Broken Throne (Red Queen #4.5)(69)

? Maven is stripped of his crown and sentenced to execution by his brother. The war for the throne is won, and the undisputed king refuses to step down. The Scarlet Guard and Montfort dissolve their alliance with Norta, and kidnap Maven before he can be killed.

? The Lakelands return in full force to assault the weakened Norta, striking the capital at Archeon. Evangeline and Ptolemus of House Samos flee the city, forsaking their royal house. Their father, King Volo Samos, dies in the battle. The Nortan forces are almost overrun, until the Scarlet Guard and Montfort infiltrate the city with Maven’s guidance. When he tries to escape in the battle, Mare Barrow is forced to kill the fallen king.

? King Tiberias VII abdicates his throne in favor of a new Norta and reconstruction into the Nortan States begins.





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Montfort archivists have been hard at work, as have I, to best record and comprehend the events of the last year or so, including the Nortan Civil War. Naturally our own historians have been somewhat lacking, both in point of view and in the ability to write while weathering a change in government. Obviously, the documentation I have found in Norta is quite biased toward the Silver viewpoint and not worthy of inclusion just now. That said, I found it fascinating to look back on events through another lens, and you might find it useful as well, if not simply interesting.





—JJ




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safe passage for Ardents in hostile nations. The Monfortan government and military undertook a joint operation to identify, warn, and relocate Ardents within Prairie, Piedmont, Norta, the Lakelands, and the Disputed Lands. The need for secrecy complicated our efforts, but thousands of these individuals and their families were removed from these lands in the years leading up to the Nortan Civil War.

The first Ardent to be publicly identified outside Montfort was Mare Barrow, a young woman from the Capital Valley of Norta. At seventeen years old, while working as a servant to the Royal Family of Norta, she was caught on a Nortan broadcast using her electricon ability. While the Nortan government and monarchy quickly covered up her blood status by labeling her a Silver noblewoman, it was clear to anyone with knowledge of Ardents what she truly was. Barrow was betrothed to the second prince of Norta, Maven Calore, and used as a vital tool in Queen Elara Merandus’s plot to usurp her husband and place her son on the throne of Norta. While living as a Silver noble, Barrow was contacted by the Scarlet Guard, a rebel group, and oathed herself to their cause. She gathered intelligence and aided the Guard in its efforts to destabilize the Nortan government. Barrow was integral to organizing the Sun Shooting, one of the Scarlet Guard’s first open acts of violence in Norta. During a failed Scarlet Guard coup, Queen Elara arranged the murder of King Tiberias VI. Barrow and his heir, Prince Tiberias, were framed for the deed and sentenced to execution. They escaped with the aid of the Scarlet Guard. (For more information on the Scarlet Guard, see subsection 12.)

Following the exposure of Mare Barrow, Montfort dispatched more operatives to Norta and the Lakelands. Most were assigned to observing and eventually making contact with the Scarlet Guard, while several were charged with tracking down Barrow for purposes of alliance. The latter did not succeed. After rendezvousing with the Scarlet Guard at one of the group’s bases, she left with a small detachment including Prince Tiberias, a Scarlet Guard captain, and her brother, another Ardent. (For more information on Ardent inheritance, see subsection 3.) Montfort intelligence postulates that Barrow was forced to flee the Guard base, fearing persecution of herself and the Nortan prince. On the Nortan mainland, her team, much like our own, sought out other Ardents (now widely recognized and called newbloods in Norta) to protect them from the Silver government.

Now king, Maven Calore was seeking newbloods as well. Barrow was operating off a list utilizing Red blood mapping, a Nortan innovation. Later on, Montfort would use similar tactics to expand its objective of finding, protecting, and sometimes relocating Ardents in danger. On the outskirts of the radiated lands of the Wash, in the once-abandoned Corros Prison, Queen Elara was collecting the Ardents her son found. She was believed to be examining them and using her whisper ability to control them. Barrow and her group stormed Corros, and Queen Elara died at Barrow’s hands. King Maven tripled his efforts to find Barrow, and she was eventually forced to turn herself over to the Silver king. It’s clear the young monarch became obsessed with the Ardent following her time in the Nortan court.

King Maven was quick to use Barrow to his advantage, putting out broadcasts of her to the Nortan nation. On camera, she rebuked the Scarlet Guard and praised King Maven, calling for Ardents like her to join him. Paired with King Maven’s decrees lifting harsh measures on the Red population, it increased his popularity within the kingdom considerably. Many Ardents answered Barrow’s call, joining the king’s army to be trained and wielded as his weapons. The first vestiges of fracture appeared during an attempted assassination of King Maven, when three Silver houses declared open rebellion against their king. They supported the return of Prince Tiberias. During King Maven’s coronation tour of Norta, the Scarlet Guard and the exiled prince captured the fortress city of Corvium, weakening Norta’s northern defenses. Feeling the strain, King Maven signed a treaty with the Lakelands, effectively ending the Lakelander War, which had lasted more than a century. He was forced to break his betrothal to a Samos noblewoman to marry Princess Iris of the Lakelands instead. Now the Silvers of both Norta and the Lakelands were free to turn all their military might on the Scarlet Guard, which was still growing in size, notoriety, and danger.