History Literature / TheEmpiriumTrilogy

* GoodIsNotNice: Red Crown is a rebel group dedicated to talking down the tyrannical and merciless Undying Empire. Due to who they're up against, the members of Red Crown take part in some morally questionable, if not downright villainous, acts themselves: using child soldiers so they have more numbers, killing innocents in order to maintain secrecy, and so on.
* GoodParents: Rielle's parents were loving and kind before her mother's death, which led to her father becoming abusive. Eliana's parents also cared for her deeply and did what they could to keep her and Remy safe despite the harsh environment around them.

* HalfHumanHybrid: Marques are beings that are half-human and half-angel. They're born with wings, but because of the prosecution against them, their wings are usually cut off.

* HarmfulToMinors: Life isn't easy for children regardless of time period: if you're an elemental child living in the Second Age, you could be kidnapped and forced to become a soldier for a despotic angel. If you live in the Third Age, you could be forced to become a killer for your own survival and that of your family's (assuming you haven't been made an orphan).

** In ''Furyborn'', Eliana can jump 100 feet off of one dock onto another and only feel a bit of pain. This invulnerability is what earned her the nickname the "Dread of Orline". This trait goes away once she's fully unlocked her powers. Remy suggests her super fast healing ability was because her powers were healing her since they had no other outlet.

* HeroOfAnotherStory: After Rielle and company split ways with Ilmaire and his companions midway through ''Kingsbane'', Ilmaire doesn't make a further reappearance (at least not until the very end of ''Lightbringer'') but he isn't fully out of the picture: excerpts from the letters he sends to Audric and from his journal are placed at the beginning of several chapters in both ''Kingsbane'' and ''Lightbringer''. These excerpts show his own personal journey as he tries to fit into the crown his recently deceased father left, deal with the usurper Merovec, and eventually strike out on his own while searching for aid.
* HeroesPreferSwords: Audric is the most powerful sunspinner to be seen in decades- if not centuries- and his main casting, Illumenor, is a sword. Saint Katell was also an incredibly talented sunspinner, the leader of the Saints, and wielded a sword casting.

* InfoDump: Chapter 37 of ''Lightbringer'' is dedicated to a conversation between Eliana and the Prophet. For the most part, it's just the Prophet explaining their plan to Eliana and, by extension, the audience: why they had Simon pretend to be loyal to Corien and his Empire, why they let Eliana be tortured for months on end by Corien, what they want Eliana to do now and how Simon figures into it, etc.
* InMysteriousWays: In the beginning of ''Furyborn'', Taliesin says the empirium "works in mysterious ways" as a way to dismiss Rielle's concerns that all the recently strange natural phenomenons are signs that the prophesied Queen's are going to appear soon.
* InstantFanClub: Soon after Ludivine's dramatic entrance during Rielle's anointing, a group calling themselves the House of the Second Sun formed. They're obsessed with Rielle and how she brought Ludivine back from the dead.[[note]](Rielle didn't, but the general public doesn't know this.)[[/note]] Group activities include reenactments of Ludivine's death and her (apparent) resurrection.
* {{Interquel}}: The events of ''Queen of the Blazing Throne'' run concurrent with what happens in ''Kingsbane''. Some scenes from the later book are even shown through Obritsa's perspective.
* InterruptedIntimacy: During ''Furyborn'', Rielle and Audric are about to go all the way when Ludivine's father walks in on them.

** Saint Katell was in love with Aryava who was angels' leader at the time. Historians consider their relationship to be a contributing factor in the ending to the Angelic Wars.

* ItSucksToBeTheChosenOne: One of the main themes of the series is just how much being the subject of a prophecy messes with your life. Having incredible powers don't mean much if you can't use them freely, and everybody has different ideas about how they should and shouldn't be used.

** Before finding out about her heritage, Eliana had an incredibly useful healing ability, but deep down it always worried her. After learning that she's the daughter of the infamous Blood Queen, she comes to hate and fear her powers. Unfortunately, the world needs her ''now'' more than ever and a big part of that is accepting who she really is, up to and including her powers. As such, she's thrust into a role that makes her deeply uncomfortable and is forced to quickly learn how to use her newfound abilities without much time to come to terms with it all.

* LittleMissBadass: Despite only being twelve, Obritsa is already a Queen and a figurehead for the human rebellion in Kirvaya. She's quite adept at hiding her true feelings regarding elementals and is a powerful marque, able to travel at least thirty miles apace without breaking much of a sweat.

