young man he found the wrong door and unlocked the war.
He found one of the three Wyrdkeys hidden in Elena Galathynius's tomb beneath the glass castle and carried it to Morath, where Perrington led him down to a sealed crypt. He put the key into the sarcophagus that Gavin and Elena had sealed a thousand years earlier — and freed Erawan. The Valg king took Perrington's body; a Valg minion took his; the man he had been was erased inside his own skin. Everything the reader will spend four books hating the King for begins here, with a curious young man opening a box that had a demon-god folded up inside it.
THE MAN INSIDE THE MONSTER
Even collared, the human in him fought to shield his own son.
Possessed, he conquered nearly all of Erilea in a decade — Eyllwe, Melisande, Fenharrow — and magic itself vanished from the land. But the vanishing was his own doing, and it was not the demon's plan: the human still trapped inside built three Wyrdstone clock towers to drain magic from the whole continent, partly against the Valg's will, so the demons could not find powerful living hosts to wear. Chief among the hosts he feared them finding was his son Dorian. The tyrant outlawing magic across a continent was, in the very same act, a father hiding one boy.
WHAT HE TOOK FROM TERRASEN
One coordinated night, and a whole royal house was simply gone.
Ten years before the series opens, the King ordered the decapitation of House Galathynius: King Orlon killed in his bed at Orynth, Prince Rhoe and Evalin Ashryver murdered at their Florine estate the same night. Their daughter survived only because Marion Lochan died buying her escape, and the child fell into the river to become Celaena. Later he sentenced that same girl — Adarlan's Assassin, secretly the heir he thought he had erased — to the salt mines of Endovier, where most people lasted three months. She lasted a year, and he built the very contest that pulled her back out, never once knowing what he'd caught.
COLLARED, AND FREED IN DEATH
The cruelest thing he did was to his own son. So was the last mercy.
He locked a black Wyrdstone collar around Dorian's neck and let a Valg prince ride him — leaving Dorian awake and present for every second of it. In the throne room, his raw Wyrdstone power paralysed Chaol from the waist down for good, and he revealed that Erawan now wore Perrington's face. Then Dorian broke his own collar, killed the demon inside himself, and killed his father — and in dying, the human King was finally let go. Aelin shattered the glass castle and turned its killing rain of glass harmless with fire. The monster died, and so did the man it had been eating for thirty years.
The king who was a cage
He is the villain the series is built to misread — a tyrant with a demon's hand up his back the whole time.
-
The crypt opened
A young Havilliard puts a Wyrdkey into a sealed sarcophagus at Morath and frees the Valg king Erawan.
-
Taken
Erawan takes Perrington; a Valg minion takes the King, erasing the man he was.
-
Conquest
Possessed, he conquers nearly all of Erilea in a decade, and magic vanishes from the land.
-
The clock towers
He builds three Wyrdstone towers to drain the continent's magic — starving the Valg of living hosts.
-
Shielding Dorian
The human inside does it chiefly to hide the most powerful host of all: his own son.
-
The Galathynius massacre
He orders the decapitation of House Galathynius — Orlon, Rhoe and Evalin dead in one coordinated night.
-
Endovier
He sentences the captured Adarlan's Assassin to the salt mines, not knowing she is the heir he thought erased.
-
The King's Champion
He hosts the tournament for a personal assassin — the contest Cain butchers his way through.
-
Collaring his son
He locks a Wyrdstone collar on Dorian and lets a Valg prince wear him as punishment.
-
The throne-room reveal
His Valg power paralyses Chaol for good; he reveals that Erawan now wears Perrington.
-
The son breaks free
Dorian shatters his own collar, kills the demon inside him, and kills his father.
-
Freed in death
As the monster dies, the human King is finally let go of the body it wore for thirty years.
What he built and held
The machinery of a stolen reign.
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