Literature / Three Dark Crowns

Three sisters, one Queen, and a whole lot of magic

Three dark queens are born in a glen.
Sweet little triplets, will never be friends.
Three dark sisters, all fair to be seen;
two to devour and one to be Queen.

In the middle of an ocean rests Fennbirn, an island of magic, ruled over by a Queen. This crown is selected not just by birthright, but by might. Though one Queen rules, three are born each generation, with each sister possessing one type of magic. During their sixteenth year, these triplets must battle each other in a fight to the death. The winner gets the crown; the losers' bodies are thrown into an abyss, their existences left to be forgotten.

For this generation, the three Queens are Mirabella, a fierce elemental with the ability to spark hungry flames or vicious storms at the snap of her fingers; Katharine, a poisoner who can ingest the most toxic poisons without so much as a stomachache; and Arsinoe, a naturalist who is said to have the ability to bloom the reddest of roses and control the fiercest of lions.

Or at least, that's what they want everyone to believe: Arsinoe can't even grow weeds, let alone a rose, and Katharine gets sick from even the weakest poisons. Mirabella- while genuinely powerful- is the only one who remembers their brief childhood together, and can't bring herself to fight them.

Unfortunately for these sisters, the beginning of the Ascension Year looms ever nearer. With alliances being formed, betrayals taking shape, and ruthless revenge haunting the queens’ every move, one thing is certain: the last queen standing might not be the strongest but she may be the darkest.

Three Dark Crowns is a YA fantasy series by Kendare Blake.

It consists of:

• Three Dark Crowns (2016)
• One Dark Throne (2017)
• Two Dark Reigns (2018)
• Five Dark Fates (2019)
• Queens of Fennbirn (2018): A prequel novella that combines two short stories.
  • The Young Queens (2017)
  • The Oracle Queen (2018)