* RomanticFalseLead: Harkan is set up from the beginning of ''Furyborn'' as a close friend and lover to Eliana. Once Simon enters the picture, it becomes very clear that Eliana will pair up with Simon at some point. Harkan seems to die, something that Eliana mourns over. As a means of distraction, she verbally and physically spars, letting the both of them become closer. Shortly after Harkan reappears in ''Kingsbane'', he abducts Eliana in order to force her to travel with him to Astavar. This betrayal turns Eliana against Harkan almost completely, effectively ending their relationship. They remain civil to one another, and Eliana still feels some residual love for him, but whatever romance she and Harkan once shared becomes a thing of the past.

* ADateWithRosiePalms: In ''Furyborn'', Rielle wakes up in the middle of pleasuring herself while dreaming about Corien. She has another date while fantasizing about Audric and Ludivine in ''Kingsbane''.

[[caption-width-right:350:Being the Chosen One isn't all it's cracked up to be...]]

* BreakingPointSwearing: After Corien shows Audric and everyone attending his wedding a vision of what happened to his father, Audric takes Rielle aside to confront her about the lies she's told. Ludivine keeps trying to redirect the conversation to other matters, but Audric- someone who isn't prone to swearing- essentially tells her to shut the fuck up.
-->'''Ludivine:''' Stop berating her and listen to me. Corien is coming, and he's close. We should be sending out every last soldier to bolster the city's defenses against him. And I should be searching for him rather than standing here keeping you from hurting each other. I suggest we talk about this later.
-->'''Audric:''' ''(angrily)'' Fuck your suggestions. We're talking about this right now.

%%* AmbiguousSituation: [[spoiler:When Rielle defeats Corien, Remy and future-Eliana disappear since their timeline no longer came to pass. The epilogue only focuses on how Rielle's decision affected Second Age Celdaria, leaving it unclear what became of Navi, Harkan, and all the other Third Age characters.]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The series ends with Eliana empathizing with Rielle about her struggles. This helps Rielle make the decision to kill Corien. She winds up killing Ludivine in the process, and Remy and future-Eliana disappear since their timeline no longer came to pass. Rielle gives birth to a daughter, dying in a flash of light a few months afterward. Celdaria is still picking up the pieces five years later, but Audric and the wraiths sympathetic with humanity become allies. Having learned from Rielle's hardships, Audric teaches his daughter (who he and Rielle have named Eliana) not to fear her powers, but to also to love other things besides them.]]

* PrecisionFStrike: After Corien shows Audric and everyone attending his wedding a vision of what happened to his father, Audric takes Rielle aside to confront her about the lies she's told. Ludivine keeps trying to redirect the conversation to other matters, but Audric- someone who isn't prone to swearing- essentially tells her to shut the fuck up.
-->Ludivine: Stop berating her and listen to me. Corien is coming, and he's close. We should be sending out every last soldier to bolster the city's defenses against him. And I should be searching for him rather than standing here keeping you from hurting each other. I suggest we talk about this later.
-->Audric (angrily): Fuck your suggestions. We're talking about this right now.

* WeaponOfChoice:

* AilmentInducedCruelty: The bedridden King of Borsvall treats his son horribly, calling him weak, ineffectual, and unworthy of the throne. However, considering he was possessed by an angel] at the time, its ambiguous how much of the King's verbal abuse was coming from him and how much of it was from the angel.

* TimeTravel: The main solution given to ending the Undying Empire for good is to kill its leader, Corien, before he could create it. In order to achieve this, Simon has Eliana go back to the Second Age and try to talk Rielle into finishing off Corien. %%stopped here
* TranslationConvention: There are several languages mentioned throughout the series with many characters stated to be speaking a specific one; one character may be speaking Celdarian at first before switching to Common, for instance. Everything the characters say, regardless of which language they're speaking, is completely legible to the reader.
* TraumaCongaLine: At age five, Rielle killed her mother inadvertently. This turned her once loving father against her to the point of being emotionally and verbally abusive. He and her mentor, Taliesin, essentially ignore her wants and desires under the guise of keeping her safe, both her from the public and the public from her. They force her to keep her powers suppressed and hidden from everyone, even her best friends, one of whom is a prince. This blows up in all of their faces, in more ways than one, when she saves the prince from assassins but winds up killing innocents in the process. The King has her then undergo a series of grueling trials in order to determine if she's the menace her father keeps telling her that she is. Between two trials, a noble tries to assassinate her and she only survives thanks to her unique powers. The last trial she ends up doing has her essentially relive the night her mother died. At first, it seems to go well [[spoiler:until Corien takes over various soldier's minds, turning the vicinity into a veritable bloodbath, during which she watches her other best friend get thrown off a cliff. Then it turns out that this friend actually died years ago and the person she's been talking to since the beginning of this whole affair is actually an angel, a being that humans have feared and hated for centuries]]. And all of that is only the beginning.

