We’re just going to say it now: Stop. This recap is so full of spoilers that even if you have any vague sense of where the series has gone so far, the title itself is a spoiler. So, seriously, we’re begging. We don’t want to ruin this for you. Read the books. Check out our previous recaps for The Thief and The Queen of Attolia before continuing on, if you must. Or, better yet, do as we are and reread!
But now that you’re prepared, let’s dive into The King of Attolia, the twistiest, most layered, most hand-to-heart romantic book in the Queen’s Thief series yet. We’re picking up where we left off in Attolia with our boy Gen, but now with a new narrator, the adorably oblivious Costis Ormentiedes. And because we can’t trust anything—Megan Whalen Turner taught us that—we feel the need to warn you once more before we go on. So, in the spirit of emphasis…
There, we have it, we’ve done it, and you’ve been properly warned. If you haven’t read this book and are reading this sentence, there’s nothing more we can do. So let’s dive into The King of Attolia!
• King Me: In the last book, Eugenides lost a hand and gained a wife—both courtesy of the Queen of Attolia. Our Thief is now, technically, the former Thief of Eddis and the current King of Attolia.
• The Consequences: The Mede threat is held off for now, but the Little Peninsula has its own instabilities. Eugenides is the nominal monarch of a country that both hates and underestimates him, the relationship status between him and his Queen is unknown, and Attolia’s greedy barons are sniffing around for any sign of weakness…
We’ve already met most of the main players, so you can refresh yourself by checking out the character sections in both The Thief and The Queen of Attolia recaps.
• Costis Ormentiedes: Our narrator. Costis is a farmboy-turned-squad leader beneath Teleus, captain of the Queen’s Guard, and honorable to a fault. Like most Attolians, Costis loathes the King on behalf of the Queen.
• Aristogiton, “Aris”: Another soldier, squad leader, and Costis’s best friend.
• Baron Erondites: The most powerful of Attolia’s barons, he is also her greatest threat.
• Erondites the Younger, “Dite”: The baron’s eldest son, Dite is hated by his father for his staunch loyalty to the Queen of Attolia. As a musician, Dite’s claim to fame is “The King’s Wedding Night,” a ribald song that roasts the king’s presumed failure in the bedroom.
• Sejanus: The baron’s second son, Sejanus is one of the king’s attendants and the one with the most sway. He leads most of the mockery against the king.
• Aulus and Boagus: Eddisian soldiers and Gen’s cousins. Beefy boys.
• Ornon: The Eddisian ambassador to Attolia, he’s known the king his entire life—and they don’t get along.
• Flopped Like a Superstar: Costis, loyal soldier of Attolia Irene, the queen, has punched Attolis Eugenides, the king, for mocking Teleus and the Queen’s Guard. Now he is waiting for the queen to sentence him, likely to death. The king accuses Teleus of being behind the attack, as well as previous attacks and aggravations. So, the queen wants Costis executed, but the king will only allow it if Teleus is executed as well. Instead, Eugenides offers a deal: Costis’s life for Teleus’s obedience. Attolia makes Teleus take the deal.
• Poor Costis: Eugenides, having heard that Costis was no longer squad leader after sucker-punching his king, announces that Costis will instead be promoted to lieutenant, and that he will serve as a member of Gen’s own personal guard. Costis begins to learn the palace’s routines. Before breakfast, he meets the king for sparring, where the one-handed monarch runs through beginner’s sword exercises. Costis runs to bathe and eat, then meets the king in his chambers, where the king’s attendants, led by Sejanus, run wild by mocking Eugenides behind his back. Sometimes, the monarchs hold court. Costis becomes exhausted by the endless parading about.
• Flip Again: Teleus warns Costis that the king meant his promotion as a joke, so he must do his duty well. Costis struggles through the Mede language lessons, but a mysterious benefactor leaves carefully written notes in his room. Later, the king orders Costis to move a chair in front of his window, help him remove the signet ring from his finger, and then keep everyone else out. Costis does. Eugenides sits in front of the window in silence for a long time. He eventually makes a joke to Attolia about the coin he is flipping, saying, “Lilies, I rule; heads, you do.” The Queen replies, “Lilies, you rule; heads, you flip again.” The king flips the coin multiple times, and each time it comes up lilies. The king grows so angry, he throws the coin.
