If you’re new around here, we need to talk about the Queen’s Thief series. It’s a set of books so layered, so good, and so twisty that the series title itself is technically a spoiler, although even when you think you’ve figured out why, there will probably be another twist that reveals that you were wrong. We wont apologize. However, for more on that, you can check out our recap of the first book, The Thief.
Now, we’re charging ahead into The Queen of Attolia! This book, as fans know, is where we really have to give author Megan Whalen Turner a hand for her ingenuity and ruthlessness. Trust us. You’ll be totally hooked.
And of course, a major spoiler alert for everything below!
• The Big Reveal: Prisoner-thief Gen revealed himself to have been the Thief of Eddis all along, and stole the mythical Hamiathes’ Gift not once but twice. He delivered it to his queen, securing her right to rule Eddis.
• Consequences: Queen’s Thief Eugenides has become famous in three countries for his lies. Neither Attolia nor Sounis seem able to catch him, and Eugenides has taken to leaving taunts each time he infiltrates their defenses. So even as Eddis’s stature rises among the three kingdoms, the pressure to catch her Thief intensifies, and the danger to our hero grows…
Check out The Thief recap for a closer look at the core group of characters that book followed—including our star thief himself, Eugenides.
• Eddis: The queen of Eddis is known for her kindness and is beloved by the people of her mountain country. Eddis leans heavily on her cousin and Thief, Eugenides, to keep her fellow monarchs in check.
• The Minister of War: Gen’s father and Eddis’s uncle, the Minister of War is a man of few words, but is devoted to his country and loves his youngest son dearly.
• Galen: The queen’s physician, he has been tending to the royal family for decades.
• Attolia: Beset by her fractious barons, the queen of Attolia keeps a tight grip on her throne through careful calculation. Attolia is known for her beauty and cruelty, and seems open to attentions from her latest suitor, the Mede ambassador Nahuseresh.
• Teleus: Attolia’s loyal Captain of the Queen’s Guard.
• Relius: Attolia’s official Secretary of the Archives—though his real job is spymaster.
• Sounis: The king of Sounis’s power was shaken by Eugenides’s daring trick, but his grabs at his neighbors’ lands are more aggressive than ever. Not content with what he has, Sounis will side with anyone who will add to his power. The magus is his most powerful advisor.
• Nahuseresh: Attolia’s ambassador from Medea, Nahuseresh is young, attractive (except for his beard, which he oils into points), and ambitious.
• Kamet: Nahuseresh’s secretary and slave.
• Hephestia: The Great Goddess, eldest child of the Earth and Sky, who rules over the old gods.
• Eugenides: Patron god of thieves, he was once human but became immortal.
• Moira: Recorder of men’s fates and Hephestia’s messenger, she has been known to visit Eugenides in his dreams.
• Like a Board to the Face: Gen is chased from the Queen of Attolia’s palace by her guards, who have orders to catch him alive. He nearly escapes, but is caught outside the city after running into a board nailed at head height between the trees. He is dragged back to the city and thrown in a cell. The queen retires to her room, where a woman’s voice warns her to not offend the gods.
• Warning Shot: An Attolian trader brings the news to Eddis and her council. Attolia, known for her torture, has promised to make Eugenides pay, as the Thief had left gifts on earlier visits. Eddis promises Eugenides’s father—her uncle and Minister of War—that she’ll see what she can do.
• Unhand Our Boy: The Eddisian ambassador bids for the Thief’s life but makes Attolia so angry that she orders Gen hanged immediately. Nahuseresh points out that this was probably on purpose, as Attolia has a reputation for slow, excruciating punishments instead. Attolia sends the Thief back to his cell. Later, Eugenides is brought to a blood-soaked torture chamber and shackled to a chair while he begs for his life. His right hand is cut off. Attolia asks if she has offended the gods, and Gen agrees that she has not.
• Home, Sick: Eugenides is returned to his queen. His arm was treated well, but his other wounds are infected, as are his eyes. Galen worries he may lose his sight. Eugenides’s fever worsens, and he suffers from screaming nightmares, forcing Galen to drug him to make him sleep.
• Slow Recovery: When fall comes, Eugenides has finally recovered enough to leave his bed. He is not blind, but he has lost weight. In the winter, he rejoins the court for the first time, where he talks to no one, and everyone around him talks of the weather and little else. Attolia keeps tabs on his progress through her ambassador and spymaster. Nahuseresh’s emperor pushes the ambassador for a finalized deal with Attolia.
