History Literature / SpinningSilver

* AdultFear:
** Miryem's mother fears her daughter becoming cold and ruthless, and her father does too, but they can't talk her out of her debt-collecting - because her father being too softhearted for collecting debt got them almost starving to death and/or dying of cold and Miryem's mother was practically dying of a sickness before Miryem took over collecting. [[spoiler:Then they become afraid for her life as a result of the Staryk king's dealings with her.]]
** The threat of antisemitic violence is always present, sometimes with immediate danger or prejudice, but even when it isn't, Miryem and her family always have the possibility in the back of their minds. Miryem finds it easier to fear that because it's so real and ubiquitous, rather than the inhuman and storied Staryk.
** Early on in her marriage/captivity, Miryem barters her [[UnusualEuphemism marriage rights]] away to the Staryk king in exchange for answers to questions in order to keep him from ''acting'' on those rights (namely consummating their marriage). Later, one he's developed a sense of respect for her cleverness, he thinks her bartering tactic was meant to subtly belittle him, and declares that that night, he [[RapeAsDrama won't be answering any questions for her]].

** Miryem and her family are Jewish, and the townsfolk's antisemitism goes from fairly passive to outright aggressive once Miryem starts collecting the money they're legally owed. It's implied that her father's passiveness when it comes to moneylending is because he doesn't want the villagers to see him as a GreedyJew... but [[MortonsFork they regard him as such anyway]] even though he's actually generous to a fault. Miryem's mother is also terrified of the Staryk tracks not just because of the Staryk themselves, but because during one raid a few years ago the Staryk happened to ignore a village that had a number of Jewish families living there--and now there are no more Jews in that village.

* MysticalWhiteHair: The Staryk have powerful magic, particularly related to winter, and pure white hair. One [[HalfHumanHybrid half-Staryk child]] inherited both the hair and a tiny bit of power, and his child got only a SkunkStripe.

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: PlayedWith for the Staryk. They've earned themselves the reputation, with all their raids and kidnappings, and [[spoiler:Miryem's family finds it hard to believe any of them are worth saving]]. But [[spoiler:Miryem points out she met at least three good individuals among them, and that ChildrenAreInnocent; even if the unseen masses supported the actions of the knights, it was out of an attempt at self-preservation from [[BiggerBad Chernobog]]. If he was defeated and a proper contract drawn up, she's certain the Staryk would be no more evil than anyone else. And she's right.]]

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Miryem has much difficulty negotiating with the Staryk Lord and getting information out of him because he refuses to treat her like someone born and raised in a society not so radically focused on holding up your end of an agreement and giving people what they're owed. Hence, even though ''neither of them want to go through with it'', [[spoiler: he insists on marrying her when she succeeds at turning his silver into gold.]] This is only further complicated by how people in the Staryk Land don't just give up on things of value even if they don't want them, and will give what is owed/deserved even if the owed party doesn't want the payment. [[spoiler: Such as a wife's right to have sex with her husband. Miryem has to announce that she'll gladly trade info for not having sex to avoid being deflowered by an ice demon.]] The Staryk are also horrified at the ease to which humans address each other by name, not realizing that it doesn't put them in danger of binding.

* CainAndAbel: Many suspect Mirnatius of having murdered his kind-hearted older brother for the throne. [[spoiler: {{Subverted|Trope}} when Mirnatius admits that Chernobog killed him against his wishes and that his brother, despite being the one who taught him CrueltyToAnimals, was the only person he truly loved.]]

* DealWithTheDevil: [[spoiler: The Tzar, Mirnatius, is in one of these, although eventually we find out that he was not the one who made the deal: his mother was, selling her unborn child for the demon's power. He is forced to share his body with a fire demon who uses magic to manipulate those around him and who got him the throne by killing his father and beloved half brother.]]

* EndlessWinter: The Staryk's world is like this. [[spoiler: Their King's goal is to do this to the human world as well, as the colder Earth is, the stronger the Staryk King's palace is.]]

** At one point, the Staryk challenges Miryem to turn the contents of three of his treasure chambers from silver to gold. [[spoiler: After spending a massive amount of time changing just one, she gets her servants to empty out all the silver from the largest vault while she changes the second. As the Staryk said, she had to change 'everything in the chambers'.]]
** This is how much of the magic in this setting works. For example, it doesn't matter how Miryem comes by it, but she manages to take three large amounts of silver and come back with equal amounts of gold. [[spoiler: This gives her the power to transform silver into gold.]]
** Irina asks nothing from Chernobog, only that he leave "me and mine alone." [[spoiler:Because she is the tsarina, this means that he can't touch ''anyone in the country of Lithvas''. That also includes her husband once he leaves his body, because her rights to him as his wife legally override his mother's contract.]]