• Wakey, Wakey: Baron Artadorus is woken in the middle of the night by a blade to his throat. The king is sitting on the edge of his bed, and reveals that he has discovered that the baron has been cheating on his taxes. The baron is worried Eugenides will tell the queen. Eugenides says that he is the one the baron should worry about. Later, Sejanus reports to his father, Baron Erondites, that the tax scheme he proposed to Baron Artadorus has been discovered, but it hasn’t been tracked back to Erondites.
• Make Me Sway: The overt attacks against Eugenides have stopped, but the attendants continue to hound the king. Twice more he locks himself in his room to stare out the window. Ambassador Ornon regrets his previous wish to see the former Thief reined in. A weak king is a dangerous king for everyone, he reckons, and Eugenides seems too willing to let himself be heckled. At dinner, a foolish noble asks Eugenides whether it was true that his cousins used to hold him face-down in a water trough—a story the king had told Costis in confidence. Afterwards, Eugenides asks Attolia to dance. She refuses, because the music is an Eddisian dance that cannot be performed with only one hand. He pushes, asking, “Am I king?” and they dance. The former Thief of Eddis leads with one hand and manages to pluck every single hairpin from his queen’s head before the end of the dance.
• The King’s Wedding Night, Revised: The king has Dite brought to him in the gardens. He says Dite’s details about his wedding night are incorrect. To begin with, Gen says, the queen cried. Dite, who is madly in love with Attolia, recoils, but the king forces him to walk in the garden together, leaving Costis, the guards, and his attendants behind. When Eugenides and Dite return, Dite falls to his knees and thanks the king.
• The Usual Suspect: Aris tells Costis the story of the young king and the trough. Costis is horrified. He didn’t tell anyone the king’s story, but Eugenides will think he did. Costis tries to apologize during sparring, but the king assures him that he didn’t suspect Costis. After, Attolia summons Costis and asks him what the king does when he dismisses the attendants and stares out the window. Costis says he doesn’t know; as far as he knows, only that.
• Betrayal: An informant tells Costis that he heard Baron Erondites conspiring with Sejanus about a project that would be successful in “a few more weeks.” During the day’s briefing, Eugenides is told that the barons of Sounis have revolted and the heir, Sophos, has disappeared. Then Relius brings in three Attolian spies from Medea, all of whom were nearly killed. The Attolians have a leak. Relius leaves to find the leak, but when the spies are through telling their story, Eugenides tells Attolia to have Relius arrested. Relius is caught in the middle of writing his confession. He had let slip confidential information to a lover and planned to poison himself to evade Attolia’s wrath and his own guilt.
• An Impossible Position: Baron Susa, who owns the land Costis’s family’s farm is on, corners Costis and presses him for information on the king. Costis resists but mentions the time Eugenides spends looking out the window. Costis is livid at himself and decides to confess to the king, but can’t find the right opportunity. Eugenides visits Hephestia’s temple but the Oracle blocks him from praying to the Great Goddess and instead hands him a paper that reads ATTOLIS. Eugenides is furious and storms back to his room to sit in front of the window. Instead of retreating, Costis hesitates, wondering if he should bring up Baron Susa. He steps forward… and sees that Eugenides is crying. He tells the king about Susa. The king apologizes for putting him in an impossible position and dismisses him. Permanently. On his way out, Costis finds a window that faces in the same direction as the king’s and looks out. The window faces Eddis, but the king’s home is too far away to see, even from the high rooms of the palace.
• Heiro the Hero: As Costis is dismissed, Aris and his squad are promoted to join the king’s protection in the palace. Sejanus and his father meet and they discuss their plans to manipulate the king—have Eugenides pick a mistress of their choosing, then make him so angry that he dismisses all his attendants but Sejanus. They’re having little luck with the mistress, as Gen insists on dancing with the artless Heiro. She offers to introduce him to other women of the court who are on his side.
• Ten Gold Cups: Someone has released the hunting dogs in the courtyard right before Eugenides was scheduled to pass through. The king had threatened that if the dogs were ever loosed around him again, he would slaughter them all. Costis runs to help, then realizes the dogs are a diversion. Eugenides’s guards—Aris and his entire squadron—are also helping with the dogs. The king is unguarded in the gardens. Costis runs, Teleus just behind him, and promises ten gold cups to the gods if the king is safe. They’re too far away to do more than watch as the assassins appear. The fight is over before they reach the king—four assassins dead on the ground, and a furious Eugenides standing over them, blood on his hook. Costis tries to calculate how he’ll pay for ten gold cups on a soldier’s salary. They leave the gardens and are at the top of the first set of stairs when the king stops walking. The blood that didn’t show through his red tunic is now spilling over onto his hand.
