City of Glass

Throughout City of Glass, the characters all grapple with their relationship to power—whether magic or otherwise—and its ability to both strengthen and corrupt. Clare uses the absolutist law of the Clave, Clary’s unique gift to create powerful runes, and Valentine’s villainous character arc to explore the complexity of power and the ways attempts to restrict it contribute to its use or abuse. Clare suggests that restrictions placed on power to ensure ethical and equitable treatment for all allow for the healthy use and expansion of power, whereas restrictions intended to preserve the power of a privileged few through the marginalization and oppression of others lead to disaster and destruction.

As a global community, the Shadowhunters are divided ideologically on both a geographic and generational level. As the governing body of the Shadowhunter world, the Clave oversees Shadowhunter law and deals with any transgressions against its rules. Since Shadowhunters were created, they have lived by a strict code that dictates how all Shadowhunters fight, socialize, and govern themselves. Those who live in Idris, surrounded only by other Shadowhunters, tend to be more conservative than those who live at Institutes around the world—integrated with mundane and downworlder society—a diversity of community that balances the Clave’s absolutist power structure. The empathy inherent in a community where diverse identities are represented limits the myopic abuses of power that an echo chamber can produce. The more conservative, older generation wants to live by the letter of the law as it was originally written, while the younger generation sees room for nuance in many of the restrictions, especially around personal lives and relationships. Alec and Magnus’s relationship—both as romantic partners and allied warriors in the fight against Valentine—exemplifies the emergence of a more progressive Shadowhunter identity. The Clave holds to an antiquated disapproval of both same-gender relationships and romantic entanglements with downworlders, but the fact that so many Shadowhunters accept Clary’s proposal to unite with downworlders to defeat Valentine’s Forsaken forces demonstrates how the Clave’s stubborn adherence to its absolutist position will ultimately threaten its power. As attitudes change, power structures must also change if they do not wish to be rendered obsolete.

The Clave’s rigidity shows how an inability to evolve and adapt may lead to a loss of power; the growth of Clary’s ability with runes represents an open-handed exploration of power with limitless potential. Since City of Bones, Clary has used runes to accomplish feats Shadowhunters have not known were possible. Being brought up away from the Clave and its laws allows her to approach her abilities with an open mind, untainted by a prejudicial posture toward difference. In Chapter 2, after Clary lands in the poisonous Lake Lyn as a result of trying to portal into Alicante, Luke—who was raised in Idris—reprimands her recklessness by saying, “Just because you have power doesn’t mean you know how to use it” (41). However, it’s by experimenting with her powers that Clary gains enough experience to expand them beyond what the Shadowhunters have previously seen or believed possible. She makes mistakes along the way, but those mistakes help her learn something she wouldn’t be able to do under the Clave’s restrictive laws. In the climactic sequence, Clary’s powers let the Shadowhunters team up with the downworlders to battle Valentine’s forces and emerge victorious, which the Shadowhunters couldn’t have done without Clary’s relaxed stance on Clave law and developing her abilities.

While Clary experiments with her powers in ways that are mostly harmless to others, Valentine’s arc demonstrates what can happen when no practical or ethical restrictions are placed on explorations of power. Before Clary, Jace, and Sebastian were born, Valentine experimented on all of them with the blood of angels and demons, giving each unique abilities that surpass normal Shadowhunter limits. For Clary and Jace, their angel blood enhanced their normal Shadowhunter skills, but for Sebastian, demon blood turned him into something dark. Valentine initially meant for Sebastian to be his second-in-command, but Sebastian’s power makes him unpredictable and violent—unforeseen consequences of Valentine’s unrestricted experiments. Valentine’s quest for power ultimately leads to his death. When he summons Raziel, Valentine means to use the angel’s unlimited power to destroy Shadowhunters who don’t agree with him. Valentine justifies his plan via his own myopic and prejudicial ideology, but in truth, Valentine’s agenda is entirely self-motivated. He only seeks power to shape the world as he wants it. Valentine’s character arc is driven by his lust for power, showing how self-motivated and unrestricted experimentation corrupts and destroys.

By itself, Clare suggests, power is neither good nor evil. It is simply a tool in the hands of those who wield it, and each individual’s goals make power a constructive or destructive force in the world. Clare focuses on the personal ethics of each character in City of Glass who attempts to wield their power to exemplify the ways power may be harnessed for good or evil.