The Queen of Nothing

The pursuit of power is a dominant theme throughout the Folk of the Air trilogy. The Queen of Nothing examines power in all its aspects: what it means for people, how far are they willing to go to achieve power, and how power corrupts and transforms. One interesting aspect of how power operates in the trilogy is that the pursuit of power by itself is not depicted as necessarily evil. Jude is unapologetically ambitious and has always wanted power, perhaps because she wants to control her own narrative. A mortal girl bullied and belittled for her frailties in the faerie world, Jude knows power is the only way for her to assert her selfhood and agency. Jude’s journey as a character involves learning how to use power fairly and without manipulation.

Power becomes toxic when pursued at the cost of harming others. The novel contains two examples of parents who are ready to sacrifice and endanger their children to obtain power. The first is Madoc, Jude’s adoptive father. Madoc has always claimed to love Jude, yet when Jude stands in his way of taking the throne, he doesn’t hesitate to strike her with a potentially fatal blow. In the standoff in the cave, even Jude cannot believe Madoc would ever harm her. When he stabs her, she is incredulous that “Madoc, who sat me on his knee and read to me and told me he loved me,” would try to kill her (130). Such is Madoc’s lust for power over the throne and over Jude herself that he subverts the established norms of parenthood. Through Madoc, the text shows the desire for another kind of power as well: the desire to control another human being, especially a child. For Madoc, his children—biological or adopted—are extensions of himself. He feels entitled to absolute power over them, which is why he tells Jude that when he gains control over her, “I am going to keep you in chains” (129). The other parents abusing their child for power are Lady Nore and Lord Jarel of the Court of Teeth. Since their daughter Suren is the queen, they rule through her by keeping her violently imprisoned. When Jude first sees Suren, she notes that she wears a magical golden bridle, as if she were a beast. Later, her parents remove Suren’s bridle so they can use it to trick Jude, but they continue to control her through “a gold crown […] stitched to her forehead, and a thin gold chain that penetrates the skin of her wrists […] like a leash” (238). Fresh scars mar Suren’s face, indicating that her parents didn’t hesitate in ripping the bridle off her. Again, Lord Jarel and Lady Nore’s treatment of Suren reverses the ideal of a loving family. Suren is just a pawn to be used for power.

The text also explores how power operates in a society. To be regarded as powerful, one must be seen as strong, decisive, and, to some extent, merciless. This is particularly true in the Faerie court. Grima Mog begins to respect Jude after Jude beats her with a metal pipe. Later, Jude realizes she has some respect in Cardan’s court because she is known as the murderer of Prince Balekin. For Jude, the conundrum now is to appear powerful without sacrificing her compassion. She often fears she is becoming like Grima Mog or Madoc in her performance of power, such as when she chokes Oak to show him that she is in charge. After Cardan’s transformation, she instructs the Bomb that she wants whoever is scheming against her to be dead, no matter “how vague the plot or how uncommitted the players” (223). This ruthless approach is necessary to cement her power, but the question the text raises is how will Jude limit herself? She has already shown herself prone to want to control events and people, such as her prior control of Cardan. When she is offered the bridle to control the serpent, she feels momentarily tempted, intoxicated by the idea of her beloved under her absolute control.

Jude’s decisions at the end of the narrative show that she has come a long way from being the person who manipulated Cardan. In the end, she doesn’t use the bridle on Cardan but instead to bind Lady Nore and Lord Jarel to their daughter. She spares Madoc’s life, allowing him to live a quiet life with Oriana and Oak. While exercising power over Faerie means Jude will often have to make tough and violent decisions, the text offers hope that these decisions will be motivated by an overall sense of fairness.