• Like a Wild Animal in a Snare: The queen meets them, startling Gen. Still holding onto Costis, Eugenides kisses his wife in a way that makes it very clear that they’ve had practice, then apologizes for not having the garden searched. He complains of being disemboweled, then flirts more with his Queen. The watching crowd is stunned. Only once they get to his rooms and the doctor arrives is the truth revealed—the king has been disemboweled, his abdomen split from navel to hip, and he had been holding his abdominal wall together with his hand. Costis catches Attolia as she faints. Eugenides scoffs at the thought of his wife fainting at the sight of blood. Not of blood, Ornon explains, but of his blood.
• Oxe Harbrea Sacrus Vax…: Costis wakes Eugenides in the middle of the night to beg for aid. The queen has ordered Teleus, Aris, and the entire squad executed for treason. The king cannot publicly cross Attolia, but he gives Costis a message for the prisoners. When they are brought before the queen, Teleus recites what they were told—an invocation in archaic to the Great Goddess, one that Eugenides himself had recited in the same prison after Attolia cut off his hand. Attolia orders the men freed, then storms from the room. King and Queen have a fight so loud that the gossip reaches Costis. The queen struck the king, then fled to her apartments. The king locked himself in his rooms. Costis doesn’t know what to do, so he returns to his duty and waits outside the king’s door. Dite and Heiro both come to visit the king and are allowed in.
• Ninety-Eight Days: The queen’s physician arrives to beg for his life. He has found quinalums in the king’s lethium. Quinalums can induce screaming nightmares. The king assures him he is not suspected, because the king knows who added the quinalums. Attolia, fed up with the attendants’ behavior, makes Eugenides address them. Eugenides reveals that he knows who is responsible to each and every slight against him. The attendants are horrified. Sejanus is still smug. Then the king accuses Dite of adding the quinalums. To save his brother, Sejanus confesses, but Eugenides says he will execute them both. Sejanus pleads, not for himself, but for his elder brother. The king reminds him that if a House is left without a direct heir, a replacement must be approved by the crown—by Eugenides—and he will not let the House of Erondites survive. And not out of revenge, but because the baron has become a danger to Attolia. Sejanus promises he will not retract his own confession if only the king will spare Dite. The House of Erondites will fall, but Dite will live. Once everyone leaves, Attolia marvels. On their wedding night, Eugenides had promised to destroy Erondites in six months. It took him ninety-eight days.
• A Brother’s Love: Dite enters to plead for Sejanus. Sejanus. Eugenides reminds Dite that he told him in their garden chat to warn his brother. Dite said he did, but he couldn’t believe Sejanus had actually poisoned the king. Eugenides admits that Sejanus hadn’t. The king poisoned himself, but Sejanus had conspired with his father and had helped the assassins. Eugenides needed him gone. Before leaving, Dite asks why Sejanus hated him so much. Eugenides explains that it was for him—Dite loved Attolia, Attolia married Eugenides, and so Sejanus hated Eugenides.
• I Can’t Do Anything I Want: Once the queen leaves, the king visits the dungeons. Relius has already been interrogated for information, and he is not surprised to see the king. Costis slowly realizes that when Eugenides had been Attolia’s prisoner, Relius had come by to interrogate the Thief. Eugenides presses Relius’s loyalty, but the ex-spymaster doesn’t waver. He hates the king, but he remains devoted to the queen. Eugenides pardons Relius, but gets in a shouting match with Teleus over his ability to do so after the queen had condemned him. Later, Eugenides visits Relius in the night to bring him Attolia’s written pardon.
• I Like Big Boys (but Eugenides Doesn’t): Once off duty, Costis walks to the mess hall but is nearly brained by falling roof tiles. That night, Eugenides visits Relius and explains that he saved Relius not for himself, but for Attolia. There were few pieces left to her heart that she could afford to lose. Still, the queen is not happy he snuck away again and threatens sterner measures to help him heal. Sterner measures are by the king’s bedside when Costis arrives the next morning—Aulus and Boagus, the king’s very large Eddisian soldier cousins. As Costis watches in awe, the cousins snatch away the king’s papers and force him to take a nap. Ornon drops by to tell the king that Sounis’s heir is likely dead. The next day, the cousins leave, but only after Eugenides promises that he will keep Costis with him at all times.
