Throne of Glass: Broody Bad Boys and a Better World

"My name is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, and I will not be afraid"

With the explosion of BookTok, Romantasy has become a hot topic in the literary world. Is it real literature? Is it just "smut"? And how can a story about an assassin and a 300 year old fae warrior have any relevance to our lives today? We are now a video podcast, so head over to YouTube to see our attempted Throne of Glass cosplays!

Transcript

Once upon a time, in a land long since burned to ash there lived a young princess who loved her kingdom. Hi, and welcome to the Literary Lamppost podcast, where we analyze books and see what we can learn from them. And now on video. I'm Caitlin. I'm a math grad student, but I love English, and I love analyzing literature. And I'm Ashleigh, an assistant editor for a magazine and a writer. Today, we are talking about one of my favorite books, which we say pretty much every episode. Well, we can't talk about books that we don't love, so- We have tried. It doesn't- Here we are ... it doesn't go well. Yeah, that podcast episode wasn't aired. Anyway, Throne of Glass, written by Sarah J. Maas. Throne of Glass first came out in 2012, though the series slowly rose to popularity and reached the status it has today through BookTok in the early 2020s. Maas wrote the first book when she was 16, but it wasn't published for another 10 years, and then she came out with the rest of the series. Now it is eight books in total. So there is a lot we could talk about, and we're only doing one episode, which might seem kind of crazy considering we did three for Lord of the Rings, so we're only gonna be touching on what we think is most important. That being said, we're gonna be covering a lot of ground today. We're gonna be talking about romantasy, um, what is it and is it bad? Femininity, the corruption of power, striving for a better world. And just a little bit of a warning, this episode is not particularly safe for work. We will be talking about issues around sexuality. Yeah, so put your headphones on if you're in the office. We're assuming that if you're listening to this podcast, you've read the series. Mm-hmm. It is a lot to summarize. There's no way we can summarize it, so you are really getting just the briefest of brief summaries, and we won't be even mentioning all the characters. But don't worry, you can still get something out of this episode even if you haven't read it. So the Throne of Glass series follows Celaena Sardothien, an infamous assassin who's freed from a slave camp, a salt mine, to compete in a deadly tournament for the evil king of Adarlan, with the promise of her freedom if she wins. And just a note, we may call our protagonist either Aelin or Celaena. She is the same person, she just has multiple identities. We will try to stick with Aelin, but in some of the quotes she's still called Celaena because her secret identity hasn't been revealed yet. Hmm. So as the series progresses across the eight books, Celaena's true identity is revealed. She is actually Aelin Galathynius, the lost queen of Terrasen, with a heck of a lot of magic. Along the way, the journey transforms from just a girl wanting to survive and find her own peace and happiness to an epic battle to reclaim her throne and save Terrasen, which was conquered by Adarlan, and also to save the entire world from the dark god Ehren and his armies. She has a few romances along the way, mostly with the Fae warrior Rowan Whitethorn. That is a tongue twister. Fae warrior- Rowan. Fae warrior Rowan Whitethorn. Fae warrior Rowan W- yeah. She forges some deep alliances and friendships with people from other countries, witches, warriors, rebels, and Fae. It's really, it's a story of political intrigue, magic, sacrifice, and the courage to stand up against the world's evil in search of a better world. So Throne of Glass is often cited as an example of romantasy. There is some debate as to whether Throne of Glass is actually romantasy, and it's really not a hard and fast line. And if you think about it, Throne of Glass is very romantic compared to fantasies like Lord of the Rings and some of Brandon Sanderson's work, but it's not quite as centered on the romance as others. But we thought that talking about this book would be a good time to address romantasy. The romantasy genre boomed in the early 2020s. Wow, that feels weird to say. I know, right? It was popularized by BookTok and authors like Sarah J. Maas, who also wrote books like A Court of Thorns and Roses- Mm-hmm ... known as ACOTAR for those of you completely tired of saying a something of something and something. Mm-hmm. And also Rebecca Yarros' Fourth Wing series. And it was actually my husband, Josh, who asked me to get the audiobooks- which given the genre is slightly surprising. Yeah. And he actually really did enjoy them, and he cited Sarah J. Maas as his favorite the, favorite th- favorite female author. Really? Yeah. Ah, good on him. Yeah. Well, we have many thoughts about the genre of romantasy. Some might surprise you, others may not. But first up, let's talk booktok. It's kind of hard to imagine life without TikTok and Reels and whatever, but really it's only been since the COVID pandemic since it's really become a thing, like- We were adults already. I know. And now there's this whole world online. A