Celaena receives the Eye of Elena, a magical protective amulet, in her second encounter with Elena’s spirit. The Eye symbolizes Celaena’s secret identity as Aelin Galathynius, the lost princess of Terrasen, becoming a marker of Celaena’s destiny to reclaim her true identity and defeat the King of Adarlan. Throughout the novel, Celaena’s repression of her true identity is further exacerbated by the secondary alias of “Lillian Gordaina,” layers of concealed identity that create moral uncertainty for other characters about her ethical nature. When Nehemia returns the amulet to Celaena at the end of the novel, she symbolically returns Celaena to her true self. 

Celaena, Dorian, and Chaol have traumatic and/or antagonistic relationships with their parents, isolated from parental instruction on the precipice of adulthood (Chaol is 22, Dorian 19, and Celaena 18). The absence of positive familial influence makes it difficult for each character to navigate moral complexities. Celaena notes this similarity early in the novel, musing that “Both she and the prince had grown up under strict, unforgiving fathers” (71)—in her case, the assassin Arobynn Hamel, as her biological parents are dead. Meanwhile, Chaol’s father disapproves of Chaol abdicating his inheritance to be Captain of the Guard; Chaol feels more at home with Dorian at Rifthold than in his home city of Anielle.