• War, Then: In late winter, Minister of War sends his secretary to fit Eugenides for a prosthetic. Eugenides flees to the temple and hides by his god’s altar. Moira appears and tells him to stop whining—literal quote, literal omg. The next morning, Sounis’s magus is waiting by his bed. He tells Eugenides that Sounis is about to go to war with Eddis, and that Eddis has been at war with Attolia since last fall. Gen is furious, especially once he learns that several of his cousins have died on his behalf. Attolia is on the brink of civil war, and Eddis is worried Attolia will form an alliance with the Medes. Hostilities have paused for winter, but once spring arrives, Sounis will ally with Attolia to keep her from the Medes and to take down Eddis, and then Sounis will turn on Attolia and try to conquer her as well. Eddis asks Eugenides to find a way to steal her peace and time.
• No Longer (?) a Thief: Gen leaves his room and tries to reach the roof of the palace so he can think. He finds his way barred by a soldier—Eddis had him placed on a suicide watch. The next morning, the magus visits again and explains that he was sent to assess how much of a danger Eugenides still posed to Sounis and that he would have to tell his king that the answer was none, except perhaps to himself. As he leaves, the magus says, “Maybe you aren’t a Thief anymore, but you could still do something,” alluding to Gen potentially convincing Eddis to surrender. In Attolia, the queen continues to check on Eugenides.
• Well, He Did Something: Spring comes, and the magus wakes to the sound of thunder. Eugenides is standing in his room. The Thief had brought Eddisians disguised as Sounisian soldiers down from the mountains. They had infiltrated the harbor and the thunder was the Sounisian navy being blown up by planted explosives. Eugenides is not with them because he has a separate task: Steal the king’s magus. He planted evidence that the magus was working with Attolia, forcing the magus to flee his jealous king.
• Run: Eugenides and the magus flee up the coast into the mountains, where the magus will be hidden in a hunting lodge. Sounis, suspecting his magus and Attolia of the attack, attacks Attolia in turn and reaches out to trade with Eddis. Attolia, for her part, suspects the Thief of having a hand in the destruction but can prove nothing.
• *Wiggles Eyebrows*: Eddis must pretend Eugenides is retired to preserve his usefulness, but she’s caught sneaking to his rooms for a meeting and must imply that they’re having an affair. Gen has started wearing a hook as a prosthetic. Eddis and Eugenides visit the magus and picnic in the ruins of an old temple, and make a point of being platonically affectionate in a way that would fit within the narrative of their supposed affair to any watching guard who would care to gossip.
• Hespira’s Mother: Eddis tells the story of the ruined temple. The goddess Meridite had a half-mortal son, Horreon, who was a gifted armorer and lived in the caves of the Sacred Mountain. Unattractive and isolated, Horreon was lonely. His godly mother promised him a wife, but Horreon wished for a willing partner. The loveliest maiden was Hespira, whose mother Callia was a priestess of Proas, god of green and growing things. Meridite told Hespira her son was dying and asked her to come sing for him. Meridite gave Hespira a love potion to make her willing, but Hespira was clever as well as beautiful. She secretly dumped out the potion and was clearheaded when she was brought to Horreon. Meanwhile, Callia searched for her missing daughter. In the spring, Callia went to Meridite’s favorite temple and planted seedlings in the garden. Vines grew, pulling apart the stones of the temple. Callia offered the goddess a trade—the temple for Hespira. Horreon loved Hespira deeply, but he wanted a willing wife, so he brought Hespira to the surface to be with her mother. Hespira would not go. She had chosen, and chose again, to stay with Horreon.
• Eugenides? In MY Megaron?! It’s More Likely Than You Think: Relius reports the hunting lodge gossip back to Attolia, including the rumors of romance and Eugenides’s hand in the destruction of the Sounisian navy. Attolia sends everyone out and destroys the room in a rage. The same news is carried to Sounis, where the king is frightened to learn that Eugenides had been in his megaron, stealing his magus while the king slept down the hall.
• Worse Than Despair: The second winter comes. Eugenides is paraded before a hospital of war amputees. More cousins die in battle. Rumors from Attolia reach Eddis—Attolia has threatened to send Eugenides into the afterlife blind, deaf, and tongueless should she catch him again. Eugenides overhears and guzzles wine until drunk and has screaming nightmares that night. The next morning, Eugenides asks Eddis for permission to run away and hide, because he is terrified of the Queen of Attolia.