lot of booktok accounts are run by women centering around romance and fantasy. Now, both genres have existed for yonks, you know, romance since the Middle Ages, though popularized by authors like Jane Austen in the 1800s. Fairy tales have been around for thousands of years, but the literary genre's more recent, stories of magic appearing around the 1800s, Romanticism era, and the modern fantasy genre as we know it kickstarted by authors like Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, both of whose books we have podcast episodes about, so check those out. So if we fast-forward to the 2020s, romantasy as a term- Mm-hmm ... is born. And there are some fuzzy lines here, because it's more of a colloquial term than an actual genre, like historical fiction, so you can argue that some books are romantasy and others aren't. But basically, a romantasy centers around romance, often with a lot of smut, or spice, as it's known, but is set in a high fantasy setting. And there's a bit of a war on social media whether or not it counts as real reading. A lot of romantasy is pop fiction, you know, pushed out because publishers know it will sell. But, you know, I do think romantasy's good, because it's gotten a lot of people back into reading, and there are also a lot of powerful female figures, which we will get into later discussing some of the characters. But there's a lot of really poor quality romantasy out there. Yeah. I feel like once I read the big name ones, the ones that followed- Read them all just weren't as good. Yeah. You've kind of read it once, read it all. Rife with plot holes, exhausted tropes, bubblegum for the brain, basically. There's also a bit of a war between people on booktok who read romantasy and those who read classics and literary fiction. Yeah, the latter group can get quite snobbish about it, not going to lie. And I know that I've fallen into that trap of thinking, like, "Oh, it's not real literature," which really isn't fair, because I've read a lot of romantasy. I think it's good to balance your reading. I mean, reading's a hobby, right? And it's good to stretch yourself and good to read harder books where you'll learn harder vocabulary and be challenged, but it's also good to have those comfortable books- Mm ... where you just feel happy reading them. When I was a kid, I was reading classics, and then I feel like my brain got fried by social media, and it's harder to stay focused than it used to be on a book that's, like, a little bit more challenging, and a romantasy is just so easy. It really is. Yeah, and so I think it's fine to read them, as long as you're balancing it a bit with other things. Like, it's good to read at all, it's good to read anything, but you need to make sure that your critical thinking is always engaged. It's too easy to turn off your brain and just absorb stuff when you're reading a romantasy, and there- Mm ... actually can be some harmful tropes in romantasy. Yeah, and some of those tropes are in Throne of Glass, and some of them bug me a lot. For example, you have a young girl, right, anywhere between 16, 19 in Throne of Glass. How old is she at the start? Like 17? 18. 18? 18. Okay, she's 18. And her male counterpart We'll be like 300 years old But because he's fae, he looks young. They look the same age. That's how long it takes for them to mature. 300, yep. It's okay. Yeah, but, like, he's lived for centuries, he's fought in battles, he's had previous, you know, love interests, but now this girl shows up and she's the one for him, but it's fine because they look the same. I feel like part of it is that 300 years is not something that we can really conceptualize. Like, a 60-year-old- Mm ... with a 19-year-old feels weird, but a 300-year-old, you kind of lose that perception of- Yeah ... time. Yeah. And I think that's maybe why it works, because that just circumvents the- Mm ... thing in your brain that says it's weird. Yeah, and, like, the other thing that bothers me is often these men are really broody and they have anger issues, or they've been through some severe trauma, but, like, they treat this girl perfectly. Like, it's the whole tall, dark and handsome, broody, bad boy trope that women love, but it doesn't translate to real life because men who are older and who've experienced severe trauma and are l- like that broody, bad boy type and have anger issues are not going to treat you- No like a 300-year-old fae warrior is going to treat you. And so when these relationships and these stories are idolized, especially by young girls, that can be problematic because they then take those expectations into real-life relationships, being like, "Oh, I can save him. He has anger issues and he's broody." Yeah, no. "But you love me." That, that doesn't work. Yeah. I also feel like we need to have a conversation about the way sexuality is portrayed, because that's- Mm ... a really big point of contention in this whole discussion, and there's a lot going on. There are a lot of accusations from people on the internet that romantasy is just porn for women, and I actually kind of take a lot of issue with that. There's a couple major differences. For one, women are not being exploited in these books. Men aren't being exploited. People are not being exploited in the writing of these books, as they often are in the porn industry. Um, the porn industry is all sorts of