The Nikolai Duology is a Young Adult fantasy series by Leigh Bardugo. It is set in The Grishaverse and it takes place six months after the events of Six of Crows.
The story follows the young Ravkan king Nikolai Lantsov, as he tries to keep his rather unstable country safe, while enemies gather at his weakened borders. But this is not his only problem. The dark magic inside him is growing, becoming more and more dangerous every day.
The book also includes point of view chapters from Zoya, a powerful squaller who assists Nikolai in his mission to keep Ravka safe and Nina who is on an espionage mission in Fjerda.
The books in the duology are:
- King of Scars (2019)
- Rule of Wolves (2021)
This trilogy provides examples of:
- Affair Letters: In the past, the queen of Ravka wrote a bunch of love letters to Magnus Opjer with whom she was having an affair at that time despite being married to King Alexander. This later causes some problems for her already rumored to be illegitimate son Nikolai (now the king of Ravka), when the rulers of Fjerda get their hands on the letters. They intend to use them to get Nikolai removed in favor of a cousin of former king Alexander who is more friendly towards Fjerda.
- Assassination Attempt:
- When Nikolai throws a big party to find a suitable bride, he invites a lot of important people from foreign nations some of which are enemies of Ravka. This causes his guards to be extra alert for assassination attempts during the party. This turns out to be a good thing when the Fjerdans try to kill him with a poison gas trap and he survives because the guards noticed the smell before activating the trap.
- The Shu are more successful in their assassination plans. They had one of their elite guards pretend to be princess Ehri Kir-Tabaan. She pretended to be interested in marrying him and when she got him to talk to her alone, she killed him and after that, she tried to kill herself. Off course the person she killed wasn't the real Nikolai, but they still got further than the Fjerdans.
- Bad with the Bone: Nina uses magically-fired bone shards as weapons
- Becoming the Mask: Nina spends most of the duology disguised as a Fjerdan woman Mila Jandersdat. Hanne is later disguised as Rasmus, the crown prince of Fjerda. Rule of Wolves ends with both assuming these identities to marry, presumably for the foreseeable if not forever.
- Big Damn Heroes: Just when it looks like all is lost against the Fjerdans, our heroes are saved by a double-whammy of the freed khergud, and Zoya showing up as a giant lightning-breathing dragon. A combination of her choosing to spare the soldiers who survived her first lightning blast, and the Darkling starting a well-timed chant for "Sankta Zoya", gets the Fjerdans to throw down their arms.
- The Cameo: Rule of Wolves has a veritable boatload. The big ones are Alina and Inej, now Captain Ghafa.
- Chronic Evidence Retention Syndrome: Heroic subversion. Nikolai has a miniature of his biological father, Magnus Opjer, that his mother gave him, which shows the incredible resemblance. Zoya snatches it away from him and throws it in the fire the second he shows it to her, snapping at him for being so stupid as to keep evidence of his illegitimacy in his own rooms.
- Contrived Coincidence: A couple. Nina befriends a girl called Hanne, who ends up being the daughter of Jarl Brum, the commander of the Grisha-hunting drüskelle, a man she's had a couple of significant run-ins with before. Furthermore, Nina's fellow spy is a young woman called Leoni, who is the girl who Jesper's mother (a healer) died for after she exhausted herself drawing poisoned well water from Leoni's body.
- Cult of Personality: It is revealed one has formed around the Darkling, calling for him to be recognized as a saint. His worshippers want to revive him.
- Dead Person Impersonation: Hanne tailors herself to look like the Fjerdan heir, Prince Rasmus, after his abuse of her causes her to accidentally kill him. This has the twin benefits of putting someone actually good on the throne of Fjerda, saving thousands when "Rasmus" calls off the war, and allowing "Hanne" to finally realize that he is actually a man.
- Decoy Leader: When King Nikolai goes missing, his allies get Isaak, a royal guard from a poor family, to pretend to be the king so that the country wouldn't descend into chaos.
- Exact Words:
- Nikolai invites the Empress Makhi to a royal wedding. He doesn't say whose royal wedding. It's actually Genya and David having the fancy ceremony they didn't get the first time around, while Ehri flies home and exposes Makhi's crimes.
- Shu Han can't send any of their troops to back up Ravka, or be seen to assist them in any way. As the government officially denies the khergud program exists, the freed subjects can help. The new empress very pointedly doesn't stop them leaving (and it can't hurt that this makes the incredibly obvious evidence of her granddaughter's crimes somebody else's problem).
- False Flag Operation: The second attempt on Nikolai's life is this. It's meant to look as though Fjerdan assassins killed him and Princess Ehri. The Shu would then have an excellent excuse to march their armies through a now-leaderless Ravka (which they'd of course just keep occupying) to attack Fjerda.
- Faux Action Girl: Justified. Mayu, a member of Princess Ehri's squad of elite royal bodyguards, gets her ass handed to her in about five seconds while sparring with Tamar and is easily dragged around by Nikolai, but this is foreshadowing that she isn't a guard at all. She's the real princess, while "Princess Ehri" is the real guard.
