A spoiler-free guide to the Realms of Letitia Bancroft’s fantasy romance series: the fallen Central Realm of Avardi, the mountain Clans of the North, the desert Craigñe of the South, and the war a generation ago that still shapes them all. Safe to read before book one. The Shattered Kingdom is an adult, enemies-to-lovers romantasy included with Kindle Unlimited.
The Central Realm
Liyana’s home, and where the story begins. Small, flat and rich: wheat and barley fields, a vast royal forest, and river trade along the River Vale. Its wealth is food, not steel or gold — worth taking, and too weak to hold.
Avardi’s castle is well guarded; the villages beyond it are not. Its king has made his own peace with the Craigñe, and the border villages are paying for it.
The Northern Realm
High mountains, deep lakes and pine forests, home of the Clan Warriors. There is one way in and one way out: the Northern Pass, a ten-mile climb through jagged peaks the clans call the Three Sisters. Snow seals it for three months of the year.
Bastian’s home, Dunbarven, lies in the mountains of Ravensthorne. The North is ruled by the Laird, defended by clifftop fortresses, and made rich by mines and the finest steel in the Realms.
The Southern Realm
The deserts of Ashara — burning by day, freezing by night, where rain is a rare and celebrated event — with tropical islands far to the south. The most populous realm, and a true warrior culture.
Its princes, the O’Far line, rule from Irskgard. Their raiders ride in black desert robes with their faces wrapped, carrying curved swords. The old prince died a month before the story begins; his youngest son rules now.
The Western Realm
Ruled by King Geoff and Queen Sophia Deville, and the Central Realm’s closest ally. The Western Realm fought — and lost heavily — in the Great War.
The Eastern Realm
A cold, remote kingdom that refused to be drawn into the Great War, calling it a matter that did not concern them. Little else is known of it — yet.
Some thirty-five years before the story, Prince Sharif O’Far of the Southern Realm — as mad as he was greedy — began attacking the trading ships of the other realms on their way east to the islands of Aurelia. Old alliances woke up, and a piracy problem became a war.
Every realm but Aurorafrost was drawn in, and most of the fighting happened in the deserts of Ashara, where the Craigñe knew the ground and their enemies did not. After six years the South was close to winning.
Then the Clan Warriors came down from their mountains. They pushed the Craigñe back across their own borders, killed Prince Sharif, and went home. Sharif’s son made peace, and it held for nearly thirty years.
Nobody in the South has forgotten who won that war — which is why a Clan warrior in the wrong place at the wrong time is never a small matter.
“Clan Warrior” is what everyone else calls the people of the North. “That’s what people call us, I’m told,” says Bastian. They live by three things — integrity, honour and kinship — and settle a slight quickly, whether it comes from a rival clan or a foreign prince.
Heir to Avardi
Twenty-six, red-haired, and by the court’s reckoning the wrong sort of royal: too loud, too kind, and too ready to climb out of a window with a sack of stolen medicine for the sick in the villages.
Clan Warrior of the North
Called Bass by his friends. Thirty, golden-eyed, foul-mouthed and in the Central Realm to trade steel and nothing else. He saves the princess anyway — and calls her Princess like an insult.
Aged Seven
A runaway stable boy Liyana took in and made her own. Quiet, watchful and completely fearless in defence of the people he loves, which mostly means kicking armed men in the shins.
Commander of the Craigñe
The Southern Realm’s real military mind, and the man hunting them north. He cannot afford to let either of them live.
Want the full story? Read about the book, read the opening, or see the series reading order.
Yes. It only covers what you learn in the opening chapters of The Shattered Kingdom and what the back-cover blurb already tells you. The book’s reveals, deaths and ending are not mentioned.
The warrior clans of the Northern Realm, a mountain kingdom reached only through the Northern Pass. They are famous for northern steel and for turning the Great War a generation ago. “Clan Warriors” is what outsiders call them.
The desert people of the Southern Realm, the most populous realm, ruled by the O’Far princes. Craigñe raiders on Avardi’s border set the story of book one in motion.
It begins in Avardi, the Central Realm, in autumn, and follows Liyana and Bastian north toward the mountains and the Northern Pass.