The Veiled Kingdom

Far from tying up loose ends, the final chapters of The Veiled Kingdom deliberately leave a tangle of unresolved issues in order to set the stage for the second installment of the series, The Hunted Heir, and the final chapter deeply complicates Nyra and Dacre’s relationship. Reeling from his father’s ultimatum and the knowledge of Nyra’s true identity, Dacre makes a series of choices that adds a much darker edge to the novel’s enemies-to-lovers plotline, for he initiates an act of intimacy that soon becomes an act of violence and betrayal. Upon finding Nyra in his room, he initiates consensual intercourse with her, but once they begin, he reveals his knowledge of her true identity in such a way that she “recoils.” However, despite the clear indications that she has withdrawn her consent, Dacre responds with violence and refuses to desist in his actions. As Nyra describes, “I instantly recoiled from him, but his grip was unrelenting. He held me against him, his black eyes boring into mine, and I couldn’t stop the pleasure still coursing through my body even as it mixed with fear” (337). Because it is clear that Nyra has withdrawn her consent, the events that follow devolve into a full-blown sexual assault on Dacre’s part, for when Nyra attempts to push him away and cannot, it is clear that Dacre no longer respects her boundaries or her physical autonomy.

Dacre’s abusive actions are compounded by his subsequent behavior, as he shames Nyra for having sex with him and tells her to run before his father makes him hunt her down. Before she runs away, Nyra thinks, “Our eyes locked for a fleeting moment before he turned away again, but it felt like an eternity as my chest constricted with fear, with longing” (340). However, it is important to note that these vestiges of longing are mixed with fear, illustrating the fact that Nyra’s previous trust in Dacre is now utterly shattered. She trusted him to keep her safe, trusted him with her body, and trusted him with the trauma of her past. By choosing to engineer a moment of extreme vulnerability and then condemn her for concealing her identity, Dacre proves that he does not hold the moral high ground in the novel’s thematic focus on The Contrast between Tyranny and Leadership. Caught up in The Moral Ambiguities of Rebellion, he uses his greater physical and political power to exploit Nyra’s vulnerability and betray her hard-won trust. Thus, at the end of the novel, the tentative connections that they have managed to form are now thrown into utter disarray, and Dacre reveals a level of cruelty that rivals that of King Roan himself. His status as a co-protagonist and romantic interest is now indelibly tarnished, and the pair’s fractured relationship remains unresolved and can only be addressed in The Hunted Heir.

These final scenes of the novel reveal the novel’s status as an example of the “dark romance” genre, which commonly features morally ambiguous protagonists and revels in graphic depictions of violence and trauma, as well as sexual assault. The genre often walks a fine line between using fiction to explore taboo topics and glorifying unhealthy relationship dynamics and sexual assault. In The Veiled Kingdom, Renee engages with the complex dynamics of humiliation whenever Nyra and Dacre have intimate moments throughout the novel, and power is always a factor, as when Dacre asks Nyra to crawl to him and beg at his feet. However, the sexual assault that concludes the novel takes these elements to a much more intense level, for if this relationship continues after an instance of sexual assault, Renee will be shifting the series’ categorization from mere romantasy to dark romance. While The Veiled Kingdom ends with an ambiguous future for Nyra and Dacre’s relationship, the fact that they are the co-protagonists of the series hints that their romantic relationship will continue.