* TwoLinesNoWaiting: The trilogy follows the lives of Rielle and Eliana as they come to grips with their powers and the expectations that come with them. Rielle's story is about her rise as the Sun Queen and the events that caused her to turn into the Blood Queen. Eliana's story is about her learning the truth behind her powers and heritage, all while trying to figure out how to bring the Undying Empire to its knees. Their stories eventually intersect towards the end of the trilogy when [[spoiler: Eliana travels back in time to talk Rielle into killing Corien]].
* TwoPartTrilogy: While the series was always intended to be three parts, ''Furyborn'' has a more definitive ending despite the fact that there's obviously still a lot more story to tell. It's plot mainly concerns itself with Rielle participating in the Sun Queen trials and Eliana discovering her powers and heritage, giving both of them more conclusive arcs. ''Kingsbane'', however, ends on a cliffhanger which ''Lightbringer'' directly picks up.
* UnderstandingBoyfriend: Ever since learning that Rielle might be one of the Queens of Prophecy, Audric repeatedly assures her that he still loves her and defends her against naysayers, even when her reputation as the Blood Queen slowly grows stronger. The only moment when he has doubts is right after learning she killed her father (albeit accidentally) and lied about it, and he quickly regrets calling her a monster when she flees Baingarde. When he sees her again, she's visibly pregnant and briefly wonders if the child is Corien's, but Audric swiftly brushes the thought aside, vowing to love the child regardless.[[note]](He ''is'' the father, but he didn't know that at the time.)[[/note]]
* UnresolvedSexualTension: At the beginning of ''Furyborn'', there is a noticeable attraction shared between Rielle and Audric. Problem is both of them have very good reason not to act on their feelings; Rielle's father has forbidden her from getting together with Audric, thinking her volatile powers might one day kill the prince. Since she doesn't want to risk becoming pregnant with just anyone, Rielle's restricted herself to fantasizing about and flirting with Audric; Audric is already engaged to Ludivine, an arrangement based in politics and thus, difficult if not impossible to break. Towards the end of ''Furyborn'', this unresolved tension between the two does become resolved.
* TheUnreveal: The name of the angel that took over Ludivine's body is never stated. The angel refuses to state her name and insists on being called Ludivine, and when Corien tries to tell Rielle what it is, she cuts him off before he can.

* UnstablePoweredWoman: As Rielle becomes more and more connected to the empirium, her mental state deteriorates. It gets to the point where Corien the genocidal angel worries after her health, often having to remind her that she's not immortal and has to take better care of herself.

* WasOnceAMan: Fidelia's crawlers were once women who were mutated through experiments so as to create monstrous soldiers for the Empire.

** Each element is closely associated with a particular weapon or armory: windsingers have arrows, sunspinners have swords, earthshakers use staffs, etc. Most elementals tend to create their castings in the shape of those weapons, though alternative castings aren't unheard of.
** Eliana favors knives and daggers as her primary hunting tool.

* WhamLine: During the ambush at the Jubilee in ''Kingsbane'', Eliana sees Simon standing on the beach when she notices something... off:

* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: The last page or so of ''Lightbringer'''s last chapter includes brief snippets as to what other characters are doing while [[spoiler:Rielle AscendsToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: the Gate is sealed, Ilmaire's stopped running away from his responsibilities and now rules Borsvall alongside his husband, Leevi, Obritsa spares the lives of the magisters who aided Corien in the abduction of elemental children, Kamayin ponders how her people will move on now that the war is over, and Audric cradles his newborn daughter as he watches the bright light given off from Rielle's ascension]].
* WildChild: Simon turns into a feral child after spending a year alone on the desolate mountain he was transported to. He quickly learns how to kill and skin animals in order to feed himself. By the time Corien finds him, Simon is so starved for any kind of interaction that he doesn't mind much that the man giving it is a genocidal angel.
* WiseBeyondTheirYears: At twelve-years-old, Obritsa is able to perfectly act the role of the "stoic orphan suddenly picked to be queen" while secretly being an agent for the human revolution. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] since she's been raised practically since birth to play that part without giving anything away.
* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: Rielle accidentally killed her mother, has had to endure verbal abuse thanks to her father because of it, and was forced to hide who she is from everybody. When her powers are revealed, everybody imposes their own views as to how she should act and behave. The public slowly turns against her, believing her to be the dreaded Blood Queen when her attempts to use her powers constructively prove fatal (at least at first). Corien showing everyone that she was behind the King of Celdaria's death and Audric's father ends up being the final nail in the coffin. Audric, in the heat of moment, accuses her of being the very monster they've feared, leading Rielle to join Corien. By the Third Age, most if not all of humanity loathe Rielle for siding with the angels and closing off the empirium to human use, for doing so allowed the Undying Empire to rise up and take over the world.
* WorstWeddingEver: Soon after his coronation, Audric and Rielle host a huge wedding. Everything seems to be going perfectly, and Rielle can't imagine being any happier. Then Corien takes over Ludivine's mind and reveals to the whole assembly that their former king died by Rielle's hand. The wedding quickly devolves into chaos, coming to a head when Audric takes Rielle aside to question her about all the lies she's told or been forced to keep.
* WouldHurtAChild: Corien kidnaps elemental children and forces their powers to emerge prematurely. He then has these children forge castings, both for themselves and for the beasts he's experimented on in order to better utilize their elemental abilities during battle.
* WouldntHurtAChild: The main reason Corien is stealing elemental children to use them as soldiers is to weaponize this ideology: he knows that many people would balk at killing a child which gives some of his army an advantage on the battlefield.
* WritersCannotDoMath: Remy's age and the subsequent age gap between him and Eliana changes a couple times throughout the series. The first flashback into Eliana's past we get in ''Furyborn'' says she made her first kill when she was twelve and Remy was five, which means they're seven years apart in age. However, another flashback in the same novel explains she was ten when her father disappeared and the text states Remy was an infant- a baby, in other words- when that happened, which would make the age gap about ten years instead.

