Kelsea Raleigh Glynn has spent her life in exile, raised by foster parents in the woods with books as her only education. On her nineteenth birthday, she sets out with a cadre of guards to reclaim the throne left by her dead mother — a vain queen who sold her people into slavery to appease the fearsome Red Queen of neighboring Mortmesne. Kelsea inherits a sapphire with mysterious magical power, a kingdom in moral collapse, and enemies on every side.

Kelsea is bookish, principled, and sometimes arrogantly moralistic — she knows what a just ruler should be before she understands what ruling actually demands. Her journey from idealism to earned wisdom, complicated by her growing magical power and its disturbing effects on her identity, makes her one of contemporary fantasy's most interesting female protagonists.

Across the trilogy (plus a prequel), Kelsea transforms from an idealistic girl into a monarch capable of terrible sacrifice. Her battle against the Red Queen escalates from political maneuvering into war, and her visions of the kingdom's past reveal truths about how the Tearling fell — and what it will cost to restore it. The prequel, Beneath the Keep, adds a parallel story of the sparks of revolution that preceded Kelsea's reign. Themes of justice, the burden of leadership, corruption, and what it means to be truly good run throughout.