The collected series.
Crown of Stars is a historical fantasy series by Kate Elliot. The books chronicle the adventures of three people in a Europe clone. The three main characters are:- Alain, a well-meaning young man who became heir to a count. He has incredible skill with animals and is chosen by a goddess of war.
- Sanglant, the first and illegitimate son of the king. He leads the elite cavalry of the king, he's a half-elf with incredible healing powers.
- Liath, a wizard who can't control her magic. She is a member of the king's elite messengers.
The books also have a mess of secondary characters, but they all have bizarre relations to each other. Oh, and All Myths Are True. Also, all the main characters are bastards (not those, but these).
The books in the series are:
- King's Dragon
- Prince of Dogs
- The Burning Stone
- Child of Flame
- The Gathering Storm
- In the Ruins
- The Crown of Stars
Do not confuse it with A Crown of Stars, in spite of the similar title.
Contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Margrave Judith doesn't hesitate to strike Hugh when he acts against her wishes, despite him being her favorite child. This explains a lot about his own abusive behavior toward Liath.
- All Myths Are True The Eika are metallic dragon vikings. There are also many mythical creatures, including griffins, sphinxes, dragons, phoenixes, and centaurs.
- Anti-Villain: Fifth Son.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Liath in the fourth book when she walks the spheres. It's only temporary, however.
- Attempted Rape: Hugh to Liath, twice. Fortunately, he doesn't get to go through with it. The 1st time Liath escapes by burning the entire palace down around them & the 2nd time she is rescued by Anne.
- Babies Ever After: The epilogue focuses on the children & grandchildren of several characters.
- Badass Bookworm: Hugh was pretty good with a sword. He also takes several levels in badass as he becomes more powerful & skilled with magic.
- Bastard Bastard: Hugh.
- Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: Variation in that Hugh does both the bringing in & the bathing to Liath when he brings her in from the cold so he can have his way with her.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Averted hard, to the degree that it's lampshaded in the text.
- Big Bad: Hugh
- Bigger on the Inside: The wagons used by Kereyit Shamans. On the outside they look like ordinary-sized wagons, but on the inside they are the size of a large, circular tent.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Tallia.
- Break the Haughty: Sapientia has a complete mental breakdown after losing her 1st husband, being handed over to the Quman as a hostage by her own brother, & being abandoned by her 2nd husband.
- Happens to Hugh after he is blinded & loses his right hand.
- Buffy Speak "It's kind of you to be so ... kind.".
- Canine Companion: Alain has his hounds, Rage & Sorrow. Sanglant has his own canine companions, consisting of a pack of Eika dogs.
- Career-Ending Injury: Hugh is no longer able to weave the crowns after being blinded by Liath.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Hugh has a habit of backstabbing everyone he's ever allied with. This eventually comes back to hurt him, as he's run out of people he can run to.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: The prophet Daisan is pretty clearly Jesus. Interestingly it's the heretics in this setting who believe in his divinity.
- Deadpan Snarker: Hugh has elements of this.
- Death by Childbirth: Alain's mother died giving birth to him.
- Demonic Possession: Hugh & Adelheid use a daimone to possess Henry & make him do Anne's bidding.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Bloodheart.
- Dying as Yourself: The daimone possessing Henry flees his body when he is mortally wounded, allowing him to die as himself & reconcile with Sanglant.
- Evil Counterpart: Hugh is a rival with Liath, and they're pretty similar in a whole lot of ways, Hugh also shares charisma, wits, and courage with Sanglant, a fact that bothers everybody.
- Bulkezu and Sanglant had the looks Badassery, and warrior prince like similarities, plus a certain immunity to specific types of attack.
- Eye Scream: Liath blinds Hugh by burning his optic nerves from the inside.
- Face–Heel Turn While more of a faint saunter over to the evil side Ekkehard counts.
- The Fair Folk: The Ashioi, an elf-like race who disappeared from the earth centuries ago.
- Family Relationship Switcheroo: Liath believes Anne is her mother until she learns that her mother is in fact a fire daimone & Anne is her aunt.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The setting in general strongly resembles medieval Europe, except for women having much stronger and/or more visible roles, including a female-dominated version of the Catholic Church.
- The Ashioi are Fantasy Counterpart Culture Aztecs.
