Tear Jerker / Heralds of Valdemar

• Arrows of the Queen:
  • "Sensholding has no daughter Talia." After half a book of thinking that she'd burned her bridges with the repressive, abusive Holderkin — and apparently being fine with that — getting straight up disowned hits Talia harder than she expected.
  • Ylsa's last moments, and Keren nearly dying as a consequence.
• Arrow's Fall:
  • Dirk's breakdown and Talia's frustration with both him and Kris in the first half of the book, especially in light of what happens later on.
  • The second half, especially Kris's death, Talia's decision to kill herself, and her subsequent CMOA rescue by Dirk, Elspeth, and every single Companion.
  • Kris's gift from beyond the grave to Talia and Dirk at the end.
• Brightly Burning has several moments.
• Storm Warning: Ulrich's death and Altra's reaction to not being able to save him.
• Storm Breaking: Karal's near-death at the end.
• Amberdrake's torturous backstory in The Black Gryphon. There is an ancestral Kaled'a'in homeland, but many Kaled'a'in lived outside of it, even in cities with city ways. Amberdrake manifested healing and Empathic Gifts at a young age, and agreed that instead of going to the Clans to learn from them he would learn "modern medicine" at a still more distant big city university. Unfortunately he was all but friendless there, a "barbarian". His teachers didn't believe in the Gifts, only hard science, and being around sick and injured people without the training to block them out made him sick in ways his instructors didn't know how to handle. Worse, Ma'ar was coming into power and stoking hatred for "foreigners" like him and other Kaled'a'in. Amberdrake's teachers tried to protect them but were clueless. He stopped getting or being able to send family letters and when he started hearing about "decadent foreigners" being deported to parts unknown he ran away.
  • After a nightmarish journey in which he saw that the truth behind the rumors was even worse, he came home feverish and weak with starvation, with the city in a panic and Ma'ar's forces one day behind him, only to find his family already gone and once-friendly neighbors who attacked him. Only then did he catch a break, fetching up against Silver Veil's wagon. Someone who he'd thought of as a High-Class Call Girl (it's complicated) took him in as she and her household evacuated, letting him pose as one of her apprentices, though this soon stopped being a pose. She tried to shield her dependents from the horrors they passed on their way to safety, often traveling through places Ma'ar's army had just passed, but he still saw a lot of death and captives being force-marched in columns. Silver Veil was a help but sought to flee the war while Amberdrake wanted to find his people, so she found someone who would take him to the Kaled'a'in.
  • Amberdrake found the clans and they honored his struggle and talents but were never able to find what happened to his family. A devastating loss, particularly to the close-knit Kaled'a'in, which left him set apart. He joined the fight against Ma'ar eagerly and found something close to family in Skan, but Skan's constant risky missions always leave him terrified, and he fears that the gryphon thinks of him only as a friend.
  "I have lost so much that sometimes I think I am nothing inside but one hollow husk, an emptiness that nothing will ever fill. Still, I try to bail in more and more hope, in the hope that the sorrow will seep out."

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