* YouMonster: Remy calls Eliana a monster upon finding out that she killed [[spoiler: their mother]].

* PsychicAssistedSuicide: On two different occasions, Corien either forced his target to commit suicide (Garver Randell) or urged them to follow through (Queen Genoveve). %%stopped here

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: King Bastien and his wife, Queen Genoveve, are the ultimate authority in Celdaria and neither of them abuse their power. Even after learning about Rielle's incredible powers- and that her deceit regarding those powers put their son in danger- King Bastien asks Rielle various questions related to her powers and why she kept them secret. When he decrees that she will be undergoing trials to test her abilities, its made clear that he doesn't really want to make that call, but he can't ignore what she's done.

* RepressionNeverEndsWell: Ever since she was five, Rielle was forced to hide her powers and (to some extent) her person from the world. As the years passed, she began to believe her father's continual reminders that she's a monster/killer/dangerous/etc. and thus eventually stopped fighting him for her freedom. This has the unintended side effect of making her powers more volatile, culminating in one particular burst of raw power that winds up killing, not just Rielle's father, but the King of Celdaria as well.

** In Second Age Kirvaya, the elementals suppressed any and all non-powered humans. To fight back against this oppression, a rebellious group made up of non-powered humans and their sympathizers. Obritsa (despite being a marque) was raised by one of their members, groomed to become the next Queen of Kirvaya so she'll be in a position of power and thus able to enact lasting change.
* RetGone: [[spoiler: Once they convince Rielle to kill Corien, Remy and future-Eliana disappear, since the circumstances that brought them to the past no longer happened]].

** In ''Kingsbane'', [[spoiler: Simon reveals himself to be a double agent for the Empire and Eliana's adoptive father was taken over by an angel]].
** In ''Lightbringer'', it's revealed that [[spoiler:the Prophet is actually Ludivine. She's been orchestrating everything behind the scenes, including Simon's betrayal]].
* RomanticFalseLead: Harkan is set up from the beginning as a close friend and lover to Eliana. Once Simon enters the picture though, it becomes clear through various ship tease moments that Eliana will pair up with Simon at some point. Harkan seems to die, and though Eliana does mourn his death, she likes to spar verbally and physically with Simon as a means of distraction, letting the both of them become closer. When Harkan reappears, he abducts Eliana shortly thereafter in order to force her to travel with him to Astavar. This betrayal turns Eliana against Harkan almost completely, effectively ending their relationship. They remain civil to one another and Eliana still feels some residual love for him, but whatever romance they once shared becomes a thing of the past.
* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: Audric is the Prince of Celdaria and does what he can to ensure the happiness and safety of his subjects. He reaches out to the Borsvallic prince, Ilmaire, in order to reforge the lost friendship between their two countries and he stops a massive storm created by the empirium by himself to help save an ally country's capital.

* SadisticChoice: After getting fed up with Eliana's continued rebellion, Corien makes her choose between saving her brother or saving her still-alive father from a fatal fall. He makes it clear that she can't use her powers to save them both for he'll kill them if she tries. He doesn't let her dwell on this choice either, ordering the both of them to be let loose soon after explaining all of this. Eliana chooses to save Remy.
* SaveThisPersonSaveTheWorld: Since Eliana is the one person who can access the empirium, Simon does everything in his power to keep her alive- if not safe- and assist her as best as he can.
* ScreamingBirth: ''Furyborn'' opens with Rielle screaming while giving birth to Eliana.