messed up, horrible working conditions, people being manipulated into things that they don't wanna do, people being exploited, mostly women being objectified. It's not good. There's also the accusation that it provides these unrealistic expectations of happy relationships, which usually c- center around women being loved and prioritized, versus porn, which has some really unrealistic and actually quite harmful expectations around things like violence in the bedroom, and women being dominated, and a whole host of other problems. Uh, regardless, in these stories, in these scenarios and relationships, men are, most of the time, they're full characters, and they exist beyond just being the pleasure objects of women. So it's not a direct comparison to porn, by any means. And in mainstream romantasy, violence against women is not platformed. Looking at you, Mr. George R. R. Martin. Hmm. Romantasy also often centers around women's pleasure, which has been overlooked, uh, for centuries. You know, within these stories, women can actually enjoy sex and be sexy and not be labeled slut, which is still such a double standard in our culture. I also think that purity culture is still a major driving force in our society, even as it becomes more secular, and we see this in the conversations around women's body counts- Mm among other things. And I found a great quote about this. It says, "Purity culture disconnects women from their desire, framing pleasure as sinful and leading to passivity, difficulty asserting needs, and the orgasm gap. In romantasy, women's pleasure is elevated, and it's put on the same level as the pleasure of men." Historically, there's been a lot of shame around women's pleasure, with the patriarchal notion that essentially women exist to fulfill men's needs, implicitly reinforcing that women don't have needs. And interestingly, there's been a huge backlash online against romantasy by men belittling and shaming women for reading the things that, you know, they enjoy. You know, I don't necessarily want to read the super smutty stuff, but I will die defending women's right to read the things that they enjoy. All of that being said, there are some problems in romantasy. Yes. For example, so many of these books are in the young adult section, where basically kids are reading them, which I think can be quite harmful. There's also some dark fantasy tropes, which can involve some violence and sadism, et cetera. There's these morally gray characters who are arguably, in real life, would be terrible abusive partners, and you don't wanna be looking for them. And so I think that there can be some quite problematic elements to that. However, you could argue that these are not the most popular books, and not Throne of Glass. Yeah, and again, it's debated whether or not Throne of Glass is actually romantasy or not. It follows some of the same tropes, and is often scoffed at by the quote, unquote, "serious readers." It's actually a really good book. Mm. It's well-written compared to other romantasy's. And it's, it's really more than just the romance. Romance features very heavily, but it isn't necessary, necessarily the main point. Finally, the label of romantasy versus high fantasy is a whole other conversation. Mm. For example, Game of Thrones has as much sexual content, or maybe even more, than something like Throne of Glass. But that, written by a man, is labeled high fantasy and a great work of literature, while Throne of Glass gets labeled as romantasy, and looked down on as kind of this guilty pleasure read. So much of the sex in Game of Thrones is violent, rape-based. It, you know, not caring about the woman involved. Isn't it interesting the books which include male-centered violent sex aren't belittled or even seen as smut, and the men who enjoy Game of Thrones are not shamed for reading it, while female authors who write books with sex scenes focused on women's pleasure are often not taken seriously, and those who read it are shamed for not consuming high quality literature. Hmm. Fascinating. Anyway. We've talked a little bit so far about how romantasy caters to women, and I think another reason why they're so popular with women is that the female characters themselves are really good, well-thought-out characters. Yeah. I appreciate how much modern fantasy has strong women characters with agency and power. Uh, we just did Lord of the Rings. Excellent books, but you know, they do not pass the Bechdel test. The women are just side characters. In romantasy, women are badass, and they hold real power rather than just proximity to it and secondary to, to a male in power. It can be a little overdone sometimes, like the whole sassy, sarcastic, agro assassin character type, but I think that Throne of Glass was maybe the original template- Yeah, with the OG for this type of character, and there's just been a lot of copycats. Yeah. But you know, Aelin isn't just a badass. She's also a girly girl. I see this thing time and time again on the internet, girls feeling like they have to stick with an aesthetic. Girly, the word aesthetic didn't exist with regards to your personality and style before Tumblr happened. But now, you know, you gotta be cottagecore or coquettecore or dark academia or angelcore or boho or clean girl aesthetic or coastal grandma or any of the myriad of other cores and aesthetics, and you gotta