Literature / The Aurelian Cycle

The debut fantasy series of Rosaria Munda. This series is a political fantasy following the nation of Callipolis, one of several island nations in an archipelago where a nation's military might is heavily influenced by the offensive force of their dragon riders, and those dragon riders have a tendency to also serve as the ruling aristocracy for a given nation. While Callipolis was previously ruled by the Triarchy, a group of three aristocrat families who each oversaw one of the three dragon breeds their nation rode, the old regime was violently overthrown ten years prior to the events of the story, with almost all of the survivors fleeing to a neighboring island that they had previously conquered.

The new regime, while granting more opportunities and education to its people and having no (official) nobility with greater rights, is still rife with its own oppressive practices. It is this system which the protagonists are set to inherit. Annie, a former serf whose family was executed by the triarchy, and Lee, a secret survivor of the aristocracy, are among the most talented of the first generation of dragon riders under the new regime. Their loyalties are put to the test when the survivors of the old regime return, seeking to fracture their usupers and reclaim their old throne through whatever brute force or political subterfuge they can.

The trilogy consists of

• Fireborne (2019)
• Flamefall (2021)
• Furysong (2022)

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The Aurelian Cycle provides examples of:

• Action Politician: Griff becomes the elected ruler of a country while also leading a dragon fleet in battle.
• Altar Diplomacy: Ixion seeks an arranged marriage with the Bassilean princess Freyda in order to get her empire’s backing for a takeover of Callipolis. Freyda, upon realizing Ixion is a sadist, would rather legitimize her rule of Callipolis by marrying Lee.
• And This Is for...: When Mabalena gets a chance to strike back.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Ixion’s final act of villainy is to kick his own dragon.
• Benevolent Dictator: Atreus genuinely cares about his ideals and has a good approval rating before the famine.
• Beyond Redemption: Atreus’s regime becomes this to the main characters when the Irons are barred from entering the bunkers during a dragon attack.
• Book Burning: Any works that Atreus’s regime determines to be too counter to the regime’s goals is seized and burned, although a handful of copies are allowed to exist in restricted government libraries.
• Breath Weapon: Dragonfire is one of the strongest weapons any nation’s military has, and there’s much tension in the first book about when or if the Callipolian dragons will mature to the point of being able to breath fire.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Leon treats the execution of Annie’s family like part of the job, dissonantly juggling a methodical killing with a polite attitude and consoling Annie afterward. Lee realizes that any given day that his dad came home from work smelling of fire could have been the worst day of Annie’s life, and not only can he not guess the day, but when he goes through his father’s journals, it seems it was never significant enough for him to record having done.
• Category Traitor: Lee, a member of one of the old aristocratic families, believes in the regime that overthrew the old government and murdered his family. His surviving relatives are offended by this, and his fellow Callipolians are hesitant to trust that he’s really on their side.
• Censorship Bureau: An important part of the government, which believes Bronze and Iron citizens too stupid to appreciate the nuance of being able to hear about complicated real world issues or view classic works that might contain outdated worldviews. It ultimately causes a large enough portion of the political elite to turn against Atreus and back the old triarchy.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: The way in which reeducation is performed on those who speak out against the Atreus regime, or who otherwise insist on exposing ideas that the regime dislikes.
• Corrupt Bureaucrat: Aside from how the government favors themselves when prioritizing who gets to eat during a famine, many of the important officials already had some degree of power in the old regime they helped overthrow. They often hold the same prejudices and ideas as the old regime while happening to have more power under the new system.
• The Coup: Before Atreus sparked a revolution and took over running the nation, he was a close assistant and friend to one of the former dragonlords.
• Culture Police: Art that runs counter to the new regime and is edited if small portions are objectionable and banned outright if the objectionable elements are too intrinsic to the work.
• Death by Childbirth: Technically the cause of Annie’s mother’s death, although it’s generally agreed that the famine is why she was weak enough for labor to kill her.
• Death Notification: Occasionally, such as when Duck is lost in battle. Griff also had to do this for his sister when her husband dies, and anticipates having to tell her that her children burned alive. He’s spared from that conversation when it turns out Delo saved the peasant hostages.