* SecretTestOfCharacter: While traveling through the Vespers, Navi and her crew are ambushed with Navi getting drugged so she passes out. When she wakes up, a masked figure aligned with the Undying Empire asks her if she will join them or die. Navi responds with the Sun Queen's prayer and the wish that the Sun Queen would destroy the Empire. The masked figure is pleased by this, revealing themself to be Ysabet, the leader of the Vesper branch of Red Crown and the same woman that Navi and her crew were traveling to meet.
* SelfMadeOrphan: When she was five, Rielle killed her mother by accident. [[spoiler: Over a dozen years later, she ends up killing her father during the fire trial.]]

* SpaceMaster: Marques have the ability to teleport by creating a portal to a specific location and stepping through it.
* SpecialPersonNormalName: Simon is one of the most important characters in the series since his time traveling magic is a key component in the Prophet's plan of taking down Corien. He also has the most normal name out of all them.

* StandardFantasySetting: The setting of the Second Age includes seven kingdoms, all of whom are head by one or two Kings, Queens, or some combination thereof. Technology is limited to swords, arrows, shields and what not for regular humans and those plus one element for anyone who can tap into the empirium.
* SwirlyEnergyThingy: While the Prophet is masking their and Eliana's doings, Eliana takes the time to open up a hole in the sky above Elysium. Dubbed Ostia by Elysium's citizens, the hole casts a purplish hue over the city and is a direct entrance into the Deep.
* TalkingTheMonsterToDeath: The plan to take down Corien and thus the Undying Empire includes going back in time and convincing Queen Rielle to kill him. The first time Eliana and Simon try this, Rielle believes Eliana is an illusion conjured by Corien. [[spoiler: The second time, Eliana has a better understanding of the pain and heartbreak that Rielle is going through, having experienced some of it herself. The empathetic conversation that Eliana has with her convinces Rielle to kill Corien.]]
* {{Telepathy}}: Mind-speak is an ability unique to angels and wraiths. It allows them to read and communicate through the minds of other angels and wraiths, and even humans.

* TimeMaster: Marques have the unique power of creating portals that can transport someone into the past or future. This, as well as their mastery over distance, is one of the reasons they were hunted down by both angels and humans.
* TimeSkip: ''Lightbringer'' includes a five year gap between the final chapter and the epilogue.
* TimeTravel: The main solution given to ending the Undying Empire for good is to kill its leader, Corien, before he could create it. In order to do this, Simon has Eliana go back to the Second Age and try to talk Rielle into finishing off Corien.

* TheMagicComesBack: In ''Lightbringer'', [[spoiler:Rielle states during her last conversation to Evyline that her stifling of the empirium won't last forever. She knows that, at some point in the future, something will happen that'll reawaken the empirium and give back everyone's access to their magic]]. %%stopped here
* TheMagicGoesAway: Unable to withstand the constant pain of keeping her body together, Queen Rielle's last act of magic wound up suppressing everyone's contact with the empirium, turning elementals back to powerless humans.

* ManipulativeBastard: Pretty much as soon as he introduces himself to Rielle, Corien uses Rielle's fears in a way that slowly distances her from her friends and family. He plays up the hypocrisy of her loved ones, that they will restrict her freedom while claiming they love her, and once they find out just how destructive her powers are, they will turn on her in an instant.

** Marques have wing marks on their backs. This is because they're born with wings which are cut off shortly after birth in order for them to hide better.
* {{Matricide}}: Part of Rielle's backstory includes her unwittingly killing her mother. [[spoiler: After Eliana's own mother becomes a literal monster, she kills Rozen to put her out of her misery.]]

** Corien renamed himself after he escaped the Gate. He hates his original name, Kalmaroth, seeing it as an indelible reminder of his former failure during the Angelic Wars.

* MedievalEuropeanFantasy: The setting of the Second Age includes kingdoms ruled by some form of monarchy, swords and their various accoutrements for weapons, and most, if not everybody, seem to be heavily religious.
* MercyKill: When one of the crawlers attacking her turns out to be [[spoiler:her mother]], Eliana kills her, knowing that it's far too late to save her.

* MindRape: Angels can easily take over a human's mind and damage it beyond repair. [[spoiler:Simon]] experienced this at the hands of both the Prophet and Corien, each for different reasons.
* MirrorCharacter: A lot about Rielle and Eliana- both their stories and their personalities- mirror one another. Aside from the obvious fact that they're both subjects of a prophecy and share incredible powers, they're also both young woman who have to deal with other people's expectations of how they should use those powers, how they should behave, what their roles should be, etc.

* MsExposition: Most of Zahra's dialogue in ''Furyborn'' and ''Kingsbane'' is to explain to Eliana about the ways of the Old World. This is helpful, not just for Elian, who thought the stories of the Old World were just stories, but also for the reader since much of the information Zahra imparts helps flesh out the world.
* MurderBySuicide: ''Furyborn'''s prologue shows Garver Randell being forced into suicide by Corien shortly after Rielle gives birth to her daughter.
* MysteriousBacker: The leader of Red Crown is known only as the Prophet. Everything else about them is a mystery, a mystery they fully intend to keep.

* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Corien (whose previous name was Kalmaroth) is a genocidal maniac who has no compunctions about using anyone and anything in any way he sees fit so long as doing so benefits him in some way.
* NeverFoundTheBody: In ''Furyborn'', Harkan volunteers to make a last stand against the Empire's soldiers as a means of distraction, a move that is suicidal at best. As Eliana rides away, she hears Harkan cry out, but doesn't look back to see if he was shot. Both she and Remy believe him to be dead. Towards the beginning of ''Kingsbane'', Harkan turns up at the Astavari castle, battered and dirty, but very much alive.

** After being shown what actually happened to his father, Audric confronts Rielle about her lies. Their argument ends with Audric saying that she probably is the Blood Queen that everyone thinks she is. This turns out to be the tipping point for Rielle, who flees Baingarde to find Corien.
* NoPeriodsPeriod: Averted twice in ''Kingsbane''. The first chapter opens with Rielle lamenting the fact that Sun Queen status doesn't lessen her menstrual cramps. Later on in that same novel, Eliana experiences the cramps that come with it for the first time (her healing ability made it so she never experienced period cramps until now).
* NotGrowingUpSucks: When Ludivine reveals herself to be an angel, it's noted that her perpetual existence as a teenager is an awful thing, and one that will get harder and harder to explain as the years go by.
* NotSoDifferentRemark: In ''Queen of the Blazing Throne'', after capturing Obritsa and torturing Artem, Corien states that he and Obritsa are both motivated by the love they each have for their people.
* NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist: Corien does genuinely want to restore his brethren to flesh and blood. However, the reason he's doing this isn't entirely selfless: he views humanity as an inferior species and yet is also jealous of their power over the elementals, something that the ancient angels cannot even claim. As such, he'll happily kill all humans to make room for the angels. It's also suggested, if not outright stated, that he's angry with God and will move heaven and earth to go against Him in any way he can.
* OlderThanTheyLook: All the angels are centuries old, or even older, and none of them look a day over thirty.
* OmnicidalManiac: Corien is an exceptionally strong angel who holds a deep hatred for the Saints, mainly due to a deception that led to him and his fellow angels being ripped of their physicality. This hatred extends to ''all'' of humankind, and he has taken it upon himself to kill every last one of them.
* OnePersonOnePower: Each elemental is restricted to one element: windsingers can only control air, sunspinners can only control light, earthshakers can only control earth, etc. The Queens of Prophecy are the only exceptions to this rule.
* OneWordTitle: The titles of each novel are compound words. The first is ''Furyborn'', the second ''Kingsbane'', and the third ''Lightbringer''.
* OurAngelsAreDifferent: Angels are winged humanoid beings with telepathic powers and are completely immortal. They existed long before humans and are impossible to kill through ordinary means.

* OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions: When she was younger, Eliana loved hearing stories about the time before the Fall, a time when the empirium was still available and magic still in use. By the start of the series, she views those same stories and all talk about the Sun Queen's eventual arrival as mere wishful thinking by people desperate for an escape from their dark reality.
* {{Patricide}}: In an effort to harm Corien, Rielle lets loose her powers and winds up killing her father in the process.

* PlotParallel: Much of Rielle and Eliana's plots parallel each other, from the broader strokes, such as becoming one of the two prophesied Queens, to some minor details, such as each of them having a wraith ally.
* PoorCommunicationKills: Many of the events in Rielle's storyline happen because of the various lies told or secrets kept both by the primary participants or other characters:

** Ludivine seems to die during the chaos at the fire trial, but she somehow survives the fall off a cliff thanks to actually being an angel. To cover for this, she makes a dramatic entrance at Rielle's anointing where she claims that Rielle resurrected her. This has the unintended side affect of turning the people who lost loved ones in the massacre against Rielle, some of them even trying to assassinate her.
* PossessingADeadBody: When she was sixteen, the real Ludivine died of a fever. An angel took over her body and has been in control of it since then. It's this angel that aids Rielle throughout the trials and traveling to various countries in search of the Saints's castings.
* PrecisionFStrike: After Corien shows Audric and everyone attending his wedding a vision of what happened to his father, Audric takes Rielle aside to confront her about the lies she's told. Ludivine keeps trying to stop the conversation, but Audric- someone who isn't prone to swearing- essentially tells her to shut the fuck up.

* PregnantBadass: By the time Queen Rielle joins the angels, she's pregnant with Eliana. She doesn't let her pregnancy get in the way of aiding Corien with his resurrection plan.
* TheProphecy: The last angel to enter the Deep, Aryava, uttered a prophecy stating the rise of a pair of Queens, each one more powerful than what had been seen before. By Rielle's time, this prophecy has been subject to much dissection and interpretation among academics, with most laypeople not giving it much thought. By Eliana's time, it's mostly dismissed as mere wishful thinking.