* GoodIsNotNice: A mild variant with Miryem. She isn't a loan shark, only charging a fair amount of interest and giving people fair prices for whatever they offer to her as payment, but it's known that her grandfather is wealthy and powerful, and she has the ledgers to prove what she is owed. She's not above threatening to get the law involved if it means getting what she is owed, and has Gorek's daughter, Wanda, pay off his debts by working for her, first as a maid and then also as a debt collector. [[spoiler: This turns out to be a blessing for Wanda.]]

** Irina takes no joy in the fact that [[spoiler: her plan for saving the kingdom from an eternal winter means that all Staryk, including innocent children, will be devoured by Chernobog. Knowing that Mirnatius had no say in being bound to it, she is also not joyful at all when planning to out him as a witch and burning him at the stake.]]

* IJustWantToBeNormal: [[spoiler: Mirnatius never wanted the throne and loved his brother]]; he would have been happy living a life devoid of politics in which he could be an artist. [[spoiler: Chernobog had other plans.]]

** This is the cornerstone of binding magic. Staryk only give their names to those they trust the most. [[spoiler: The book ends with Miryem learning of the Staryk Lord's name when he signs a wedding contract with her.]]

* IncestantAdmirer: Ilias to Mirnatius, much to the latter's annoyance. Mirnatius doesn't seem particularly bothered by the fact that Ilias is his male cousin, so much that [[spoiler: if Ilias ever did manage to sneak into his bedroom, Chernobog would kill him, and covering up the death of a royal cousin would be harder to cover up than any of the commoners Chernobog usually kills]].

** Gorek, Wanda's father, can in many ways be described as the polar opposite of Miryem's father. Miryem's father would go hungry so his wife and daughter could eat and was happy to help his wife with women's work to make things easier for her; his only fault was that he was too kind to collect on the debts people owed him unless they desperately needed the money. Gorek is a domestic abuser who gambles away money he could use to feed his starving family, and [[spoiler: would have pimped his daughter out to the village men had Miryem not unknowingly saved her by arranging for Wanda to work as a housemaid for her family to pay off his debts.]]

* TheManBehindTheMan: Irina as tsarina. When she learns that magic exists [[spoiler: and that her husband gets away with whatever he wants with the help of a demon]], she reminds him that unless he can snap his fingers and make money and goods this will do him little if there's a famine or he runs out of money. She also suggests that if his powers have a limited range he'll be just as vulnerable as anyone else to stray arrows on the battlefield. Once she's ensured her immediate safety, she sets about cleaning up the political mess caused by Mirnatius' neglectful rule, which has left the nobility a scant few inches away from revolt. Although he's as acerbic about it as he is about everything, Mirnatius doesn't interfere with any of the decisions she makes.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Miryem briefly has this reaction when [[spoiler: she finds out that the gold is the key to stealing the spring from the world and that her transmutations have been extending the winter.]] She again has this reaction when she realizes [[spoiler: that defeating the Staryk King could also mean that the innocent Staryk commoners could also become food for Chernobog. She has no guilt about the King or the other nobles who have been killing and raiding for gold, but she can't stand the idea of the children being punished.]]

** Firstly, the Staryk King [[spoiler: tasking Miryem with turning his silver into gold results in her having it turned into jewelry and sold.]] This jewelry winds up in the hands of Irina, and [[spoiler: its magic allows her to use mirrors as portals to the Staryk's world. She's able to hide there from a demon her husband harbors which intends on devouring her life force.]]
** Then, Gorek's drunken rage [[spoiler: at Wanda's refusal to accept the marriage he arranged for her provokes her brother into action to save her. Gorek dies in the struggle. The two of them escape to the woods and hide in a cabin that turns out to be connected to the Staryk's realm as well, and some of the things they make and food they cook wind up in the other world's reflection of the cabin. This winds up saving Irina and her nanny when they're close to dying in the cold. They also are in the perfect place to find their younger brother and Miryem's parents when they're stranded in the woods.]]
** And on top of all of this [[spoiler: Irina winds up returning the favor to Miryem, as they meet up in the Staryk's realm and hatch a plan to save the world and get the demon to leave Irina alone by feeding it the Staryk Lord. Things don't work out as planned, but ultimately Chernobog is defeated and the Staryk Lord stops his raids on the human world.]]