• Denying the Dead Parent's Sins: In flashbacks, Lee takes poorly to hearing his dad was the one to orphan Annie and rejects the idea that the famine his family was murdered over really happened.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Power hates to be called Parry
• Didn't Think This Through: Megara leaks the location of all the granaries to the public so civilians can raid them. The New Pythos riders use the leak to plan an air raid.
• Divide and Conquer: The New Pythos dragonlords deliberately incite disharmony between the native clans so that infighting between them can distract from rebellion efforts.
• Divided We Fall: Annie and Lee spend much of the second book unable to coordinate any of their efforts due to their differing approaches to the ration policy. Even when Annie tries to come to Lee’s side, communication breakdown is so severe that Lee’s allies think Annie is attempting a power grab, resulting in further harassment of Annie.
• Dragon Rider: The story focuses primarily on a group of young adults being trained as the new dragon-riding arm of their respective nations’ military.
• Due to the Dead: The Callipolis revolution destroys the remains of the dragonlords. The Norcians allow the survivors of their revolt to give their dead a funeral. Ixion has the corpses of ever member of Atreus’s government that he doesn’t need hung on display.
• Easily Condemned: Annie notes before there’s even a famine that the public at large is quick to turn on her and the other dragon riders the moment anything goes wrong.
• Easily Elected: After all Atreus warnings about how unstable democracy is, Ixion shows up at the first democratic assembly and orders everyone to vote him in as their ruler. With the bribe of food and unspoken threat of attack, the vote goes in his favor.
• Easily Swayed Population: Prior to New Pythos turning out to be an actual threat, the working class newspaper reports on them like they are to give the people an easy diversion for any negative feelings they mught have to the current government.
• Eat the Rich: The dragonlords, having maintained a comfortable lifestyle while their subjects starved in a famine, are torn about in a bloody revolution at the start of the story.
• Elective Monarchy: The legal system in Norcia, prior to the dragonlords conquering it.
• Face Death with Dignity: Atreus is very calm about his execution, and even offers his killer words of guidance in his final moments.
• Failed State: The Atreus regime results in mass starvation and such callous willingness to sacrifice those who are ‘easy to replace’ that the unskilled labor class is left to burn in an attack to ensure room in safety bunkers for the more valuable, even in districts where the bunkers are not at capacity.
• Failure-to-Save Murder: Twice in Flamefall
  • Cor’s reaction to Duck’s death. Compounded by the fact that not only did Annie fail to protect him while they flew together for a strike, but she’d been asked to watch over him in that capacity after rejecting Cor’s request to leave Duck out of the mission.
  • The government, realizing they don’t yet have enough bunkers to protect everyone in an air raid, issues orders to the military to let Irons into bunkers last. Some officers don’t let them in at all.
• Fantastic Caste System: Everyone takes an Metals Test to determine what field of work they’re best suited for. Their rank is marked by a bracelet they’re given (gold, silver, bronze, or iron) which determines their job potential. Gold and silver are treated as more sophisticated intellects and get better pay for their work. Bronze and iron are considered too stupid to be trusted to think for themselves and are subjected to heavier propaganda and lower pay. Iron is also viewed as easily replaceable for how ‘unskilled’ the work they’re allowed to do is.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Atreus’s regime allows for some class mobility, but sacrifices national self-sufficiency in favor of short term economic growth. When this is exploited by New Pythos to cause a famine, their ration policy and oversight of who works where causes them to starve the very people building the bunkers people shelter in during attacks, leading to mass casualties when the capitol is hit with an air strike.
• Fictional United Nations: The Medean League, put in place to try and prevent the most powerful nations in the archipelago from starting wars.
• Forced to Watch: Lee and Annie were both made to watch the murder of their families as children.
• Foreign Ruling Class: The dragonlords. It’s more noticeable in New Pythos, where Griff regularly notes how Norcian cultures has been defaced or suppressed. There are frequent allusions to conquest and overlap in Norcian and Calliponlian culture to suggest that Callipolis underwent a similar process and lost more of its native culture. In both nations, the dragonlords barely bother to learn the language of the natives.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Atreus is noted to have forgotten all about Leo, who was spared as a result of his intervention during Palace Day, and doesn’t recognize him when he later returns as Lee.