* PowerCrutch: Elementals have to craft a casting through which they can channel their abilities. Even the Saints, as strong as they were, needed one. The fact that Rielle ''doesn't'' need one is another mark of how powerful she is. Theoretically, Eliana doesn't need one either, but since her connection to the empirium is far weaker, she makes a casting anyway in order to help with tapping into and controlling her powers.

* PromotionToParent: Since Eliana and Remy's father has been missing for years, Eliana becomes Remy's sole caretaker after their mother becomes a crawler.
* ProtagonistJourneyToVillain: Rielle's storyline is about how she started out as the long awaited Sun Queen, beloved by many, to the long feared and widely hated Blood Queen, traitor to her kind.
* PsychicAssistedSuicide: On two different occasions, Corien either forces his target to commit suicide (Garver Randell) or urged them to go through with it, as what happened with Queen Genoveve.

* GreatOffscreenWar: The Angelic Wars were a series of battles between humans and angels during the First Age. Since these battles happened centuries ago, we hear a lot about them, but never see them happen. %%stopped here
* HalfBreedDiscrimination: Marques were hunted down by both angels and humans, not just because of their half-breed status, but also because each marque possesses the unique power of crossing time and space.

* HandWave: In ''Lightbringer'', the Prophet essentially shrugs off Eliana's concerns about how tampering with the past will affect the present with a "someone smarter than me said it'll be fine, don't worry about it."

* HarmfulToMinors: Life isn't easy for children regardless of time period: if you're an elemental child living in the Second Age, you could be kidnapped and forced to become a soldier for a despotic angel. If you live in the Third Age, you could be forced to become a killer for your own survival and that of your family's (assuming they're still alive).

** In ''Furyborn'', Eliana can jump 100 feet off of one dock onto another and only feel a bit of pain. This invulnerability is what earned her the nickname the "Dread of Orline". However, this trait goes away once she's unlocked her powers. Remy suggests her super fast healing ability was because her powers were healing her because they had no other outlet.
** In ''Lightbringer'', Rielle acquires bad burns while opening the Gate. By that point, she's so in tune with the empirirum that she's able to heal those burns with a mere thought.
* HealingHands: After gaining better control of her powers, Eliana obtains the ability to heal wounds and past scars. In order to unlock Simon's latent marque magic, Eliana heals some of his physical scars.

* HeroOfAnotherStory: After Rielle and company split ways with Ilmaire and his companions midway through ''Kingsbane'', Ilmaire doesn't make a further reappearance but he isn't fully out of the picture. Excerpts from the letters he sends to Audric- and from his journal- are placed at the beginning of several chapters in both ''Kingsbane'' and ''Lightbringer''. These excerpts show his own personal journey as he tries to fit into the crown his recently deceased father left, deal with Merovec, and eventually strike out on his own in the search to aid Audric and end the angelic threat.
* HeroesPreferSwords: Audric is the most powerful sunspinner to be seen in decades, if not centuries, and his main casting, Illumenor, is a sword. Saint Katell was also an incredibly talented sunspinner and the head of the Saints. Her casting was also a sword.
* HeroicSecondWind: In ''Furyborn'', Eliana is exhausted, hungry and stressed during the fight with the Empire fleet. After being forced to end [[spoiler: her own mother's]] life, she becomes so upset that she starts a raging storm without even realizing that that's what she's doing. The storm takes down most of the fleet and it confirms to Simon that she's the Sun Queen that he's been searching for.

* HorsebackHeroism: During the annual horse race, Rielle sees a horseless Audric about to be attacked by assassins from Borsvall, an enemy country. Without a second thought, she rides to where he is and uses her powers to stop them before they can kill him.
* HowWeGotHere: The prologue of ''Furyborn'' shows Blood Queen Rielle giving birth to Eliana and facing down Corien, an encounter that leads to Simon and the newborn princess being thrust into the future and the empirium being smothered. The narrative then jumps back two years ago to a time before Rielle's powers were even widely known. The rest of her story shows how she turned into the Blood Queen. [[spoiler:Subverted in that the exact events depicted in this prologue don't come to pass thanks to future-Eliana's interference.]]
* HumansAreFlawed: One theme woven throughout the trilogy is that no human is perfect. Trying to force someone into being completely flawless is inhumane and will bring about more misery, and not just for the person being scrutinized. [[spoiler:Eliana]] pretty much states this theme outright during the climax of ''Lightbringer'':
--> [[spoiler:Queen Rielle]]: I don't know how to be what I am, split in two like this. [...] I am but one queen. One queen with the desires of two. I cannot bear it.\\

[[spoiler:Queen Rielle]]: And if I am more than human?\\

* IAmAMonster: Eliana sees herself as a heartless monster due to her work as a bounty hunter for the very Empire that took over her home kingdom (among others). This view of herself gets worse after unleashing her powers in catastrophic ways and finding out that her birth mother was the Blood Queen. After some soul searching, she comes to terms with her powers and her heritage, helping her self-image improve.