• How Much Is That Guard-Boy in the Window: Eugenides visits Relius again and asks him for a favor. The next day, he kicks Costis out, saying he’s recovered and doesn’t need his pet guard any longer. Stunned and confused, Costis leaves. He later learns from Aris that everyone else believes that Costis is lying—that the assassination was fake, or that it was real and Teleus saved the king, and Costis is lying for Eugenides. Costis is reinstated as squad leader but get into bar fights four separate nights. The last time is nearly deadly and he has to be saved by a stranger. Meanwhile, Aris is worried that it was one of his own soldiers, a man named Laecdomon, who started the rumors that the assassination was fake.
• The Power of Love: Eugenides visits Relius again, but this time he brings Attolia. Eugenides kisses his wife’s cheek, and then Relius’s, before giving them privacy. Attolia and Relius forgive each other, then discuss the golden age that could be with Eugenides as king, true king, which he refuses to be. Attolia confesses she is tired of forcing those she loves to think or act, so she will not force Eugenides.
• Big Mad: Sounis reclaims his kingdom from the rebels, but Sophos does not reappear. The court still believes that Attolia is the mastermind behind Eugenides’s plans. Sejanus is banished to the hinterlands. It is revealed that the assassins came from Sounis and were provided by Nahuseresh. On learning this last bit of news, Eugenides locks himself in his own bedroom and destroys everything in it. The attendants piece together he isn’t angry because he hates Nahuseresh, or even that he can’t kill Nahuseresh because he is king. Eugenides is angry that he can’t kill Nahuseresh with only one hand.
• Go to Bed, Eugenides: Costis is roused from bed by a frantic Aris. The king is drunk on the crenellations of the palace roof, hopping from one to the next, and no one can get him down. Costis steps out and begs Eugenides to get down. Eugenides responds by balancing in a one-handed handstand on a crenellation and says his god won’t let him fall. The king confesses he was thinking of Nahuseresh, and of Costis, and how he owed Costis better than assassination by roof tile—since that is what the falling tiles and the bar fights all were, attempts to kill the king’s chosen guard. The king had asked Relius to put two men on Costis’s tail to protect him, in case the public dismissal didn’t do the trick. Eugenides also confesses that he’s never been caught in a trap he couldn’t escape, but now he is afraid he was, and also afraid that he didn’t want out, and afraid to let the gods know he hated being trapped for fear they might take it all away. Startled by his own confession, the king steps out into open air, but does not fall. Instead, he is caught by nothing Costis can see, and a voice says, “Go to bed.” Eugenides is pushed onto the roof, where Costis catches him. The king decides to go to bed.
• A Challenge, You Say?: In payment for the assassination attempts, Costis makes Eugenides agree to come to sword training the next morning. The king refuses to spar, so Costis swings at him with the sword and says the king better participate quickly, or Costis will be executed for attacking the king. They spar. The king beats Costis, but Teleus steps up next and challenges the king to spar. They make a bet. If Eugenides beats Teleus, he can reduce the Guard by half. Eugenides wins. But after Teleus, the king invites each man watching to take a turn at beating him, same conditions on the bet. Costis is worried that the still-healing king will overextend. Aris is even more worried, because Laecdomon is one of the challenged men. They are too late to stop Laecdomon from stepping into the ring.
• Attolis: Everyone—the Guard, the Queen, the attendants, Costis—watch as Laecdomon fights and unarms the king. Laecdomon brings the sword down on the king, but Eugenides snatches the wooden sword away with his bare hand and strikes down Laecdomon. Laecdomon is arrested and Eugenides places the sword in Attolia’s lap. They address each other as “My Queen” and “My King,” and Eugenides, at last, accepts his role as King of Attolia.
• Annux: After the match, Teleus invites the king to visit the Guard’s bathhouse to cool down. Teleus and Eugenides reach an understanding. Eugenides confesses he had deliberately baited Costis into hitting him, all those months ago, because he needed a lever—to change Teleus’s mind, he needed to change Costis’s. Eugenides was also the one who sent Costis the Mede study notes. Then he asks Teleus, as King of Attolia, as Attolis, if he may reduce the Queen’s Guard. Teleus agrees, but quibbles that Attolis didn’t actually win the sparring match, since he didn’t treat the sword as if it were real. Attolis opens his palm, revealing the newly healed scar where he had caught the assassin’s sword in the same way. As Attolis leaves, the soldiers whisper that he is Basileus, prince among men. Teleus disagrees. Attolis will be Annux, a king of kings.
Want to read more in the Queen’s Thief series?
- Find more recaps here
- Buy The King of Attolia now, or the next book in the series, A Conspiracy of Kings
- Prepare for the epic finale, The Return of the Thief