A Court of Thorns and Roses

“Once it had been second nature to savor the contrast of new grass against dark, tilled soil, or an amethyst brooch nestled in folds of emerald silk; once I’d dreamed and breathed and thought in color and light and shape. Sometimes I would even indulge in envisioning a day when my sisters were married and it was only me and Father, with enough food to go around, enough money to buy some paint, and enough time to put those colors and shapes down on paper or canvas or the cottage walls.”

Feyre laments the loss of her artistic dreams, replaced by dreams of security and safety, yet she retains the ability to think in terms of color and light. Throughout the novel, Feyre uses descriptive, colorful language like the diction of this early quote to express the moving beauty of the faerie realm of Prythian, where she reconnects to her identity as an artist. As she recovers, her dreams grow larger, too.

“But I’d sworn it to her, and then she’d died, and in our miserable human world—shielded only by the promise made by the High Fae five centuries ago—in our world where we’d forgotten the names of our gods, a promise was law; a promise was currency; a promise was your bond.”

Feyre struggles to accept her freedom from responsibility for her family, as honoring promises is fundamental to her personal and cultural ethics. Feyre internalizes this cultural value as a strong sense of obligation to others. There is both strength and tenuousness for a world built on promises; the mortal realm is soon revealed to be more threatened than Feyre realizes.

“Love won’t feed a hungry belly.”

Feyre is dismissive of Nesta’s desire to marry Tomas Mandray for love; her only concern is the safety and survival of her family. This inherent resistance to love’s necessity to life presents an obstacle to Feyre’s and Tamlin’s romance, and it is only after Tamlin assures Feyre of her family’s provision that Feyre allows herself to pursue love as a worthwhile goal of its own.

“The few stories I’d heard had been wrong—or five hundred years of separation had muddled them. Yes, I was still prey, still born weak and useless compared to them, but this place was…peaceful. Calm.”

For the first time, Feyre acknowledges that there is more to Prythian than she knew and that there is beauty in addition to danger beyond the wall. After several chapters establishing the faerie lore of the human world, Maas shifts in this moment to reveal that Feyre’s expectations will be subverted and that her perspective will change drastically, creating dramatic tension and foreshadowing Feyre’s eventual integration into the world of the High Fae.

“If you’re wise, you’ll keep your mouth shut and your ears open. It’ll do you more good than a loose tongue. And keep your wits about you—even your senses will try to betray you here.”

Alis gives Feyre good advice, and she hints at the glamours in place and double meanings behind the early exchanges of the novel, as Tamlin attempts to communicate with Feyre about the curse. This advice helps Feyre to reconsider events at the Spring Court and learn to navigate the secrets and riddles Under the Mountain to discover hidden truths.

“That’s what happens when you’re responsible for lives other than your own, isn’t it? You do what you have to do.”

Feyre dismisses Tamlin’s surprise that she learned to hunt and care for her family despite her illiteracy. Feyre earns Tamlin’s trust and admiration with her response, unwittingly echoing his own sense of obligation to his courtiers and establishing herself as more than the hateful human he assumed her to be. This line encapsulates Maas’s portrayal of love as self-sacrifice.

“Do not forget what I told you—stay with the High Lord, and live to see everything righted.”

The Suriel encourages Feyre toward the actions most likely to break the curse, though Feyre is unable to recognize the true meaning of the warning. Later, when Feyre goes Under the Mountain, she realizes that the Suriel was hinting at the solution to the curse: staying with Tamlin in terms of falling in love with him.

“I wanted to tell him how much that meant—that the High Lord of the Spring Court thought I was worth saving—but couldn’t find the words.”

Feyre is astonished that Tamlin, a powerful High Fae, would deign to save the human murderer of his friend. Though this moment is essential to Feyre’s growing self-esteem, her astonishment is also an example of dramatic irony: Feyre is Tamlin’s only opportunity to break the curse and save his people. Feyre is not as insignificant as she thinks she is.

“Of course we can lie. We find lying to be an art. And we lied when we told those ancient mortals that we couldn’t speak an untruth. How else would we get them to trust us and do our bidding?”

Everything Feyre assumed about Prythian is called into question with Lucien’s admission that faeries can lie. This moment is a turning point for Feyre, who realizes she has not been nearly cautious enough in Prythian and that the dangers she assumed would be apparent may still lurk beneath the beauty of the Spring Court. Lucien’s words also foreshadow Amarantha’s duplicitous bargains Under the Mountain.

“I regret what I did to Andras […] I regret that there was…such hate in my heart. I wish I could undo it—and…I’m sorry. So very sorry.”

After seeing the Summer Court faerie die, Feyre is overcome with remorse for killing Andras, even though she felt she had no other choice. This moment marks her first true vulnerability with Tamlin as she offers a heartfelt apology to the faerie she once feared and hated. Feyre sees that faeries and mortals have more in common than she assumed.

“Some showcased colors I had not considered; these had a bend to the world that told me a different set of eyes had painted them. A portal into the mind of a creature so unlike me, and yet…and yet I looked at its work and understood, and felt, and cared.”

Feyre’s understanding of the shared reality of humans and faeries deepens, aided by her appreciation for art. In the gallery, Feyre almost literally sees through the eyes of others, reconsidering the world as she knows it and finding herself drawn to rather than repelled by the faeries.

‘“Though you have a heart of stone, Tamlin,’ it said, and Tamlin went rigid, ‘you certainly keep a host of fear inside it.’”