• Ten Days Later: Eugenides disappears for ten days. When he returns, he joins Eddis in her war room and lays out a plan to end the war, remove Attolia, and prevent the Medes from swooping in to “help.” Eddis is livid. The council thinks she sent her Thief, he could have been caught, and now he wants to lead the plan personally and throw himself back into the potential clutches of Attola. Eugenides confirms that this plan is what he wants, and that as Thief and member of the royal family, no one else can do this like he can. At last, Eddis gives permission for Eugenides to steal the queen of Attolia.
• The Royal Attolian Backstory: Attolia’s father betrothed her to a horrible man who called her shadow princess—as quiet and dull as a shadow. He didn’t notice as she gathered leaves from the coleus bush in her garden or care as she listened to his plans to assassinate her father, the king. She didn’t protest as her fiancé ate from her plate and drank from her cup as he planned to run her country. At her wedding feast, after the death of her father, she slipped the leaves into her wine, then watched as her fiancé choked and died. When her most powerful baron ordered her to marry him, Attolia’s captain of the guard shot him. Then Attolia rose to power alone, keeping her kingdom together and greedy barons at bay through ruthlessness and cunning. She modeled herself after Hephestia, who ruled alone, and wore a headband fashioned after the goddess’s own rubies. Eugenides, when he snuck through her palace, once left her a pair of ruby earrings to match. She never wore them.
• By Hook or by Crook: In the summer, Eddis bids her Thief goodbye, perhaps for the last time. Attolia is informed that one of her messengers was killed at the edge of the forest just outside her fortress. Nahuseresh is surprised; he thought he had stopped or killed all of Attolia’s messengers. The dead messenger’s six companions hand the queen the message—one of her barons has betrayed her and allowed the Eddisians to come down the Seperchia to attack with cannon. Attolia gives orders for Teleus to surrender, then sneaks away into a small boat guarded by a lone soldier. Meanwhile, five of the messenger’s companions return for their fallen comrade and never come back. Attolia and the cloaked soldier are alone together on the dock when he pulls the boat in with the hook attached to his right arm.
• A Choice for Attolia: Eugenides orders Attolia into the boat and sails out through a narrow pass into a tiny cove. Attolia cannot swim. Gen offers her a choice: she can drown, or she could marry him and make him king of Attolia. She spitefully confesses that she listened outside his cell every night after cutting off his hand—hearing him cry, then reciting an archaic prayer for help to the Great Goddess. But Eugenides is unshaken, and Attolia agrees to marry him.
• Dancing Under the Orange Trees: When they reach land, Eugenides hands her the three knives he stole from her pockets and shows her where to strike. But, he says, before she does, she should know that he loves her. He has loved her since he was a boy and watched from the trees as the forgotten shadow princess danced alone outside a party. Attolia doesn’t believe him. But she knows that if she climbs the stone steps of the cliffside without him, the Eddisians at the top will murder her. On the climb, Gen explains that the messengers, both “dead” and alive, were Eddisians and the cannon in the forest was wodden. Angry, Attolia outpaces him. . Eugenides calls to her and, to buy time, says he’d hoped she would like the earrings he left for her. Attolia mocks him and says that when she is actually willing to marry him, she’ll wear his earrings.
• Rescue…?: At the top of the cliffs, the Eddisian council of ministers and their soldiers help Eugenides and Attolia onto horses and ride to a hillside camp overlooking the Attolian countryside. Later, Attolia is awoken in the middle of the night by shouting and the sound of fighting. Eugenides bursts into her tent and kisses her, then tells her to stay inside. She watches as Eugenides and an older soldier fight back to back against the Mede army. The Eddisians fight fiercely, but are outnumbered and surrender. Eugenides is placed in neck chains and shackled. Terrified, Gen snaps at Attolia, telling her that going from shadow princess to puppet queen in one rule was impressive, and that when Nahuseresh tells her that he loves her, Eugenides hopes she believes him. That, he admits, was not a lie he told her.
