[[quoteright:340:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/khezef.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:340:[[FreakinessShame Those are some fine-looking wings there, buddy.]]]]

->''I can promise a snow-covered country haunted by ghosts, a murdered lord, a shadowy drakhaoul-daemon with a craving for innocent blood, unrequited love, imperial ambitions, court intrigue, an ancient legend about a dead emperor's cursed rubies.''

->''And a dragon.''
-->-- '''Sarah Ash'''

A trilogy of fantasy novels by primary school teacher Sarah Ash, consisting of ''Lord of Snow and Shadows'', ''Prisoner of the Iron Tower'', and ''Children of the Serpent Gate''.

Gavril Nagarian is a simple painter living in the idyllic nation of Smarna, on the [[ConstructedWorld continent of Rossiya]]. His life gets turned upside-down one day when a band of warriors from the GrimUpNorth of Azkhendir [[ChangelingFantasy approach him stating that he is the son of their recently-deceased king, and he must take his father's place.]] What follows is an elaborate character-driven fantasy saga featuring...well, all the elements mentioned in the page quote.

Mrs. Ash has also written a dual book {{prequel}} series, ''The Alchymist's Legacy'', dealing with the youth of Estael, the original trilogy's [[TheDragon left-hand-man to the bad guy.]] It also focuses on the earlier lives of Ruaud de Lanvaux, Celestine de Joyeuse, and Jagu de Rustéphan and how they all came to associate with one another in ''The Tears of Artamon''. ''Tracing the Shadow'' is the first book, taking place for the most part before the events of the original trilogy; ''Flight Into Darkness'', the second and last book, entails the "behind the scenes" events taking place concurrently with it.
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!! ''The Tears of Artamon'' provides examples of:

