They call me the Bitch Queen, the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and exiled my king the night before they crowned me.
Chronicles of the Bitch Queen (Alternatively titled Chronicles of the Wolf Queen or Annals of the Bitch Queen) is a Dark Fantasy trilogy by K.S. Villoso. Set in a fragmented empire constantly plunged into violence, the trilogy follows Queen Talyien. After bloody warfare that costs her brothers their lives, Talyien finds herself dragged into a long-spanning conflict of magic, intrigue, and assassination.
The books in the series include The Wolf of Oren-Yaro, The Ikessar Falcon, and The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng.
Tropes in Chronicles of the Bitch Queen include:
- Anyone Can Die: Any character is a potential casualty. By the end of the final book, most of Talyien's allies are dead, Yuebek is (thankfully) dead, and Tali herself barely makes it out alive.
- Bed Trick: None of the leads want to do it, but they end up feeling forced to swap out Tali for Chiha on Yuebek's wedding night to her, since they all know that Yuebek might well just kill Tali on the spot, as he's been known to do to women. Yuebek sees through it, and is very unhappy with them.
- Bittersweet Ending: On the one hand, the empire is not yet resolved. If anything, its struggles are worse than ever. On the other, Yuebek is dead and Talyien has overcome her father's legacy and managed to finally get some rest alongside Khine.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Nobody is quite as bad as Yuebek, but all of the main characters are deeply flawed, many of the villains are complex figures, and Tali herself has some extremely ruthless moments.
- Blood Magic: One of the most significant and dangerous kinds of magic in the world is blood magic. It's practiced primarily by very evil people, the most notably being Yuebek.
- Crapsack World: The empire that Tali finds herself in charge of is plagued with bandits, feuding nobles who don't give a damn about the commoners underneath them, and vicious mages who need innocent victims to work their spells. While it's also full of people who are kind and helpful, they rarely make it through.
- Dark Fantasy: The trilogy is set in a Crapsack World of a falling, vestigial empire and follows an Anti-Hero protagonist as she tries to save her son from the multiple battling political factions. Magic is a part of the setting, but has enormous costs.
- Decadent Court: The nobles of the empire, when not outright waging war against one another, are still trying to kill each other. This is most notably displayed by Yuebek's attempted wedding to Talyien in The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng, as it descends into a bloody mess of duels, heads in boxes, and assassination attempts.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Talyien's life of suffering, as told in the books, concludes with her surviving her Heroic Sacrifice, leaving Rai on the throne to become The Good King, and making off with Khine to live a more peaceful life.
- Finger in the Mail: In The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng, Tali literally has one of her son Thanh's fingers sent to her as a threat.
- Gambit Pileup: Tali's entire life has been schemed out in increasingly elaborate plans that sometimes end up fulfilled, sometimes completely undone, as she continues her path to her son.
- Mercy Kill: Tali mercy kills a man corrupted into a beast, after he begs for it.
- No Dead Body Poops: A very consciously averted trope, particularly in the brutal battles in The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng. Battlefields are filled with gore and excrement.
- Roaring Rampage of Rescue: One that lasts multiple books. Tali spends much of the trilogy trying to rescue her son, killing everyone who gets between herself and her son.
- Villain Episode: Very briefly in a late chapter of The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng, the narration switches to being told by Yuebek as Tali finally brings him down. His narration is just as vile and narcissistic as one would expect of such an evil character.
- War Arc: This is a central part of the plot; multiple factions of the empire are constantly on the brink of war, and violence completely breaks out in The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng when Dai Kaggawa starts making his move to take power.
- War Is Hell:
- Talyien's father Yeshin participated in a war that claimed countless lives, including his own family, and left the empire in ruins. Nobody was a hero and countless people died.
- The war depicted in The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng is filled with meat-grinder battles and brutal violence. Mass casualties are incurred, even the "good guys" end up causing mass destruction that will lead to civilians dying in the future, and the battles are filled to the brim with brutal carnage.