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This series provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: The Arron family is incredibly tough on their respective Queens, especially the weaker ones. Katharine's training includes limited access to untainted food and drink, exposure to various poisoned plants, being poked and prodded by the harsh Geniveve, etc.
• Acquired Poison Immunity: Thanks to her Arron training, Katharine has this, but it has come at the cost of her health. After being possessed by the spirits of past defeated Queens, she becomes more naturally able to handle poisons. Arsinoe is naturally immune due to being the real poisoner queen.
• Aerith and Bob: Characters named Asrinoe and Geniveve live alongside characters named Joseph and Elizabeth.
• All Issues Are Political Issues: The Arrons- the family that fosters poisoner queens- are loathe to give up their three generations long reign. Natalia notes that the actual strength of the Queen doesn't matter, but rather that of the family that backs her. The temple have been openly backing Mirabella, despite it being less than ethical, because they want to wrest control of the island away from the poisoners.
• All of the Other Reindeer: The populace of Wolf Spring dislike Arsinoe due to her lack of naturalist talent. The people of Fennbirn as a whole dislike her because she tried to escape the island twice.
• An Arm and a Leg: The priestess Rho plans to remove Katharine's and Arsinoe's arms and head and throw them into a sacrificial fire. Elizabeth loses a hand for enabling Mirabella to run away when the pressure to kill her sisters became too much.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: The Arrons are decadent, fond of power, and have a disturbing tendency to poison anyone they find an inconvenience.
• Arranged Marriage: The queens are presented to carefully screened suitors from the mainland. While it looks like they can choose among them, that isn't really the case - the Arrons in particular already have Katharine's consort picked out for her.
• The Bait: In Two Dark Reigns, Jules acts as bait to lure Katharine.
• Bears Are Bad News: One bear ruins Arsinoe's face after she tries to enslave it with low magic. The bear that Jules tames for Arsinoe's presentation manages to break free, kill at least one priestess, several celebrants and nearly kills Mirabella.
• The Beast Master: Most naturalists have some kind of animal familiar. Jules is exceptional in having a mountain lion as hers. She also manages to control a bear so he can pretend to be Arsinoe's familiar when the queen has to demonstrate her power to the masses.
• Big Brother Instinct: Mirabella is the eldest triplet and has this in spades toward her sisters despite it being unwise. It flies out of the window after it appears that Arsinoe tried to kill her. Then it comes back again when she actually meets Arsinoe.
• Blood Knight: The priestess Rho is one bloodthirsty beast. Killing Katharine and Arsinoe at the feast is her idea. She also forces Mirabella to kill a volunteer.
• Blood Magic: Low magic (i.e. magic for the giftless) relies on blood. Queen's blood is particularly powerful, because of her link to the Goddess and the island.
• The Brute: Rho fits it to a tee. She is savage, bloodthirsty and thinks nothing of killing children.
• The Bully: Rho again. She has a bad habit of smacking around the other priestesses in the Temple. She likely would hit Mirabella if she thought could get away with it.
• Bullying a Dragon: Rho seems to forget just how dangerous Mirabella is when forcing the girl to do things she does not want. Genevieve seems to forget that if Katharine becomes queen she would have won the hate of the ruling monarch.
  • Averted with the High Priestess Luca who is wary of personally angering Mirabella. Queens of Fennbirn shows exactally why: When Luca first met Mirabella, Mirabella tried to drown her.
• Cain and Abel: Basically the entire premise. Two of the triplets have to die for one to ascend to the throne.
• Closet Punishment: In The Young Queens, after finding out she has to kill her sisters, Mirabella freaks out so bad the storm she brings down threatens to demolish the house. Unable to control her temper, the Westwoods lock her in a cellar for three years.
• Corrupt Church: The Temple has grown power hungry, bloodthirsty and grasping in the last century.
• Dangerous 16th Birthday: The year the triplet Queens turn sixteen is the same year that they have to battle each other to see who becomes Queen Crowned.
• Elemental Powers: Elementals are people who have power over fire, water, earth, air, and the weather.
• End of an Age: The various gifts were slowly growing weaker and weaker with each generation. And with the mist that once isolated the island now gone. Arsinoe, the surviving triplet, rejects becoming the next Queen Crowned, instead giving that title to Jules, a naturalist without any royal blood.
• Evil Red Head/Fiery Red Head: Priestess Rho. Although she usually covers her hair with the hood, when it is out in the open, it is described as red as blood or flames. Mirabella suspects that she has the war gift, because she is always harsh towards other priestesses and often hits them for perceived mistakes. And then she forces Mirabella to kill the novice priestess and seems to draw a lot of pleasure from it. It is also her idea to use the guise of a Sacrificial Year to kill Arsinoe and Katharine during Beltane.
• Fantasy Pantheon: The inhabitants of Fennbirn pray to the Goddess. The Queens are said to be descended from her.
• Familiar: Each naturalist has one, ranging from a small woodpecker (Elizabeth) to a mountain cat (Jules). Familiars share the feelings of their chosen naturalist and generally do their bidding, although it's hard to force them to do something against their will.