* ObstructiveCodeOfConduct: Part of the Staryks' general BlueAndOrangeMorality. For example, they cannot give or receive gifts, seeing them as devastating insults or signs of weakness (even the concept of "thanks" is disdainful to them), which means that when a Staryk is mortally wounded, they cannot accept the unbidden help of those around them without bartering first, choosing instead of kill their would-be helper and die in the process themselves, something we hear both from Miryem's recollection of a family who attempted to help a Staryk knight (only two children were left alive, and that was because they were hiding), as well as what happens when [[spoiler: Sergey attempts to aid the Staryk King, who almost kills him until Miryem convinces the two to deal first]].
* OhCrap: [[spoiler: Oleg's]] reaction to realizing the gold he was about to steal was earmarked for the Staryk is not exactly a stoic one. This is fully justified, as their magic takes his life shortly afterwards.

* ReluctantRuler: It becomes clear over the course of the book that Mirnatius is far more interested in beauty than anything resembling statecraft. [[spoiler: He did not want the job, nor did he want his half-brother to die, but Chernobog had different ideas.]]
* RescueRomance: It's implied that [[spoiler: Mirnatius falls in love with Irina after she tricks Chernobog into leaving him.]]

** Then Miryem [[spoiler: completes the Staryk Lord's tasks and goes from wealthy commoner to queen. The book ends this way as she's fallen in love with him for real.]]

** Irina, once she becomes tsarina, sets to work immediately both on the demon problem and the political problems of Lithvas, knowing that the country is a few bad decisions away from civil war. She notes that technically her job just to produce a tsarevitch, but very few tsarinas actually confine themselves just to that.

* SoProudOfYou: Irina's father has ignored her for most of her life. [[spoiler: He finally tells her that he is proud of her when she shows she can play the game as well as he can.]]

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Miryem is an inversion of this for Wanda, as her demand that Wanda work off her father's debt [[spoiler: prevents him from marrying her off for a dowry, and they provide her with dinner free of charge, unaware that she usually goes hungry at home. However, when Miryem finds out that Wanda's father was beating her and that Wanda had hidden her raise from him in order to try and save up enough to escape, Miryem is aghast at how easily it all could have fallen apart if Gorek had complained to her and Miryem had fired back.]]

* WhamEpisode: Chapter 10. [[spoiler: The marriage chapter in which Miryem is taken to the Staryk lands, Wanda's father dies, and we learn that the tsar is harboring a demon that wants to devour Irina.]]

* WhatTheHellHero: Played with. [[spoiler: The Staryk King is more of an AntiVillain, sacrificing humanity to save his people from Chernobog,]] but Miryem calls him out on how even that justification is flimsy at best as [[spoiler: nobody knew that Mirnatius was harboring a demon when they crowned him king, and would have burnt him at the stake if they'd known. Unbeknownst to either of them, Mirnatius has no say in harboring a demon or becoming king, but Chernobog went ahead and killed his family against his wishes. She also reminds him how the Staryk were pillaging human villages well before Chernobog came to power. He ultimately ''admits'' she was right and enters a contract to stop their pillaging if Chernobog is defeated.]]

* WouldNotHurtAChild: [[spoiler: The knowledge that there are Staryk children]] is what drives Miryem to defeat Chernobog.

* MaritalRapeLicense: The concept of a married couple being entitled to the other's body is in force both in the human and the Staryk world. The Staryk king obviously does not want to do this and immediately takes her deal for questions in exchange for her rights, but he doesn't mention ''his'' until [[spoiler:she succeeds in her task--ironically, his newfound respect for her means she's less safe. She makes sure to specify that "no taking unwilling women" includes herself when she makes her second pact with him later on]].

* NobilityMarriesMoney: The Duke of Vysnia's second marriage.

* GenreSavvy: Irina recognizes the similarity of being married to the tsar to Scheherazade's own marriage to a monstrous husband, but she doesn't want to beg nightly for her life over ''quite'' so long a period of time. (She also doesn't ''have'' the time, given Lithvas' desperate situation.)

** Irina's father, the Duke, is a fair ruler who focuses on the big picture and refuses to be courted into rebellion, but he views his daughter largely as a waste of resources because he can't give her a dowry and she's not beautiful enough to tempt any high-ranking lords into marrying without one. She muses that he can give his daughter to an unpleasant and troublesome marriage because he put himself through unpleasant and troublesome battles to attain his own position. [[spoiler:When she demonstrates that she can play the game as well as he can, he expresses his approval of her, and she realizes that this affects her more than she expected.]]

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Miryem briefly has this reaction when [[spoiler: she finds out that the gold is the key to stealing the spring from the world.]] She again has this reaction when she realizes [[spoiler: that defeating the Staryk King could also mean that the innocent Staryk commoners could also become food for Chernobog. She has no guilt about the King or the other nobles who have been killing and raiding for gold, but she can't stand the idea of the children being punished.]]

