What Is The Eye Of Elena In Throne Of Glass?

The Eye of Elena is another magical artifact in the Throne of Glass series and immediately you wonder what this is supposed to do for our protagonist, Celaena. It is a blue gemstone necklace with roots in the ancient lore of Elena, the first Queen of Adarlan. Written by Sarah J. Maas, the history of the Eye feels like it’s been seeped into the pages and we can feel it there. As Celaena uses the Eye to search for hidden wyrdmarks and uncover long forgotten truths, it can be a great guide, but most of the time it feels like a burden to her. And then there’s the moment where she discovers its connection to the wyrdkeys. It gave me chills.

It’s a really interesting thing that this magical artifact is tied to Celaena’s development as a character and her growth, even though it can be sort of a burden for her at times. I especially love that The Eye of Elena isn’t just another magical plot device. It really feels like a piece of Celaena, and often when Celaena is wearing it, there’s this sort of unspoken, underlying tension because the Eye of Elena is a piece of Elena, the first Queen of Adarlan, and therefore a piece of legacy and something that Celaena can look to in order to understand her place in all of this. However, the Eye of Elena is also something that reminds her of just how little she actually knows. And as the story continues, the power of the Eye of Elena changes in really interesting ways.

The Eye is one of the most clever elements of worldbuilding in the entire series. At its surface, it is a pretty piece of jewelry left by Celaena’s predecessor, but it is actually a bridge between the past and future of the young assassin. When Celaena first gets the Eye, she thinks it will be a pretty royal trinket, but as the story continues, it begins to glow near wyrdmarks and magic. It becomes a tangible link to Adarlan’s past and the story really starts to come together as Celaena learns more about the world she has been fighting in. The way Maas drip feeds information through the Eye is masterful. One of the biggest plot twists in the book is when Celaena finally realizes that the Eye is a part of Elena’s power, and that revelation completely recontextualizes so much of what came before it. The Eye is not a passive object – it is actually driving the plot forward while also deepening the mythology and magic of the world. And on a more emotional level, it ties together Nehemia’s gift to Celaena, Celaena’s guilt over Nehemia’s death, and Elena’s legacy. It’s all very beautifully done.

Ugh, the Eye of Elena is my favorite sort of fantasy macguffin – beautiful and obscure until suddenly not. First it’s just a pretty trinket left by Nehemia, and then it starts to glow and reacts to the wyrdmarks on the pages of ancient books like a metal detector. Throughout the book Celaena’s relationship with it changes from a pretty accessory to a almost person-like entity giving her clues and driving her mad. The bit of lore about it being a fragment of Elena’s power is also really cool. Maas never info-dumps and instead releases morsels of information in tiny, addictive crumbs.

The Eye of Elena is a very unusual item in the world of fantasy because it is alive and has a strange, enigmatic agency that sometimes helps Celaena and sometimes just watches her. The way the Eye of Elena heats up or glows from time to time as if teasing her with information that she cannot yet understand is particularly effective. The connection between the Eye and the Wyrdkey hunt is also excellent. The Eye of Elena is a symbol of the massive amount of power, responsibility and secrets that Celaena inherits as Asha Man. The moment of revelation for Celaena as to the true function of the Eye of Elena is also excellent – a wonderful moment of narrative pyrotechnics.