58 pages • 1 hour read
Sarah J. MaasThrone of Glass
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Celaena Sardothien, an 18-year-old girl who was once the “most notorious assassin” in the kingdom of Adarlan (1), has been enslaved for a year in the Salt Mines of Endovier. Endovier is a death camp for political prisoners of the tyrannical King of Adarlan, who aims to conquer the entire continent of Erilea. Other prisoners at Endovier include suspected practitioners of magic—outlawed by the King—and rebels against the King’s corrupt court. Many of the prisoners at Endovier are citizens of Eyllwe, one of the last kingdoms on the continent to resist Adarlan.
Chaol Westfall, the royal Captain of the Adarlan Guard escorts Celaena in chains to the Endovier overseers’ building. He takes Celaena on a meandering route to intimidate and confuse her, but Celaena’s instincts and training as an assassin are too highly developed for these tactics to work. Still, a year of hard labor has left her too physically and emotionally depleted to attempt to escape. Worried that she is being escorted to her execution, Celaena tells herself, “I will not be afraid,” a refrain which has helped her survive the horrors of enslavement (2). Celaena is surprised to be escorted directly to Dorian Havilliard, the Crown Prince of Adarlan.
Chapter 2 Summary
The 22-year-old Chaol is very handsome, as is 19-year-old Prince Dorian. Celaena resents her attraction to Dorian because of her hatred for the royal family of Adarlan: Later novels in the series will reveal that the King of Adarlan murdered Celaena’s parents, the King and Queen of Terrasen (another kingdom on Erilea) when Celaena—or Aelin Galathynius—was eight. Arobynn Hamel, the King of Assassins, gave the orphaned Aelin the alias “Celaena Sardothien” to hide her identity as the lost princess of Terrasen.
When Celaena refuses to bow to Dorian, Duke Perrington, the King’s lackey, throws Celaena to the floor. Dorian marvels that Celaena has survived a year at Endovier, since most prisoners only live three months. Shortly after Celaena arrived at Endovier, she killed “her overseer and twenty-three sentries” before she was knocked unconscious (11). After this, the King of Adarlan ordered she be kept alive at Endovier as long as possible so that she would endure more misery. Dorian explains that he has a proposal for “Adarlan’s Assassin.”
Chapter 3 Summary
Dorian’s father is seeking a Champion—really an assassin on retainer to dispatch his political opponents—and will hold a tournament at the Adarlan capital of Rifthold to determine who fill the role. The King has invited 23 members of his court to each sponsor a competitor, so Dorian wants to sponsor Celaena to annoy his father. If Celaena wins, she will serve for six years and then regain her freedom, but to sweeten the deal, Dorian promises that if Celaena wins, he will ensure she is freed early. Celaena must compete under an alias: She is famous in name only, so it would embarrass the King and his court to know that the deadly assassin they were terrified of is a teenager.
Celaena insists that they should hire her on the spot, given her reputation, but Dorian notes that she will need to train and recover from her time at Endovier. Chaol is reluctant to trust her, given her criminal history. Celaena, disgusted by the thought of “six years as the King’s crooked dagger” (16) negotiates to be freed in four years, but ultimately agrees to compete.
Chapter 4 Summary
In private chambers where she is finally unshackled and allowed to bathe, Celaena has difficulty adjusting to comfort after the abuses of Endovier. She goes to sleep on the floor. Still, Celaena is in high spirits as servants dress her for the journey to Rifthold, as she loves fine clothes and good food. She feels hopeful for the first time in a year and grateful to escape, but she also feels conflicted about leaving the prisoners of Endovier behind.
Celaena gets along well with Dorian’s hunting hounds, but she is cold when the prince tries to strike up conversation, to Chaol’s amusement. Celaena is disappointed to learn that she will travel in chains because Chaol believes her to be a danger to Dorian. As the party travels through the Oakwald Forest, Celaena intentionally pesters Chaol with questions, but Chaol is reticent: He is “not obligated to bestow any kindness” on a “criminal” like Celaena (26).