** Corien was Kalmaroth before being banished to the Deep along with his kin. After escaping, he renamed himself to Corien and began building an empire with him placed at the top. By the Third Age, he's known only as the Undying Emperor to all humans and most, if not all, of his underlings.
** When they first contact Eliana, the Prophet states that they have many names before giving her their more well known moniker.
* ImmortalityBeginsAtTwenty: The completely immortal angels all look like they're in their early twenties regardless of how long they've actually been around.
* ImpartialPurposeDrivenFaction: The Obex are an organization that are solely focused on protecting and studying the Gate. They aren't associated with any particular country or ruler, loyal only to the Saint's legacy.

* InMysteriousWays: In the beginning of ''Furyborn'', Taliesin says the empirium "works in mysterious ways" as a way to dismiss Rielle's concerns that the prophesied Queen's are going to appear soon.
* InstantFanClub: Soon after Ludivine's dramatic entrance during Rielle's anointing, a group calling themselves the House of the Second Sun formed. They're obsessed with Rielle and how she brought Ludivine back from the dead.[[note]](She didn't really, but the general public doesn't know this.)[[/note]] Group activities include reenactments of Ludivine's death and resurrection.

** Saint Katell was in love with Aryava, leader of the angels. Historians consider their relationship be to be a contributing factor into the ending of the Angelic Wars.

* ItSucksToBeTheChosenOne: One of the main themes of the series is just how much being the subject of a prophecy messes with your life. Having incredible powers doesn't mean much if you can't use them freely, and everyone has different ideas about how they should and shouldn't be applied.
** Despite how much grief her father gives her for being powerful, Rielle takes pride in being able to split the sea, control a shadow dragon, and summon fireballs all without the need of a casting. However, everyone expects her to use these abilities to protect crown and country. She would love to revel in her abilities as much as she wants, but she can't without potentially turning the public against her. It's why Corien's words of devotion and his promise that ''he'' will never fear her are so appealing.
** Before finding out about her heritage, Eliana had an incredibly useful healing ability, but deep down it always worried her. After learning that she's the daughter of the infamous Blood Queen, she comes to hate and fear her powers. Unfortunately, the world needs her ''now'' more than ever and a big part of that is accepting who she really is, up to and including her powers. As such, she's thrust into a role that makes her deeply uncomfortable and is forced to quickly learn how to use her powers.
* KillAllHumans: Angels see all humans as an invasive species that's trying to take over their homeland. They attempted to wipe humanity out as a result of this ideology.
* KissingCousins: Double subverted with Audric and Ludivine. They were a pair of engaged cousins at the beginning of the series, the engagement having been arranged by their parents as part of a political move. However, Audric is in love with Rielle and while Ludivine does love him, her feelings aren't romantic in nature. That said, Ludivine states in ''Kingsbane'' that she'd have no issue partaking in a threesome with Audric and Rielle, something that Audric agrees with.
* LastOfHisKind: Eliana is the last member of House Courverie, and both she and Simon are the last of the Old World Celdarians.
* LiarRevealed: During the reception for Rielle's wedding, Corien shows everyone a vision that exposes the truth behind their previous king's death as well as the king's commander: afraid that Corien would kill them, Rielle unleashed a ton of power that did end up burning Corien, but also killed the both of them. When Audric found her shortly thereafter, she lied to him, too scared of losing him and his love to tell him the truth. The effect this reveal has on Audric momentarily turns him against Rielle, leading the two to argue which culminates in Rielle running away from Baingarde to seek out Corien.
* LittleMissBadass: Despite being only twelve, Obritsa is already a Queen and a figurehead for the human rebellion in Kirvaya. She's quite adept at hiding her true feelings regarding elementals and is a powerful marque, able to travel at least thirty miles apace without breaking too much of a sweat.
* LoveMakesYouCrazy: Corien the Undying Emperor has spent a ''lot'' of time thinking about Rielle and his love for her. It gets to the point where he can't focus on anything else besides reuniting with his lost love, up to and including his main goal of resurrecting his kind and destroying humanity.

* MagicalSensoryEffect: Each type of elemental magic has its own distinct scent; firebrand magic smells like smoke, windsinger magic smells like alpine, etc.
* TheMagicComesBack: [[spoiler:Rielle states during her last conversation to Evyline that her stifling of the empirium won't last forever. She knows that, at some point in the future, something will happen which will lead to its reawakening.]]