- Fate Worse than Death: Hugh loses his hold over his dream girl, fails at revenge, loses his powers, his hand, his eyesight, and has to spend the rest of his life knowing he's been beaten and will never, ever get a rematch.
- Foil: Hugh & Sanglant. Both are around the same age, bastards, charismatic, & good looking. There's also their rivalry over Liath.
- Freudian Excuse: Implied to be the reason why Hugh is the way he is. He was his mother's favorite & she doted on him, but that didn't stop her from striking him whenever he stepped out of line. His mother's abusive behavior toward him is very similar to his own abuse of Liath.
- Friend to All Living Things: Alain, to the extent that he even shows compassion toward creatures like the guivre, which most people fear & consider monsters.
- Genius Ditz: At the end of the series, Baldwin.
- Giant Flyer: The guivre.
- The Good King: Henry is seen as this by most of his Wendish subjects, at least until he leaves his kingdom to chase dreams of empire in Aosta. The Varren see him as an illegitimate monarch & usurper since he lacks a blood claim to the throne of Varre.
- Head-Turning Beauty: Liath, who at one point has 3 different men interested in her. It's implied this may be due to her fire daimone heritage.
- Healing Factor: Sanglant's healing abilities allow him to survive death wounds & live with very little food for an entire year. They also heal his wounds & prevent his body from decaying when he is temporarily dead after having his soul torn from his body.
- Hell Hound: Sorrow and Rage, Alain's dogs. Played with in that they aren't actually hellhounds but are instead descended from the Emperor Taillefer's black hounds.
- Heroic Bastard: Sanglant starts out as one. Liath & Alain both become Heroic Bastards as the series goes on.
- The High King: Henry, especially once he crowns himself emperor.
- Hordes from the East: The Quman, Fantasy Counterpart Culture Mongols who launch a large-scale invasion of Wendar.
- I Have You Now, My Pretty: Hugh says this almost verbatim to Liath whenever he thinks he's got her in his clutches.
- Interspecies Romance: Henry & Kansi-a-lari, though not so much on her part. Also Bernard & Liath's fire daimone mother count.
- Karma Houdini: Hugh is able to get away with nearly everything, largely due to his position & family connections. However, karma does eventually catch up with him.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Lavastine tells Alain he believes him to be his bastard son. Subverted later, when it is revealed that Lackling was actually Lavastine's bastard & Alain's father could be one of any number of men his mother was sleeping with at the time.
- Lust: Hugh is consumed with obsessive lust for Liath & will stop at nothing to possess her.
- Made a Slave: Happens to Liath when she is sold to Hugh to pay her father's debts. Ironically, this happens to Hugh himself when he becomes Sorgatani's pura.
- Messianic Archetype: Alain is hinted to be some sort of Jesus figure; somebody told him the truth, and their leg healed. Tallia suffered the stigmata or it was faked and goes completely insane.
- Missing Mom: Sanglant's mother disappears shortly after giving birth to him. He does eventually meet her as an adult, only to have her leave him again. Liath is also this to Blessing after she is transported away from earth.
- Mrs. Robinson: Margrave Judith has a thing for much younger, very attractive men.
- Mysterious Parent: Alain never does learn the identity of his father.
- Noodle Incident: Whatever it was that Hugh did at Zeitsenburg.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Hugh tries this on Liath more than once, & she realizes she may have more in common with him than she cares to admit. Both are smart, well-read & intellectually curious as well as powerful magic users.
- Our Centaurs Are Different: Unlike most depictions of centaurs, which are usually Always Male, the centaurs in this series are always female. Some of them are ancient & incredibly powerful magic users.
- Our Elves Are Different: The Ashioi are an ancient elf-like race that are a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the Aztecs. They mysteriously left the earth centuries before the events of the series, but traces of them remain.
- Our Gryphons Are Different: Griffins in the series have the traditional half-eagle, half lion appearance, but with razor sharp feathers. The feathers are extremely valuable because they're proof against magic.
- Our Orcs Are Different: The Eika pretty much fill this niche. They differ from typical orcs in that they're metallic dragon Vikings, but they still fill the role of raiding & pillaging human civilizations.
- Parental Abandonment: Sanglant's mother abandons him not long after giving birth to him, leaving him to be raised by his father.
- Parental Betrayal: Kansi-a-lari turns on her son with no hesitation & has no problem with going to war against him.