* RapePillageAndBurn: Magreta, Irina's nurse, narrowly avoided this as a younger woman when the present duke seized his seat--the former duchess locked the women of her household in a basement chamber for their protection. By the time they were found, the soldiers were too tired from battle to do anything but bring them to the duke. He instructed that they be let alone, because "we don't always need to be brutal."

* ThirdPartyDealBreaker: The climax has a heroic version when Irina breaks the [[DemonicPossession demonic pact]] that keeps her husband TrappedInVillainy. His mother sold him into the pact, but Irina argues that a wife's claim to her husband supersedes a mother's claim to her son.

* WinterRoyalLady: Irina becomes this thanks to the jewelry made of Staryk silver. Others looking at her describe her pieces as having "winter around her throat" or on her brow, and her own clothing (unless Mirnatius fancies it up) is usually in shades of grey or blue.

* GenreSavvy: Irina is an extremely savvy leader, quickly figuring out how to escape from the demon her husband harbors, including limitations that he hadn't considered, and [[spoiler: deftly takes over leading the kingdom after they capture the Staryk King.]] During the book's finale, she wisely [[spoiler: refuses to strike a deal with Chernobog and forces him to leave her kingdom forever, using ExactWords to force him to free her husband in the process.]]

A SpiritualSuccessor to the author's previous novel, ''Literature/{{Uprooted}}''. While the two books don't share a setting, their tones and themes overlap significantly, with this book being ''very'' loosely based on the stories of Literature/{{Rumpelstiltskin}}, Literature/{{Bluebeard}}, and Literature/HanselAndGretel.

** Irina's father, the Duke, is a fair ruler who focuses on the big picture and refuses to be courted into rebellion, but he views his daughter largely as a waste of resources because he can't give her a dowry and she's not beautiful enough to tempt any high-ranking lords into marrying without one. She muses that he can give his daughter to an unpleasant and troublesome marriage because he put himself through unpleasant and troublesome battles to attain his own position.

* GenreSavvy: Irina is an extremely savvy leader, quickly figuring out how to escape from the demon her husband harbors, including limitations that he hadn't considered, and [[spoiler: deftly takes over leading the kingdom after they capture the Staryk King.]] During the book's finale, she wisely [[spoiler: refuses to strike a deal with Chernobog and forces him to leave her kingdom forever.]]

* IncestantAdmirer: Ilias to Mirnatius, much to the latter's annoyance. Mirnatius doesn't seem particularly bothered by the fact that Ilias is his male cousin, so much that [[spoiler: if Ilias ever did manage to sneak into his bedroom, Chernobog would kill him, and covering up the death of a royal cousin would be harder to cover up than any of the commoners Chernobog usually kills].

* BitchInSheepsClothing: The townsfolk in general, but [[spoiler:Oleg in particular for trying to ''murder'' Miryem out of greed and and antisemitism. It's hinted that although he enjoyed an excellent reputation among his neighbors, he was abusing his wife behind closed doors]].

* DeconstructedTrope: At the end of the book, [[spoiler:Chernobog is defeated and both Lithvas and the Staryk are safe. But although Miryem's neighbors make friendly noises as a result of her father forgiving their debts, no one thinks they've magically lost their prejudice, and the ones who have been particularly hostile remain so. Rather than return their old house, the Mandelstams join Wanda and her brothers in making the witch's hut a large family home.]]

* RealityEnsues: At the end of the book, [[spoiler:Chernobog is defeated and both Lithvas and the Staryk are safe. But although Miryem's neighbors make friendly noises as a result of her father forgiving their debts, no one thinks they've magically lost their prejudice, and the ones who have been particularly hostile remain so. Rather than return their old house, the Mandelstams join Wanda and her brothers in making the witch's hut a large family home.]]

* ParentalSubstitute: Magreta gives Irina all the affection of a mother. Initially she started caring for Irina after her mother's death so she would stay useful enough to be employed, but she quickly came to love Irina as though she was her own daughter.

** Zigzagged with the village children, several of whom bully Stepon, and seem just as anti-semitic as their parents.

* GenreSavvy: When Irina learns that magic exists [[spoiler: and that her husband gets away with whatever he wants with the help of a demon]], she reminds him that unless he can snap his fingers and make money and goods this will do him little if there's a famine or he runs out of money. She also suggests that if his powers have a limited range he'll be just as vulnerable as anyone else to stray arrows on the battlefield. [[spoiler: Her refusal to take anything from Chernobog save for his word that he wouldn't harm her or anyone she cared for results in his banishment from her kingdom.]]