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By A Court of Wings and Ruin, the third novel in the series (after A Court of Thorns and Roses and A Court of Mist and Fury), Feyre has already proven her personal strength, courage, and determination. She is, at the beginning of the novel, an immensely powerful faerie and the High Lady of the Night Court, wielding a wide array of magical abilities. Though she has faced dangerous enemies before and survived, Feyre’s first challenge in this novel is to adapt to the more subtle game of politics. In the Spring Court, she learns to conceal her true feelings, deceiving others in order to pursue her goals. Though she feels, at various points, an almost uncontrollable desire to strike out openly at her enemies at court, such as Ianthe, she nevertheless understands that she must control her rage, successfully tricking everyone but Alis, a seamstress, who knows Feyre well enough to see through her ploys. Despite her strong desire to return to Rhysand and Velaris, she bides her time, undermining Tamlin’s authority by slowly turning his allies against him. By the time she leaves the Spring Court, she has collected valuable information about Hybern and sowed serious discord among Tamlin’s people. Feyre, then, proves herself a cunning manipulator.
Still, Feyre struggles with her new role as a leader. Though she succeeded in her goal of weakening Tamlin’s reign, her friends and allies in Velaris are frustrated by this characteristic tendency to work alone without consulting others, and they chastise her for not working as a team and allowing others to assist her and mitigate risk. Further, Feyre’s actions in the Spring Court raise difficult ethical questions. She satisfies her desire for personal revenge against Tamlin, and reasons to herself that she is justified in sabotaging an ally of Hybern. Later, however, she learns that Tamlin was a double-agent working against Hybern, and the chaos she leaves in her wake makes it easier for Hybern to gain a foothold in the Spring Court, from which he launches his bloody assault on the Summer Court. Questioning her own motivations, Feyre ultimately acknowledges that her new role as High Lady requires her to subordinate her own desires to that of the common good.
Despite some of these stumbles, however, Feyre learns a good deal about leadership in the course of the novel. She is driven, above all, to create a more just and equitable future for humans and faeries alike. As a faerie who was formerly a human, she occupies a unique position from which to bridge the gap between these worlds. At the end of the novel, her proposal to renegotiate the treaty rather than simply rebuild the wall between humans and faeries reflects the compassion that she brings to her role as political leader.
Click here to read more about Feyre Archeron.
