The Ever King

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of child abuse, imprisonment, parental neglect, abuse, torture, and murder.

As the first installment in a spinoff of the Broken Kingdom series, The Ever King rides the coattails of the historicized violence in L.J. Andrews’s previous works, most of which involves the brutal war between the earth fae and the sea fae. Much of this history characterizes the premise behind The Ever King’s plot and creates the tension between the two main protagonists. By recreating the effects of this history in The Ever King, Andrews demonstrates that the cyclical patterns of violence are easy to fall into and difficult to break. Erik’s vengeance plot against Livia’s father, Valen, stands as a prime example of this dynamic. Erik’s childhood was steeped in violence, and he admits to being “born into brutality” and harboring early “memories are of blood and death” (290). He also admits, “Thorvald was not what I would call a gentle father […] and his greatest fear was producing a gentle heir. He had his ways of seeing to it his fears were never realized” (290). This understated description hints at the violence and abuse that Erik endures, and this issue is further compounded by the death of his mother, the torture he experiences at the hands of earth fae clans, the contempt and subsequent death of his father, and the public humiliation and brutalization at the hands of his uncle.