• Full-Circle Revolution: It’s made apparent pretty early on that even if Atreus’s regime offers more opportunities than the dragonlords did, they have essentially created a new elite and exploited underclass, and maintain their position through oppressive censorship and totalitarian enforcement. Then a famine comes, and they seize all food under threat of dragon fire and leave the poor to starve while the rich are well fed, which is the exact thing the dragonlords were overthrown for doing.
• Good Is Not Nice: Power is practically seen by his fellow guardians as their Token Evil Teammate, Despite his personality defects and gleeful antagonism of others, he consistently does what he thinks is for the good of the people in serious situations, and is one of the more effective Guardians due to his ability to make calls others find emotionally difficult and convincingly play off a betrayal.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Miranda Hane notes when confronted by Annie that entrenching her regime’s power turned her and her comrades from idealist revolutionaries into a corrupt politician guilty of many of the same crimes she once rallied against.
• Heel Realization: Had by a nameless soldier during the revolution, who drops out of the military and goes to live a quite life after Palade Day. Seeing Leo’s reaction to his family’s murder jolts him out of his bloodlust, and he saves Leo’s life by smuggling him out of the palace.
• I Did What I Had to Do: How Atreus responds when confronted about the violence he knew he was inciting during the revolution.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Annie spends a long time grappling with her decision to bring Duck on a dangerous mission.
• Immune to Fire: Dragons are immune to fire and heat, although their more flammable riders necessitate they still dodge fire attacks.
• In-Series Nickname: In spades. Aside from Antigone going by Annie, Duck, Power, and Rock are almost never addressed by their real names.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Power, despite being a bully who seems amused by others suffering, is steadfastly loyal to Callipolis, becomes a supportive friend and steady ally to Annie, and is among the most willing to do whatever it takes to save his friends, family, and nation.
• Karmic Death:
  • Atreus is murdered by Lee in the very room where he killed Leon and ordered Lee’s death. He finds it fitting, even if Lee is unhappy with the situation.
  • Lee and Annie trick Ixion into engineering one in which Annie has to watch while Lee is burned alive in his own home, not knowing they set up an escape plan.
  • After Annie tries to spare Ixion, his cruelty to his own dragon spurs Aela to kill him of her own accord, as she wants revenge for his murder of Pallor.
• Kangaroo Court: Ixion runs a series of trials against those who helped overthrow the triarchy in the past where his faction picks the jury and the defense isn’t allowed to produce any of their own witnesses.
• Kill It with Fire: Given that dragons are a major military asset and common enforcement method for how regimes maintain power, this is present in spades.
• Kill the Parent, Raise the Child: Atreus does this unwittingly after brining about Leon’s death and then taking on Lee as his protégé.
• Kill the Poor: Each time Atreus’s regime is faced with a supply shortage (such as food or bunkers) they choose to prioritize by social class, leaving the ‘easily replaceable’ unskilled workers who tend to come from the poorest families to suffer the brunt of the casualties.
• Just the First Citizen: Played with. Atreus is noted to avoid putting on airs and requires his dragon riders take a vow of poverty, but when push comes to shove he puts himself and his friends above the general public.
• Let Them Die Happy: To the extent that it can be called a happy death, Atreus promises Leon that his son will be spared and looked after before killing him.
• Lingering Social Tensions: The prejudice between the bourgeoisie and working class is still present, with many of the nation’s established elite families looking down on those of poor origins despite ostensibly backing the metals test that purports to value people for merit over oldfangled blood supremacy ideas.
• Make an Example of Them:
  • Farmers/serfs who have their food seized are set on fire. The dragonlords would burn their family to death in their house while the current regime instead leaves them with severe but not necessarily fatal burns.
  • One of the Norcian riders was severely injured as punishment for supposed treason, but only after the rest of her family was murdered. The remaining Norcian riders were brought to watch so they would know not to get any funny ideas.