Chapter 5 Summary
In Oakwald Forest, Celaena notices that Dorian and Duke Perrington do not get along. The deep forest reminds Celaena of her home country Terrasen, which she hasn’t seen since childhood. Dorian’s soldiers are fearful of the woods, and Celaena warns them that the trees still remember King Brannon, an immortal Fae who was the first king of Terrasen and whose realm once encompassed the Oakwald Forest. Chaol asks to hear more, but Celaena lies that she doesn’t know anything else. Silently, however, she considers the many magical creatures that once inhabited Erilea. Ten years ago, the King of Adarlan outlawed all magic and committed genocide of magical or part-magical beings under the pretense that the Fae and magic were an affront to the Goddess, the supreme deity of Adarlan’s religion. The Fae and other magical creatures fled Erilea, and magic “completely and utterly disappeared of its own accord” soon after (31). Celaena, who is secretly a descendant of King Brannon and part Fae, used to have magical powers, but they disappeared as well. That night, Celaena wakes to find small white flowers at the foot of her cot and infant-sized footprints leading out of her tent.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
Before the story begins, Maas orients the reader by featuring a map of the novel’s world: the continent of Erilea. Maps are a common world-building strategy in high fantasy, a genre typified by the epic nature of the story and the use of an invented world as setting. Once Maas introduces the reader to Celaena in the Salt Mines of Endovier, Maas delivers crucial information—such as Celaena’s backstory and the disappearance of magic—in asides and cryptic memories, hinting at the deeper complexities of the story and creating an air of mystery that facilitates richer worldbuilding. Maas writes the first five chapters from Celaena’s perspective in the limited omniscient (also called close third person), establishing Celaena as the primary protagonist.
The opening chapters set up several fantasy plot tropes: the Tournament, a “Chosen One” narrative, and the struggle between good and evil. Tournaments provide clear plot structure, with their tiered competitive rounds forcing the protagonist to display skills while navigating increasingly difficult obstacles. In this case, the stakes of King’s Champion competition are immediately established as life-or-death, or as Celaena describes them later in the novel, “Freedom or Death” (361). Celaena’s eventual victory over 23 competitors is foreshadowed by her defeat of the 23 Endovier guards; in the process, she will regain her agency and sense of identity, which have been stolen from her through enslavement.
Celaena’s backstory establishes her as a Chosen One: a protagonist whose unique abilities mean they are destined to save the world. Celaena’s backstory as the orphaned Princess of Terrasen sets up Celaena’s journey to reclaim her identity; already we can guess that her destiny will be to defeat the forces of evil in Erilea, embodied by the nameless King of Adarlan. Often, Chosen Ones are resistant to their fate, favoring self-preservation over duty—and true to type, Celaena does just this, repressing memories of her childhood in Terrasen and covering up the mysterious footprints that appear in her tent, symbolically erasing her past association with magic.
The Chosen One plot device is often closely aligned with another feature of high fantasy: the struggle between good and evil, into which the hero must step. Maas seems to complicate the simplistic dichotomy of good and evil by introducing a more nuanced morality: Celaena is both an ethically compromised professional murderer and the potential savior of Erilea. However, almost immediately, questions about Celaena’s true moral center resolve: The novel dismisses Celaena’s past misdeeds by focusing on her sense of justice: “three long scars down her back […] would always remind her of what she endured. And that even if she was free, others were not” (24)—her suffering at the death camp has not inhibited her compassion or outrage at the King’s violent conquest of Erilea.
The last element typical of YA literature is the nascent love triangle between Chaol, Dorian, and Celaena. As Celaena starts her journey to heal and accept her destiny, Dorian will come of age rebelling against his father’s values, and the cautious and self-righteous Chaol will find his loyalty and honor tested. Chaol’s character arc will contribute greatly to Maas’s nuanced moral universe, as Celaena’s tragic history will challenge his black-and-white view of the world.
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