- Good Princess, Evil Queen: Over in Shu Han, popular and amiable younger princess Ehri was named the next queen by her mother, but the throne was usurped by her cruel and jealously antagonistic older sister Makhi.
- Handicapped Badass: Adrik. He lost an arm in the previous series, but he is still a powerful squaller.
- Happily Married: Two couples from the original trilogy, Genya and David and Tamar and Nadia married between series and both are shown to be in happy, healthy relationships.
- Heartbroken Badass: Six months after the fact, Nina is still suffering the loss of Matthias.
- Heroic Bastard: Nikolai, the hero of our story, is officially the son of the former king Alexander III and his wife, the queen. In reality, he was born from an affair between the queen and Magnus Opjer, a Fjerdan diplomat. This wouldn't be such a problem if not for the Affair Letters mentioned above.
- Mirroring Factions: At the end of Rule Of Wolves Nikolai muses that he and the Darkling had pretty much the same goal, trying to be Ravka's salvation; and he has the potential to go the same way as his nemesis if he doesn't take steps to right his course. He also mourns the young man that the Darkling once was, who was very similar to Nikolai himself in believing he could accomplish anything if only he was clever, strong and brave enough.
- Mundane Utility: In addition to spying and emergency impersonation of inconveniently missing royals, Tailoring is also useful for gender-affirming surgery.
- Murder by Inaction: A certain guard goes to get help when his abusive master has a serious fit—but he takes his sweet time doing it. He had no way of knowing he didn't actually need to slow down to make sure Rasmus died, since Rasmus's "fit" was actually Hanne crushing his heart, but it's the thought that counts. Plus, his dawdling gave time for Hanne to switch appearances with Rasmus, which ultimately helps both Fjerda and Ravka in the long run.
- Offered the Crown: Ultimately, the Fjerdans get ahold of Nikolai's mother, and he realizes he can no longer hide his illegitimacy. So he just straight-up admits to being a bastard, abdicates, and says that since the Lantsov dynasty was started by a vote of Ravkan nobility, the nobles should start a new dynasty—by crowning Zoya. They do.
- Old Man Marrying a Child: Zoya nearly fell victim to this. Her mother arranged for her to marry a wealthy man while she was nine. Her would-be husband was in his sixties. The wedding was stopped due to Zoya's aunt protesting the wedding and Zoya discovering her Grisha powers to save her aunt when her fiancé retaliated. The ordeal ruined Zoya's relationship with her mother as a result.
- One Degree of Separation: Leoni, one of the Grisha working with Nina is the same girl Jesper's mother died saving. And Joran, Prince Rasmus's bodyguard, is the druskelle who killed Matthias.
- Orphanage of Love: Nina, apparently, grew up in one. It wasn’t until a tyrant of a bully arrived that she discovered her Grisha powers.
- Possession Implies Mastery: Hanne is effortlessly good at tailoring with presumably little to no experience or training. Compare that to Genya, who essentially pioneered tailoring and still had to spend years training and perfecting her craft at the Little Palace.
- Redemption Equals Affliction: Averted. The Darkling willingly condemns himself to an eternity of horrible pain to stop the blight, but he insists that it's not his way of redeeming himself, because he doesn't think he needs redemption. He views this as being exactly the same as all his previous actions, just one more hard choice made for Ravka's sake.
- The Reveal:
- Hanne is the daughter of Jarl Brum from Six of Crows.
- Fjerda is preparing to start a war with Ravka.
- "Princess Ehri" is actually one of her royal guards in disguise who has a mission to kill Nikolai and herself and frame the Fjerds for it.
- Hanne didn't die, Rasmus did, and "she" stole his identity with a little quick Tailoring.
- Sequel Hook: At the end of Rule of Wolves, Zoya realizes that she needs a certain very special item that only a truly excellent thief can steal, and sends a message to Kaz Brekker.
- Shout-Out:
- During a dinner scene between an Isaak-disguised-as-Nikolai and the Shu princess Ehri they decide that "whatever the grey stuff was, it was delicious."
- Spirit Advisor: Matthias appears to be this for Nina so long as she hasn’t buried his body. Heartbreakingly, though Nina can see and hear the dead, she realizes during the burial that Matthias was never there, it was just her own wishful thinking.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Many people still view the Darkling as a national hero, despite his crimes. His request for stopping the blight is to be enshrined as an official Saint, making this permanent, because what he really wants is for Ravka to love him. Despite their hatred of him, Zoya and Genya agree.
- War Is Hell: Even as David and Nikolai have to keep developing new weapons for Ravka to have any hope of holding off Fjerda, they lament how much deadlier wars fought with these are going to be, and how there's something chilling about the ease and impersonality of firing a shell at someone versus bayoneting them. Underscored by the Fjerdans bombing the Little Palace, which was specifically targeting Grisha children and kills David.