• Moral Myopia:
  • The dragonlords think it was their innate right to own others, and that they’re worthy of doing whatever they want to commoners without recourse. The cruelty they casually subject others to, they feel absolutely enraged to face for themselves.
  • The protagonists are left grasping hard at any justification they can find for their moral superiority when the new regime begins engaging in the same practices the old was reviled for.
• Moral Pragmatist: Atreus tells the Fourth Order riders that they will often have to choose between the lesser of two evils. They shortly after are placed in a series of situations where they have to compromise their morals for the sake of what they hope will lead to fewer long-term deaths. It becomes especially pragmatic when the debate over which people to let starve during a famine is had.
• Murder by Cremation: How Annie’s family is executed.
• Necessarily Evil: This becomes Annie’s common justification once the Callipolians realize there’s an incoming famine, and the government decides to seize the insiufficient food supply which, decide which part of their population its most practical to let starve, and begins using the Guardians as enforcers against anyone who protests the ration policy.
• The Needs of the Many: How the riders justify to themselves when they set farmers on fire.
• Never Found the Body:
  • Duck is seen falling into a burning building and, much later, Griff is only able to find his armor and determines he burned away.
  • Griff’s father who disappeared at sea when he was a child comes back in the final chapter.
• Nice to the Waiter: While Freyda disdains the idea of peasant dragon riders, she’s otherwise nice to her staff and abhors seeing the upper class act abusive to commoners, and even gives Griff a chance to warn everyone of the plan to kill the Norcian riders after he warns her that Ixion would make a bad husband.
• Noble Tongue: Dragontongue, the language spoken by the dragonlords and much of the upper class. The Atreus regime is trying to turn it into a Classical Tongue, since most classic literature and poetry uses it, but there remain a lot of influential holdovers from the old regime that prefer to speak Dragontongue.
• Occupiers Out of Our Country: The goal of the Norcians, who have been under dragonlord rule far shorter than Callipolis was and still recall a lot of their old culture.
• Outside-Context Problem: Lee becomes so focused on the injustice of the Atreus regime and Annie so focused on the threat of invasion by and oppression in New Pythos that they’re both blind to the other problem, and subsequently blindsided when each problem blows up in their face.
• Pet the Dog: In a jarring moment of compassion, Leon Stormscourge comforted Annie over the loss of her family, who he just executed while forcing her to watch. Later flashbacks also note that he was polite in conversation to her family shortly before killing them, and even apologized for what was happening when he showed up to execute them.
• Police Brutality: Annie faces massive public backlash after firing on a mob of starving citizens who threatened Power. She also later learns that her faction’s city guard was ‘overzealous’ in squashing a rebellion in Southside when she was a child.
• Politically Motivated Teacher: Professor Tyndale, secretly a spy for New Pythos, doesn’t hesitate to openly express his opinions about the Aurelian Cycle being banned. Annie uses this as a pretense to report him.
• Present Absence: Julia, in the second book. Her loss hangs heavy over both Lee and Griff.
• Politically Correct History: Atreus’s regime rewrites history to downplay the wrongs of their side and heap added blame on the dragonlords, including changing the dates of a massacre in the capitol to pretend it was dragonlords against revolutionaries, when it was actually the slaughter of protestors upset that the revolutionaries reneged on their commitment to democracy.
• Propaganda Machine: One of the government departments if openly called the Ministry of Propaganda. They make different versions of the newspaper with varying levels of propaganda depending on how informed or manipulated they want a given class to be.
• Puppet State: Freyda intends to make Callipolis a vassal state of the Basillean Empire
• Questionable Consent: While Griff technically plays along willingly when Julia takes him as her lover, the power imbalance and the fact that he’s desperate for the medicine she pays him with make the situation dubious even before Griff starts hinting that he’s not even attracted to women.
• Rebellious Princess: Freyda, taking inspiration from Julia, bucks as many traditional expectations for women and princesses in her empire as she can.
• Regime Change: The series opens in the middle of one before skipping ahead to ten years into the new regime, with much of the plot revolving around both the old regime trying to regain power and the populace threatening to overthrow the current regime in order to try establishing a third version.
