Line #8 Awesome/TheQueensThief


1	* Prefacing this with: anything Eugenides does, ever.
2
3	!!''The Thief'':
4	* The entire first book is revealed as one for Gen. Not only has he managed to retrieve Hamiathes' gift for his cousin, the Queen of Eddis, but it's revealed that the entire book was his plan to make sure Eddis wouldn't have to marry Sounis. Even better, it becomes clear on rereading that he has never once outright lied.
5	* Sophos lends Gen his practice sword to hold off the Attolians. On the clifftop, both the magus' party and the Attolian soldiers can subsequently see Gen hiding from the horsemen, but the magus forestalls a crossbow bolt by saying there's no way the thief can use it--and then his jaw ''drops'' when Gen proceeds to take apart several heavily armed, well-trained horsemen.
6	* Pol's last stand. After the Attolians apprehend the party, Pol puts a hand out and shoves Ambiades off the edge for being a traitor, and for being an ass about Gen's apparent death. Then, he grabs two Attolian soldiers and takes them off the cliff with him.
7
8	!!''The Queen of Attolia'':
9	* Attolia's rise to power. Her father married her off to an ambitious family who planned to use her position as a minor princess to seize the throne. Because she acts like a stupid ShrinkingViolet, they openly discuss their treasonous plans around her while she collects coleus leaves and catalogs her jewelry. Accordingly, her father dies shortly after the marriage, and her husband claims the throne through her. He gloats loudly until he takes a sip of wine from her cup (which she has been fake-drinking from because it's full of coleus poison). Then when a courtier demands she marry ''him'' as her erstwhile husband is cooling, she orders one of the guards to kill him, having bought them all off with her jewelry.
10	* Then there's what she did to Nahuseresh...she kept him believing, in spite of her backstory, that she was a puppet, was aware of every single step of his XanatosSpeedChess, and shot his game down completely with ThePlan of her own. Complete with a freaking ''epic'' BreakingSpeech. Badass.
11	--> "Diplomacy, in my own name."
12	* Eugenides kidnapping Sounis's advisor out of his own palace ''when Eugenides had only one hand'' has to count, using a complex plan to frame the magus for destroying his own country's navy (thus defanging a huge aspect of Sounis' military capability into the bargain) and force him to flee into Eddisian custody.
13	* The plot to abduct Attolia. Eugenides has his agents practice Attolian accents until they are flawless enough to fool Teleus, the captain of the queen's personal guard who has successfully defended her from the multitude of threats from her own country. At the same time, they fake a hopeless siege on Ephrata with the use of painted wooden cannons, driving Attolia to flee through Ephrata's bolt-hole to a boat where Eugenides is already waiting, having disposed of the guard who was supposed to take her to safety.
14
15	!!''The King of Attolia'':
16	* Eugenides is considered by most of his new people to be an idiot, a usurper and a barbarian. His attendants live to play pranks on him, egged on by Sejanus, a favored younger son of the most powerful baron. Then their helpless, inept monarch proceeds to reveal that he knows who exactly is responsible for each of the pranks pulled on him, drive Sejanus to confess to regicide ''in front of the attendants'' who have just been placed in a very compromising position by ''him'', and exile Sejanus' older brother, thereby bringing an end to the house of the most powerful baron in Attolia.
17	-->'''Attolia:''' Ninety-eight days. You said it would take six months.
18	-->'''Euginides:''' I like to give myself a margin when I can.
19	* Later, this same king takes on member after member of the king's own guard and defeats ''every single one of them'', culminating in an IronicEcho -
20	-->Eugenides: You forgot it's a wooden sword.
21	* He wins over Teleus once and for all by revealing that seizing Laecdomon's wooden sword by the blade was no cheat because he can ''and has'' done it with a real one: the sword of the assassin who wounded him. He then makes it clear that if he had really felt his life was in danger, he would have just disembowled Laecdomon with his hook.
22	* Let's face it, ''everything'' the king does is awesome, from the way he serves wine--juggling a cup one-handed while he puts the other cup down--to the way he demonstrates his faith--getting drunk while jumping from crenelation to crenelation on the outer wall of the palace--to the way he convinces the Queen--and everyone else in the palace--that he is not seriously injured by ''constantly whining that he is going to die''. They should just get it over with and rename him His Royal Awesomness.
23	* A quiet moment of awesome for the side character Heiro: the mousy younger daughter of a lord involved with Baron Erondites's conspiracy. She repeatedly dances with with Eugenides in order to prevent her older sister, who is also a conspirator, from getting a shot at manipulating him into taking her (the sister) as a mistress, which the conspiracy believes will help them turn Eugenides into a PuppetKing. Even after her father beats her for it, Heiro keeps doing it anyway. She only stops when Eugenides discreetly explains he's got this under control.
24
25	!!''A Conspiracy of Kings'':
26	* The new king of Sounis has to be elected by the council of barons. Sophos gives an impassioned speech about uniting with Eddis and Attolia against the Mede threat, cooperation, and other such things that cast him as a WideEyedIdealist to a bunch of hard, cynical men... so they vote him down, and the Mede ambassador gloats appropriately by asking if he ''really'' expected that to work. "Not on the ''first'' vote," says Sophos. And then he shoots the leader of the rebellious barons dead, and holds the ambassador at gunpoint -- specifically because if he were to aim at anyone else, the other barons might think they were safe. The barons unanimously vote him in as king.
27
28	!!''Return of the Thief'':
29	* Perhaps the greatest moment in the series to date. Eugenides, after leading his alliance into a war and having been tortured by the Medes, ''straight up murders the Mede general,'' blows up the enemy camp with its own powder stores, and walks back to his own camp. The next morning Nahuseresh comes out to parley, to which Eugenides replies that he will only speak to the ''true'' man in charge: Baron Erondites. He calls out his name... and '''''a bolt of lightning directly strikes Erondites’ tent, killing him instantly.'''''

Context Awesome / TheQueensThief