stick with something, and everything in your life has to be like that. I have seen, like, 11-year-olds on YouTube lamenting that their showers aren't aesthetic enough. Girl. Like, really. But, you know, girls grow up with these stereotypes. Like, when I was a kid, it was very black and white. You were either a tomboy or you were a girly girl. Caitlin was the girly girl, I was the tomboy. Like, I refused to wear dresses. Or pink. Or pink. But girls are multifaceted human beings. We shouldn't actually have to be confined to one thing or another. And Aelin is a really beautiful representation of somebody who can be powerful. She fights and murders people, and- We're not encouraging murder, FYI. Assassin does not look good on a resume. So she fights and murders people, and she's a strong leader, and she has this immense magic which she wields so well. She's the most powerful person or fae in the book, which may seem kind of common for a female protagonist today, but if you think about it, we've come a long way since characters like Arwen in Lord of the Rings. You know, but Aelin is not confined to that assassin- Aesthetic ... style. Assassin core, if you will. Like, she loves pretty dresses and reading and music and candy and fine dining, all things that today get characterized and boxed into the soft girl aesthetic. You know, it's something that Aelin w- would definitely not be characterized as. I quote, "Her salary as king's champion was considerable, and Celaena- Aelin ... spent, spent every last copper of it. Shoes, hats, tunics, dresses, jewelry, weapons, baubles for her hair, and books. Books and books and books. So many books that Philippa had to bring up another bookcase for her room." My girl loves books. Hmm. That's a Brooklyn Nine-Nine quote. Oh, I miss that. We are r- actually really lucky to have become women at a time where we have these kind of models in literature, where women can be complex and multifaceted and more than just arm candy. They can be pretty and vain and be strong and good leaders, because girls are often told that they can't be both. You know, Aelin is an example of someone who doesn't have to sacrifice her femininity and become more manly to be a leader, which unfortunately I think even now women have to to be taken seriously. Think corporate women wearing pant suits and speaking in a lower voice. And avoiding wearing pink. And the more representation that we have of these kind of women in the world, the more we will be able to emulate that in our lives. Another major theme in Throne of Glass is the corruption of power. In the book we see the King of Adarlan conquer and colonize the surrounding countries. He strips them of their culture, their customs, languages, and forces people into slave camps, especially magic users. He very strongly censors ideas and education. For example, there's a quote from the first book, " Libraries were full of ideas, perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons." Mm. And as such, the king burned books, books were banned, knowledge was controlled, the arts, such as theater and music, were suppressed, and critics of the government were eliminated. The king creates a narrative about magic users, that they need to be feared. He casts them as enemies, and in his own country banishes not just magic users, but magic itself. Successfully, he turns people against people, you know, who once all lived in peace. He manipulates them and uses his power to control them. Turns out, though, the king is actually possessed by a demon from another world, as are those in the king's close circle. These demons, called the Volg, are a very literal metaphor of how power corrupts, and you can see examples of power corrupting all through history. I think one of the most powerful moments in the book, um, an example of when the people were willing to stand up against that corruption of power, is right after the king orders the massacre of all the people in the slave camps. That's insane, right? And a performance is being given at the theater in the king's city, and we're going to read it, because it's just that good. That was when they noticed that every musician on the stage was wearing mourning black. That was when they shut up, and when the conductor raised his arms, it was not a symphony that filled the cavernous space. it was the song of Eelewe, then the song of Fennharow, and Melusand, and Terasen, each nation that had people in those labor camps. And finally, not for the pomp or triumph, but to mourn what they had become, they played the song of Adolin. When the final note finished, the conductor turned to the crowd, all the musicians standing with him. As one, they looked to the boxes, to all those jewels bought with the blood of a continent, and without a word, without a bow or another gesture, they walked off the stage. The next morning, by royal decree, the theater was shut down. No one saw those musicians or their conductor again." I get shivers every time. I do too. It's so powerful. It can be easy in the face of things going wrong in the world to either hide your face in the sand, because maybe things don't directly affect you, or, you know, fully immerse yourself in everything that's happening and feel very overwhelmed and fearful of everything happening. That's what I do. Yes, she does. You know, Aelin fears herself and her magic. She fears