The Attor’s words to Tamlin in the Spring Court garden first seem to be idiomatic, but when Feyre goes Under the Mountain, she realizes that this quote is literal and that Tamlin intended for her to overhear the Attor. Without hearing this expression, Feyre could not deduce the full extent of the curse and know she could outwit Amarantha by stabbing Tamlin in his stone heart without harming him.

“But they never understood. What it was like, what is like, for me to care for my people, my lands. What scars are still there, what the bad days feel like.”

Tamlin lets his guard down, at last, admitting to Feyre the psychological and physical burdens of being the High Lord of the Spring Court. The comfort and understanding that Feyre and Tamlin offer one another become the foundation of their mutual love and respect.

“But the word—shortcomings—had somehow stopped finding its mark.”

Feyre’s self-esteem grows dramatically as she adjusts to life in Prythian beyond the reach of poverty and with Tamlin’s acknowledgment and support. Though Nesta previously used Feyre’s “shortcomings” to humiliate her, Feyre is confident enough in the value of her own abilities to joke at her own expense.

“‘I love you’ he whispered, and kissed my brow. ‘Thorns and all.’”

Tamlin offers Feyre unconditional love, accepting her for exactly who she is. The extent of Tamlin’s love is revealed when Feyre realizes that he even prioritized her safety over breaking the curse, sending her home just days before Amarantha’s deadline.

“I should say it—I should say those words, but they got stuck in my throat because…because of what he had to face, because he might not find me again despite his promise, because…because beneath it all, he was an immortal and I would grow old and die […] I would not become a burden to him.”

Feyre’s instinct for self-sacrifice prevents her from saying the words that would break the curse and free Tamlin. Here, Maas reveals Feyre’s reluctance to “burden” Tamlin with her love to be an overextension of a noble inclination. If Feyre had allowed herself to be vulnerable and to take ownership of her feelings, the curse would have been lifted and she might have escaped going Under the Mountain.

“She had looked at that cottage with hope; I had looked at it with nothing but hatred. And I knew which one of us had been stronger.”

Returning home with a new perspective after her time in Prythian, Feyre reconsiders her assumptions about her sisters’ feelings. Once certain that emotions had no place in survival, Feyre now sees that Elain’s hope was a triumph of her human spirit. Feyre has learned that openness and vulnerability are essential, not ancillary, to matters of survival.

“If Amarantha ripped out my throat, at least I would die doing something for him—at least I would die trying to fix the destruction I hadn’t prevented, trying to save the people I’d doomed. At least Tamlin would know it was for him, and that I loved him.”

In her proclamation, Feyre foreshadows both Amarantha’s death and her own. Tamlin rips out Amarantha’s throat, and Feyre does die breaking the curse that she failed to break by not admitting her love for Tamlin.

“There are those who seek me a lifetime but never we meet / And those I kiss but who trample me beneath ungrateful feet. At times I seem to favor the clever and the fair / But I bless all those who are brave enough to dare. By large my ministrations are soft-handed and sweet / But scorned, I become a difficult beast to defeat. For though each of my strikes lands a powerful blow / When I kill, I do it slow…”

Amarantha’s riddle is indecipherable to Feyre at first, yet filled with references to the events of the novel. Tamlin seeks love for 49 years without success; Feyre scorns love out of her unwillingness to burden Tamlin. Nesta seems to have greater luck in love at first, yet Tamlin and Feyre are rewarded with a more successful relationship. Amarantha, scorned in love, has become a “beast,” and Feyre is slowly tortured to death for her love of Tamlin.

“The Faerie Queen straightened a little bit—even Jurian’s eye seemed fixed on me, on Rhysand. For the rest of her life—he said it as if it were going to be a long, long while.”

Rhysand subtly challenges Amarantha’s authority via his bargain with Feyre. By betting on Feyre to win, healing her, and extracting a promise regarding Feyre’s future, Rhysand implies that Amarantha will be defeated and hints at his true allegiances.

“In saving Tamlin, I was to damn myself.”

Feyre faces an impossible choice: murder innocents or fail Tamlin and the Spring Court. Feyre decides that moral transgression is the only option and that the stakes of saving all of Prythian outweigh the loss of three innocent lives—yet this knowledge offers no consolation. Maas suggests that even if the ends arguably justify the means, committing an atrocity is traumatizing in and of itself.

“Trust no one, Alis had told me. But I trusted Tamlin—and more than that, I trusted myself. I trusted that I had heard correctly—I trusted that Tamlin had been smarter than Amarantha, I trusted that all I had sacrificed was not in vain.”

Feyre demonstrates her newfound self-esteem as she relies on her own reason and moral surety to outsmart Amarantha. Feyre has mastered the slippery nature of the faerie world, developed the confidence to trust that mastery, and can at last recognize the value of her sacrifices for others.

“I kept far enough back that I would only nod, because I had no words to offer them in exchange for their gratitude, the gratitude for the faeries I’d butchered to save them.”

Although she saved all of Prythian, Feyre is preoccupied by the death of the two innocent faeries and unable to celebrate her victory. Feyre’s overwhelming guilt and empathy are contrasted by the High Fae, who seemingly understand Feyre’s actions to be necessary and consider the sacrifice acceptable to defeat Amarantha. Here, Maas contrasts the damaging effects of moral compromise on the individual with the feelings of those who benefit from such actions, emphasizing the moral ambiguity and conflict of interests.