Children of Virtue and Vengeance

Princess Amari is another first-person narrator of the novel. She is the daughter of King Saran, who she killed at the conclusion of the previous novel to end his tyrannic rule. Now, she faces the rule of her mother, Queen Nehanda, who has continued her husband’s genocide against the maji. Although it is initially believed that she is a tîtán, she discovers with Zélie’s help that she is actually a cênter, able to draw magic from those around her.

Throughout the novel, Amari’s friendship with Zélie plays an important role. The two often disagree about how to move forward with Orïsha. While Zélie becomes fixated on destroying the monarchy, Amari holds out hope throughout much of the novel that she can bring peace by negotiating with her brother, Inan, and rule the nation. However, as a dynamic character, she also changes in the text. After she becomes convinced that Inan betrayed her, she realizes that she will do whatever it takes to put an end to the war. In direct contrast to Zélie—who initially wants violence and then breaks free from the cycle—Amari changes from wanting to bring peace to realizing that force is the answer. She willingly chooses to murder thousands of villagers in the hopes that it will destroy the monarchy and clear the path to the throne.

When Amari dedicates herself to ending the war, the lasting impact of the trauma experienced at the hands of her father becomes clear. She repeatedly thinks about him as she makes decisions, allowing his words to infiltrate her thoughts. Despite her father commanding her to “fight” and “strike” in the past, she chose not to fight, allowing Inan to slice and scar her back. As she makes the decision to sacrifice the villagers, she thinks of these words. However, after changing from wanting peace to using all-out violence, Amari finally finds balance at the conclusion of the text. She realizes how wrong it is to look to her father for guidance and instead recognizes that the monarchy itself is entrenched in violence. She chooses to end the cycle of violence by allowing her mother to live and face justice, showing her growth and maturity.

Inan is the third first-person point-of-view character in the novel. He is Amari’s brother and, after the death of his father, the king of Orïsha. He is a warrior, having trained in battle and for the throne his entire life. Like Amari, memories of his father—and the trauma inflicted by him—infiltrate Inan’s thoughts, often guiding his decisions and influencing how ruthless, or not, he chooses to be. Since his father betrayed him in the first novel, which led to the death of Baba, he spends much of his time trying to get Zélie’s forgiveness, as he truly loves her. He attempts to apologize to Zélie by bringing her into his dream, then by meeting with Amari to broker peace, and finally by reconstructing Zélie’s childhood home and writing her letters apologizing and explaining his feelings. In this way, Inan is a representation of the theme of Love Versus Duty. On the one hand, he has been trained by his father to believe that his one duty is to protect Orïsha; on the other, he loves Zélie and therefore understands the struggle of the maji and the unfairness of the monarchy in a way that his parents could not.

Throughout the novel, Inan changes. Like Amari, he initially fights for peace and does whatever he can to build relationships with the maji and the nobles. However, after the maji destroy their food stores and he sees the violence inflicted on his soldiers, he realizes that he needs to do whatever he can to end the war and the suffering of all people. He then chooses to largely follow his mother’s advice, putting up little resistance to her attempts to bring down the maji. However, after he learns the truth about her past—that she allowed the Burners into the palace to kill their family—he realizes that the “poison” of Orïsha that needs to be rooted out is not the maji, but rather the monarchy itself. He finally stands up to his mother at the climax of the text, choosing to poison her, leaving her to die, and telling the nobles that he is disbanding the monarchy.