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“Adarlan could take their freedom, it could destroy their lives and beat and break and whip them, it could force them into ridiculous tests, but criminal or not, they were still human. Dying—rather than playing the king’s game—was the only choice left to him.”

One of the last sentences of Chapter 16, this quote demonstrates Celaena’s understanding that her plight is the same as so many others. The king’s competition to find a Champion is no different from his rule over the rest of Adarlan—it is a demonstration of his ability to use his power and influence to toy with the people he rules over, killing, jailing, and humiliating them as he chooses. Here, the King of Adarlan has become synonymous with Adarlan itself, showing his ultimate control over the land and its people. This quote occurs directly after one of the Champions, Sven, makes a run for escape and is immediately shot down by the royal guards. Celaena realizes that he has done the same thing she tried to do while she was enslaved at Endovier—use an escape attempt as a means of committing suicide. She presents the choice of death as the only remaining demonstration of personal agency that the people under Adarlan’s rule have left to them.

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