• Nahuseresh Tells a Tale: Nahuseresh tells Attolia that a woman snuck into his room and told him where the queen was being held. Attolia asks if she spoke his name or shook his shoulder to wake him. Nahuseresh said the woman spoke his name, and then implies that Teleus has been conspiring with the Eddisians. When they return to the megaron, bodies hang from the gates—two of Attolia’s few loyal barons. Nahuseresh said they were traitors and he had hung them on her behalf.
• The Queen’s Plans: Attolia orders Teleus to make sure Eugenides doesn’t kill himself, then calls for a messenger and a bath. She dresses and puts on her ruby headband and ruby earrings. When she rejoins the prisoners, she is told that the prisoner seated behind Eugenides, the older man he had been fighting beside, had tried strangling the Thief to death. She makes sure Eugenides is conscious and listening, then dictates a message to Eddis to be sent with the older soldier:
She would not return the Thief a second time, Eddis does not understand Attolia’s attachment to the Medes, the Thief had let her choose her own fate, and she now has an answer to that proposal. If Eddis wants to save her Thief from suffering, a message should be sent back with the older soldier no later than the seventh hour of the next morning, on pain of death.
• Diplomacy, In My Own Name: Eugenides is locked in a tower room apart from the other prisoners and guarded by Attolian soldiers. The Eddisian army arrives, so Attolia and Nahuseresh ride to a ridge to watch the battle unfold. Attolia asks Nahuseresh if he recognized the older soldier—it was Eddis’s Minister of War, the Thief’s father. Attolia then outlines the many ways Nahuseresh fought to undermine her rule, and the many ways she outwitted him without him realizing. Then she shows him the battlefield, where the Attolian soldiers have stepped aside to allow the Eddisians to chase off the Medes, and the tall grass behind them, where Teleus has a crossbow trained on Nahuseresh. The Mede ambassador is placed under arrest and Attolia will marry the suitor who will let her rule—Eugenides.
• The Forgotten Thief: Eddis arrives, and the two queens discuss strategy. The Eddisian prisoners are released, all except Eugenides. When the two queens remember him, they hurry back to the megaron, brushing off Teleus, who tries to tell them about Nahuseresh. They find Eugenides on the floor, eyes closed, a wine cup tipped and broken on the floor beside him. Attolia thinks he has been poisoned and realizes, too late, that she loves him. Eugenides wakes, only asleep, then accuses the queens of forgetting him. He teases Attolia and they bicker, then he touches the ruby earrings she put on after her bath and asks again if she liked them. She says she does. On their way out, they learn that Kamet freed Nahuseresh and the two have fled for Medea.
• One True Puppetmaster: While the two countries meet in the Attolian capital over treaty details, negotiations stall. Attolia refuses to allow Eugenides to consecrate an altar to Hephestia. Cornered, she tells him the truth—the gods betrayed him. It was Moira, Hephestia’s messenger, who told Attolia how to catch Eugenides the first time, and who told Nahuseresh where to find him the second time. Eugenides barricades himself in an empty room, sacrifices an animal, and demands to speak to the gods.
• Do Not Offend the Gods: Moira appears and warns Gen three times not to demand Hephestia’s presence. Three times he ignores her. The room explodes. Eugenides demands to know why he has been betrayed—and why he wasn’t allowed to die in a fall as is the right of Thieves. He sees a vision of the Sacred Mountain exploding, burying Eddis in burning rock. Eugenides screams. In another part of the palace, Attolia at last prays to Hephestia, promising an altar and a temple where the Great Goddess will forever be worshipped if the gods will return Eugenides to Attolia. In the abandoned room, an unknown goddess asks Eugenides if he would have his hand back if it meant losing Attolia, Eddis, and Sounis to the Medes. That, she says, is his answer.
• And She Believed Him: When Eugenides wakes, Eddis is sitting next to his bed. She says she has seen the same vision of the mountain exploding. It is a warning, with time to prepare. He sleeps. When he wakes again, Attolia is there. Attolia says he has been asleep for three days, and that when they found him, the entire room was scorched black and covered in broken glass, but he was unharmed. Moreover, the goddess has removed the pain in his arm that had plagued him since the amputation. Eugenides demands to know if Attolia loves him. She counters that, given who she is, he shouldn’t love her. Eugenides says she is his Queen and asks again if she loves him. She says yes. He says he loves her. And she believes him.
Want to read more in the Queen’s Thief series?
- Find more recaps here
- Buy The Queen of Attolia now, or the next book in the series, The King of Attolia
- Prepare for the epic finale, The Return of the Thief