- Parental Favoritism: Henry openly favors Sanglant over his legitimate children, to the degree that he is willing to defy the inheritance laws to make him his heir. There's also Hugh, who was his mother's favorite & his sisters greatly resent him for it.
- Playing with Fire: Liath has an affinity for fire. This is because she is half-fire daimone.
- Pretty Boy: Baldwin, who was super hawt.
- Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Eika. Stronghand is unique among them for thinking of more than just bloodshed & raiding.
- Psycho Electro: When Hugh becomes a tempestari, watch the fuck out.
- Puppet King: Hugh & Adelheid use a daimone to turn Henry into a puppet king who does Anne's bidding, just as he was about to return to Wendar against her wishes.
- Rags to Royalty: Liath begins the series as an orphan sold into slavery. She ends as Count of Lavas & a descendant of the Emperor Taillefer.
- Rape, Pillage, and Burn: The Eika & the Quman do this to large sections of Wendar. The Quman in particular wreak lots of devastation before they are finally defeated.
- Really Royalty Reveal: Happens to Liath twice. She first learns she is descended from the Emperor Taillefer through her mother. Then she learns that Anne is not in fact her mother but her father's half-sister. Finally it is revealed that she truly is descended from Taillefer through her father & is the true heir to the county of Lavas.
- Rebel Prince: Sanglant rebels against his father's authority by refusing to go to Aosta & marrying Liath despite Henry forbidding it. Later, he leads an army into Aosta to foil the plans of the Seven Sleepers & free Henry from their control. He has to face off against Henry's forces in battle, which naturally leads many to believe him in rebellion against his father.
- Royal Bastard:
- Alain is (supposedly) the son of a servant and either a merchant, a count, an elven shade (don't ask), his grandfather or some completely unknown man. This is a major plot point in the series - until he stops caring about it.
- In order to become king or queen, you have to sire or birth a bastard to prove your fertility. Sanglant is the bastard son of the current king and an elven woman from that "ceremony". He gets treated even worse than the average bastard thanks to his mother's blood.
- Royal Brat: Blessing though the epilogue reveals she eventually grew out of it & became a capable ruler.
- Sexy Priest: Hugh, full stop. Baldwin also qualifies.
- Ship Tease: Creepily enough, Liath and Hugh.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Sapientia & Theophanu. Sapienta is temperamental & weak-willed while Theophanu is thoughtful & deliberate.
- Sinister Minister: Hugh. Also Anne & Antonia.
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Baldwin enters the church to a escape marrying a woman in her 50s. At one point Ivar observes that it's not Baldwin's fault that he's been "cursed" with a face so beautiful that it becomes a mirror for everyone else's ambitions.
- The Starscream: Hugh, again. He doesn't hesitate to betray his allies the moment they're no longer useful.
- Succession Crisis: Despite having 3 legitimate children, Henry would prefer Sanglant to be his heir, though bastards inheriting is legally dubious. After Sapientia shows she's capable of producing an heir, he marries her off to a foreign prince, knowing the Wendish nobility wouldn't accept him as consort. Just before Henry dies, he names Sanglant as heir. The succession issue isn't settled for good until the very end of the series, when Theophanu, believing Sanglant to be dead, takes the throne.
- Technical Pacifist: Alain will beat you senseless, but he will not kill. His dogs will though.
- Token Evil Teammate: Lord Wichman, big time.
- Took a Level in Badass While most characters in the book took a level here or again, Liath is by far the biggest example, going from a raped and abused legally bought slave belonging to Hugh to one of the king's best messengers to a mother to joining and then escaping from her mother's cult group to ascending the mythical Crown of Stars to a pure elemental plane of fire and discovering her true birthright as an offspring of said plane's inhabitants to growing fiery wings to finally confronting Hugh at the end of the book, displaying her wings, overpowering his magic, and BURNING HIS EYES OUT FROM THE INSIDE.
- Hugh himself, who becomes more powerful in every book.
- The Usurper: Sabella attempts to usurp Henry's throne more than once.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Hugh is the epitome of this trope. Outwardly, he appears to be a pious, charitable, well-read churchman, which makes it hard for people to believe him capable of what he's accused of. His good looks certainly help as well.
- Warrior Prince: Most of the nobles qualify but Sanglant especially. He commands the king's Dragons & is a very skilled & capable warrior.