• Revealing Continuity Lapse: The history of Palace Day that the Fourth Order are given by Atreus lists Leo as dead, even though Atreus personally intervened and saved Leo. Turns out his intervention was for show and the order Atreus whispers in the opening was to kill Leo somewhere out of sight. The nameless soldier was the one who actually saved Leo when he decided to defy that order.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: The series opens on revolutionaries killing the old aristocracy in senselessly cruel ways, including forcing the old lords to watch as their children are murdered. Government-bound students are taught an only-lightly sanitized version of Palace Day and are discouraged from glorifying it. The Fourth Order are horrified to read a fraction of what occurred during the massacre and need to know if Atreus anticipated such violence, to which he tells them that he knew there was a chance things could escalate to that level. It is later revealed that he deliberately wanted to murder all of the families down to the last child.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: In-universe. Most of the public is taught a sanitized version of the revolution that obscured how violent it was and glorifies each of the revolution’s achievements. The day in which the old aristocracy was brutally murdered, Palace Day, is a national holiday in which the extent of the violence is covered up and everyone focuses on their escape from the tyranny of the families that were killed.
• The Right of a Superior Species: How the dragonlords see themselves. Julia cannot accept Lee’s arguments defending the new regime because she genuinely believes she’s a superior form of human who is entitled to own others, and her property needs to be put back in place after the revolution.
• Royal Inbreeding:
  • The dragonlords mostly married between their families, which didn’t offer much fresh blood.
  • The Basillean Empire is worse, as royal siblings are expected to wed one another.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Most of the nobility, since they maintain their power by commanding the dragons that both defend their nations and enforce its laws.
• Royally Screwed Up: The Basillean prince has a glaring facial deformity that causes him to drool nonstop and is prone to seizures, likely due to his family practice of Royal Inbreeding.
• Runaway Fiancée: Freyda shows up to back Ixion without the entourage of servants expected of her status because she’s trying to flee from a forced marriage to her brother.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Delo’s conscious compels him to give Griff a chance to rebel, despite knowing it might get his family overthrown a second time.
• Sexual Extortion: Griff depended on Julia to supply him with medicine for his sister, which she gave him as payment for him being a dutiful lover.
• Sins of Our Fathers: The new regime didn’t just kill the old dragonborn, but also murdered as many of their children as possible. This is initially presented as spite, but is revealed to be a deliberate effort to ensure none of those children reinforce old notions of inherent talent by succeeding in the new system.
• Sliding Scale Of I Did What I Had To Do Versus Moral Event Horizon: The protagonists start grappling with where they and Atreus’s regime fall on this scale when they take over food distribution during a famine and must choose who to let starve.
• The Social Darwinist: The official policy of the Atreus regime is that the worse a person’s performance on a standardized test, the more expendable their life is.
• Spanner in the Works: Freyda and her goliathan manage to be this for both the Callipolian Guardians and the triarchy-in-exile. While providing Ixion’s forces with the raw might of her massive dragon to realize their plans, her general disdain for Ixion’s sadism and her moments of compassion to those he abuses drive her to repeatedly willfully undermine him.
• Staged Populist Uprising: While a lot of the passi are sincere in their cause, a lot of the major members of their movement are secretly working to restore the triarchy.
• Villains Want Mercy: After the Norcian revolt, Delo drops to his knees and starts reciting every repentant Plea for mercy his people used to require of their subjects, then offers a deal to see his surviving family safely exiled while he remains behind as a hostage.
• Voice of the Resistance:
  • Atreus, during the revolution against the dragonlords.
  • Megara Roper and later Lee sur Pallor when Atreus’s famine policy causes unrest.
• Written by the Winners: The violence of the revolt is downplayed in most public reporting and celebration, and any records that humanize the old regime or give a full account of their brutal deaths is censored.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Ixion kills Dora Mithrides once he’s done forcing her to play hostess. She saw it coming, but there’s not much she could do to stop it.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: As a survivor of the Palace Day massacre, Lee has a very different take on most of the major victories of the revolution despite coming to agree with the new regime’s ideals.

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