* AllLoveIsUnrequited: In the first book and for a while into the second one, anyway.
* ArrangedMarriage: Eugene and Astasia.
* BeastAndBeauty: Kiukiu and Gavril, once the latter's BodyHorror kicks in.
* BreakTheCutie: Both Gavril and Kiukiu (hell, just say Kiukiu's name out loud and tell me she isn't supposed to be lovable!) get the treatment.
* ChangelingFantasy
* ChildrenAreInnocent
* CycleOfHatred: A major theme. One of the problems of Azkhendir society is that when someone is murdered, they produce a wraith, and the easiest way to lay a wraith is to kill its murderer...which then creates another wraith.
* DealWithTheDevil: One of Gavril's ancient ancestors made one, and his family is still suffering for it.
* {{Deconstruction}}: So, it turns out that while TheEmpire does bad things it is ultimately a force for good, that TheEmperor has legitimate reasons for wanting to take over the world, that he genuinely loves the woman he has forced to marry him and eventually earns her love in return, that the LegionOfDoom is made up of human beings who are generally not sadistic and many of whom just want to ensure peace and get back home, and that no-one is actually evil. [[SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism Huh.]]
** It's a LighterAndSofter Deconstruction! It's like its deconstructing Deconstructions! Okay, the author probably wasn't thinking about that at the time.
* EasingIntoTheAdventure
* EnemyWithin - Khezef, a [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot vampire dragon demon]] who lives within whoever is patriarch of the Nagarian family. [[spoiler:Eugene eventually gets his own vampire dagon demon as well.]]
* EvilDuo - Eugene and Estael, though they're not so much evil as they are in the hero's way.
* FantasyCounterpartCulture - Rossiya is a Rome-analogue. Muscobar is Tzarist Russia. Azkhendir is Wallachia, and Smarna is Venice with some touches of Revolutionary France. Francia is France merged with the Spanish Inquisition. Tielen is a hybrid between Industrial Revolution Great Britain and German Unification Prussia.
* FantasyGunControl - Massively, massively averted. First of all, there are guns. Second of all, the author seems to have put a lot of thought into how various technological achievments occured and what their effect on the world is, and the relation between [[MagiTek science and mysticism.]]
* {{Foil}} - Gavril and Eugene are both dispossesed heirs to thrones, both are followed around by a younger female MoralityPet, both are in love with Astasia at one point or another, both are young well-educated men, and both have an EnemyWithin. However their personalities are complete opposites; Gavril [[IJustWantToBeNormal just wants to be normal]] while Eugene seeks to TakeOverTheWorld.
* FreakinessShame: While the drakhaol is definitely not pretty, more than a few characters express awe at it's majesty and power. Gavril's angsting about it is perfectly justified, though, since it gives him a HorrorHunger ''and'' makes him ugly.
* GrimUpNorth - Azkhendir. Well, it's north of the protagonist's homeland, anyway. There are actually more temperate lands northward beyond it, but it still has all the elements of this trope thanks to it being at a very high elevation.
* HorrorHunger
* IJustWantToBeNormal - Gavril
* LamarckWasRight - Possibly justifed as we're dealing with [[AWizardDidIt demon magic here.]]
* LockedOutOfTheLoop - Gavril's mother Elysia never told him who his father was.
* LongLostRelative - [[spoiler: After Kiukiu is rescued by Malusha from the Snow Spirits, she finds out from her in the Ways Beyond that Malusha is her paternal grandmother and that she (Kiukiu) is an Arkhel Guslyar descendent.]]
* {{Meido}}: Kiukiu.
* MoralityPet: Eugene has his daughter and Astasia, while Gavril has Kiukiu.
** [[spoiler:Khezef sees the entire Nagarian line this way. It is noted more than once that his connection to the family has made him ''very'' different from his siblings]].
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone - In ''Lord of Snow and Shadows'' Gavril experiences this twice after [[spoiler: he burns the entire Tielen army to a crisp (though Eugene barely escapes and is badly burned), and he nearly drains Kiukiu of all her blood.]] In ''Prisoner of the Iron Tower'' Gavril experiences this after [[spoiler: he takes the life of his first "bride" and from them on continually feels a deep self loathing after each time he kills]].
* MysteriousParent: Gavril first learns who his real father is through Kostya as well as the Drakhaoul [[SecretLegacy legacy]] the ''druzhina'' expect him to continue. Additionally, Kiukiu learns of her father through Malusha, that he was [[spoiler: an Arkhel, a Guslyar, and was considered a traitor by his family]].
* NewSuperPower: [[spoiler: Kiukiu's inherent Guslyar abilities, honed by Malusha]]. Gavril can also count, discovering what he can do with his Drakhaoul powers.
* NinjaPirateZombieRobot: the Drakhaouls are a kind of demon vampire dragon. Also Estael, who is both an alchymist, [[ElementalPowers wind mage]], and EnsembleDarkhorse.
* OurAngelsAreDifferent: The Heavenly Guardians seem to be a rather Old Testament-inspired type of them. [[spoiler:Also, the Drakhaouls]].
* OurDemonsAreDifferent: The Drakhaouls
* OurDragonsAreDifferent: The Drakhaouls.
* OurSpiritsAreDifferent: Spirits from the Ways Beyond, especially the [[spoiler: sacrificed children]].
* OurVampiresAreDifferent: The Drakhaouls
* TheParagonAlwaysRebels: Implied with the Drakhoul Prince. "He was once the brightest of us."
* PhantasySpelling: "Alchymy," "forte-piano," et cetera.
* PrincessClassic: Astasia (technically she starts out as a duchess and later becomes an empress, but she still pretty much fits the trope).
* [[spoiler: RapidAging]]: [[spoiler: Kaspar sends Kiukiu to the Ways Beyond, where her spirit ends up being trapped for days. By the time Gavril gets her physical body to Malusha to bring her back to the living, Kiukiu has aged into an old woman - her face wrinkled, her hair dried out and completely gray.]]
* RightfulKingReturns
* RoyalBlood
* RousseauWasRight: TheEmperor? He's a pretty nice guy once you get to know him, he's just a bit rough around the edges. The KnightTemplar? He's just ignorant, not bad. The [[OurDemonsAreDifferent vampiric demons who feast on the blood of innocents?]] [[spoiler:They just want to go home.]]
* {{Shadowland}}: The cold, bitter, ProudWarriorRaceGuy filled Azkhendir in contrast Gavril's warm, tourist-drawing, scholar-filled homeland of Smarna.
* [[spoiler: SecondLove]]: [[spoiler: Kiukiu for Gavril]].
* SecretLegacy
* SpiritWorld: The Ways Beyond.
* SuperpoweredEvilside: Khezef
* TheDragon: Estael
* TheEmperor: Eugene, as of book 2.
* TheEmpire: Heavily deconstructed.
* TransformationSequence: Whenever Gavril [[spoiler:or Eugene]] enters his dragon form.
* TwoBeingsOneBody: As the Drakhaoul gains more power over its host, the host slowly begins to look more and more draconic.
* UnequalRites: The old, wild magic that the Drakhaoul examplifies is very different from the scientifically influenced [[{{Magitek}} "alchymy"]] that TheEmpire makes liberal use of, which in turn is something very different from regular science. At one point, an alchymist and a scientist are both assigned to the same problem and told that their different viewpoints will be an asset, and react with amused contempt and disgusted outrage (respectively) at the very suggestion that the other one could be of any use whasoever.
* UniquenessValue: Gavril is at one point [[IHaveYourWife coerced]] into consuming, over a period of time, a potion that will first weaken and then destroy the Drakhaoul he has bonded with. The daemon's pleading to Gavril that "you're killing me... and I'm the last of my kind... the last in the world..." is surprisingly moving, given that we know by that point how monstrous it is. Of course, it helps that Gavril is TheHero and the Drakhaoul, however unpleasant, is his only means of protecting his country from TheEmpire.
* VirginSacrifice: Drakhaouls must feed on "innocent" blood to recover after expending energy by going into their dragon form. Also, such sacrifices must be made to [[spoiler:open the Serpent's Gate and let them back into Heaven.]]

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