her surroundings. She fears losing those she loves, and yet she perseveres anyways. Her mantra is, "I will not be afraid." Initially, Aelin actually doesn't want to do anything. She doesn't want to reclaim her throne. She just wants to survive and disappear. In fact, she spends several chapters drunk on a rooftop, just bumming around. Yes. But there are several key characters who push her to think about what it is that she could actually do and the difference that she could make, and one of those, Nehemia, actually has to die for Aelin to realize that she needs to do something. There's a really good quote from one of the books: "But just remember that this fear of yours, it means you have something worth fighting for, something you care so greatly for that losing it is the worst thing you can imagine." And what is it that we're fighting for? Well, there's another quote which really sums up what we were most excited to talk about when it came to Throne of Glass. There's a couple characters named in this quote that we haven't talked about. They're not important to this episode, so just don't worry if you don't know who they are. But the quote goes like this, " came," Manon said loud enough that all in the city walls could hear, "to honor a promise made to Aelin Galathynius." "To fight for what she promised us," Darrow said quietly. "And what was that?" Manon smiled then. "A better world." Mm. You know, that thread runs the whole way through this book series, a better world. So we don't live in a fantasy world, right? But we can fight for a better world as well. So what does working for a better world for us look like? The first thing I think is putting people over profit. A better world would look like nobody being in poverty and children not dying of starvation or preventable diseases while others hoard trillions- Trillions of dollars. A better world is where big corporations are held accountable for the destruction they have caused to our beautiful planet. A better world is one in which those who harm children are prosecuted and thrown in jail and are not shielded by corrupt governments. A better world is where people are not harmed for being different. Can we achieve all this? Humans have a tendency for evil, but equally we have a capacity for good. And like we spoke about in our last episode, even when we don't feel like we can win, we need to try. It's the fight that matters, you know, knowing you didn't sit by while people suffered. And collectively, humanity has achieved great things in past. I believe we need to keep trying to bring about a world where the poor, the sick, the outcasts, those discarded by society are cared for, you know, where love is stronger than hate. We're not fighting demons or magic in today's day and age, but we are fighting something just as powerful and just as scary, and that's hatred. Mm. Hatred of certain people and certain ideas, and it's so easy to just not speak up, especially if it's something not affecting you directly But eventually it will. It's also hard to immerse yourself in some of the more difficult things going on in the world. It's hard to stay sane through it all, and I find the following quote very relatable. "'What if we go on,' he said, 'only to more pain and despair? What if we go on only to find a horrible end waiting for us?'" Exactly that. What if all our conversations, our attempts to be kind, our struggles to stand up for what's right, ends in nothing? That thought can be demoralizing. But the quote continues, "Aelin looked northward as if she could see all the way to Terrasen. ' Then that is not the end.'" Really, the best we can hope for is to do what we can in the corners of our world, to speak up, to be kind, to love others, and have the courage to look past our fear of what others will think and say of us, and fear of what the world holds, and to say in the words of Aelin, "My name is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, and I will 📍 not be afraid." And on that note, thank you for joining us for this very first video episode of- Yay ... The Literary Lamppost. Join us on Instagram and share your thoughts with us. We would love to hear what you think. Also, share this podcast with somebody you think would enjoy it, and stay tuned for our next episode in which we will be talking about The Great Gatsby. I'm pretty sure we said that in the last episode- We did ... and we decided to do Throne of Glass instead. We did. But we will get to The Great Gatsby, we promise. Yes, we will. Please, please, please also leave us a rating or comment. It lets the algorithm know that you like this show, and it helps other people find it, and we promise we read every single comment because we get so few. We'd also love it if you shared this episode with somebody you think would enjoy it. Make sure you follow us on Instagram @theliterarylamppost, as well as hitting that subscribe button on Spotify, or Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast platform, to make sure you don't miss any of our new episodes. Thanks for listening and see you next time. See you. This podcast includes brief excerpts from literary works for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and analysis, which we believe constitutes fair use under copyright law. Our theme music was created by Joshua Ebbet for exclusive use by The Literary Lamppost Podcast. Bye.