• Foregone Conclusion: The Oracle Queen is about Elsabet, a past Queen who is most well known in present-day Fennbirn for slaughtering three families. So you already know that not everyone will make it to the end.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Quite possibly one of the most extreme cases and culturally enforced.
• The Good Old Days: Everyone thinks fondly of times of the Queens of Old, when the strongest queen won on her own merits rather than on the scheming of her backers.
• Green Thumb: All naturalists can make crops and plant life flourish. Naturalist Queens are supposed to be particularly exceptional.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality: The only named characters that are cruel for the sake of being cruel are Genevieve and Rho. Everyone else is rather conflicted if amoral and not truly evil.
• Harmful to Minors: Mirabella is devastated and traumatized after Rho forces her to kill a volunteering priestess to harden her for her task in killing her sisters.
• He Knows Too Much: This fate almost befalls to Arsinoe right in the middle of a crowded tent when she blurts out that the Temple is scheming to kill both her and Katharine at the Quickening Feast.
• Hot Guy, Ugly Wife: Elsabet of The Oracle Queen is a conventionally unattractive Queen who has a very attractive king-consort.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Natalia Arron and her nephew Pietyr. They fit their personalities very well.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each of the main books follow the same naming scheme of "Number Dark Noun".
• Inept Mage: Katharine can't tolerate toxins and Arsinoe can't make anything grow. Becomes subverted for Arsinoe when she realizes that she's actually a strong poisoner.
• Irony: Arsinoe surviving the Ascension Year is this for at least two reasons:
  • Everyone thought she would die first due to her apparently giftless nature; she winds up having a strong poisoner gift and is the only one of her sisters to live past the age of sixteen.
  • Queen Camille switched Arsinoe with Katharine in the hopes that Mirabella- a powerful elemental- will take the crown away from the poisoners who had ruled for three generations. Mirabella ends up being the first of the triplets to die and Arsinoe- a poisoner- lives to see another day.
• Making a Splash: Water is Mirabella's weakest element and she is still able to command it to bring a drowning boat towards her.
• Master Poisoner: All the Arrons and Katharine.
• Modest Royalty: The naturalist queens are raised without ceremony, dirt on the nose and running wild. This makes them the people's queens and rather beloved by the masses. Arsinoe- while modest and unconcerned by appearances- is not beloved by the majority of the people of Wolf Spring. She is not a naturalist but a poisoner.
• Not Quite Dead: Katharine, against all odds, managed to claw her way out of the Breccia Domain and came back with more confidence and more vindication towards seizing the crown.
• Not What It Looks Like: Jules loses control of Arsinoe's pretended bear familiar. Said bear goes straight for Mirabella and would have killed her had Joseph not jumped in to protect her. This causes Mirabella to think that Arsinoe tried to kill her and vows to kill her sister the first chance she gets.
• "Number of Objects" Title: Part of the Idiosyncratic Episode Naming of "[Number] [Dark] [Noun]":
  • Three Dark Crowns
  • One Dark Throne
  • Two Dark Reigns
  • Five Dark Fates
• Oh, My Gods!: Islanders swear by the Goddess, while mainlanders by the God.
• Out with a Bang: After consummating her marriage with Nicolas in One Dark Throne, Katharine wakes up to her husband's dead body. Turns out her body is now a poison in and of itself. The mainlander boy didn't stand a chance of surviving.
• Playing with Fire: One of the elements Mirabella works best with.
• Present Tense Narrative: The entire series is written in third person present tense.
• Puppet King: In the last one hundred years it has been the Black Council ruling the island through the winning queen. It is unknown if the Queens of Old held any actual power. This is doubly true for the king-consorts. None of them has any power; everyone knows that they are mere figureheads and a symbol of mainland alliances.
• Released to Elsewhere: What Arsinoe suspects happens to the reigning queen once she gives birth to triplets. Supposedly she and her king-consort leave the island for the mainland.
• Revenge: By the end of the book, all three sisters have sworn revenge on each other.
• Shock and Awe: Lightning is Mirabella's favorite element and what she is best at.
• Sinister Minister: The Temple is playing favorites for the first time. They plan to kill Katharine and Arsinoe the moment they realize that Mirabella cannot do it herself.
• Twin Switch: Arsinoe is actually the poisoner Queen and Katharine the naturalist one. Queens of Fennbirn shows that Camille (the previous Queen) intentionally switched the two, her hope being that the much stronger Mirabella would be able to take the crown away from the poisoners and end their three-generations-long rule.
• Undying Loyalty: There is very little Jules and Arsinoe would not do for each other. Elizabeth and Bree have this toward Mirabella as well.
• Wham Episode: Arsinoe eats three poisoned candies with no ill effects. Her friend Jules only ate one and nearly died. It makes Arsinoe realize that she is a poisoner rather than a naturalist.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Despite Mirabella and Arsinoe's best efforts, she and her sisters end up killing each other off anyway; Katharine pushes Mirabella off a cliff, and Arsinoe kills Katharine in a similar fashion.

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