ACOTAR 6 Prep: Everything You Need to Remember Before A Court of Splintered Harmony
This is your entire Sarah J Maas universe recap to get you ready for ACOTAR 6
If you want to be ready for ACOTAR 6 but the idea of rereading five ACOTAR books, three Crescent City books, and Throne of Glass feels impossible, this is for you.
We went through everything we think is worth remembering before A Court of Splintered Harmony. Where everyone was left after Silver Flames, the lore dumped on us in House of Flame and Shadow, all the weird little details that are very importnat.
Spoilers ahead for ACOTAR, Crescent City, and Throne of Glass.
Where did we leave everyone in ACOSF?
A Court of Silver Flames wrapped up nicely, but it left a LOT of the bigger ACOTAR plot hanging.
Feyre and Rhys survived, Nyx was born, Nesta gave back much of the power she took from the Cauldron to save them, and Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie officially brought the Valkyries back.
But elsewhere in Prythian?
Koschei is still hanging out at his lake with that suspicious black box.
Vassa is still cursed.
Beron still sucks.
Eris is still secretly working against him.
Spring Court is a mess.
Lucien, Vassa, and Jurian are still doing their Band of Exiles thing.
And the Elain/Lucien/Azriel situation has become very forbidden love.
Let’s Talk About the Valkyries
The fact that ACOTAR 6 is officially The Valkyrie Cycle: Movement I means the Valkyrie history deserves way more attention than we were giving it before.
The original Valkyries were ancient female Fae warriors who fought during the war 500 years ago. Cassian didn't just know about them historically. He actually knew them and fought beside them.
His first lover outside the Night Court was a Valkyrie named Tanwyn.
She eventually rode at the front of the Valkyries into the Battle of Meinir Pass, where they all died.
Cassian knew they were being sent into what looked like a suicide mission and tried to get the Illyrians to send help. They refused. When he fought back, they beat him, chained him to a supply wagon, and kept him from going after the Valkyries. By the time he woke up, it was over.
Which makes what happens with Nesta in Silver Flames hit SO differently.
Cassian couldn't save the original Valkyries at Meinir Pass.
Five hundred years later, his mate stands alone at the Pass of Enalius to save the new Valkyries.
Gorgeous writing, Sarah.
Our Eyes are on Gwyn
Gwyn is the one who actually researches the original Valkyries while working for Merrill and starts pulling their lost training techniques back into the world.
She, Nesta, and Emerie don't just copy what the old Valkyries did either. They start blending Valkyrie training with Illyrian techniques from Cassian and Azriel.
So they're not really recreating the old order. They're building a new version of it.
Also, Gwyn is a singer.
We are not saying that means anything.
We are simply pointing out that our next books are called Splintered Harmony and Forgotten Melody and are literally structured in musical movements.
Do with that what you will.
Nesta is Still that Girl
Nesta was already sitting on a ridiculous amount of unresolved plot after Silver Flames.
She's Cauldron Made.
She can use the Dread Trove.
She created Ataraxia and two other magical weapons.
She resurrected the Valkyries.
Then House of Flame and Shadow happens.
Nesta goes beneath the Prison with Bryce and Azriel, learns the real history of the island, fights Vesperus, uses Ataraxia to kill her, lets Bryce borrow the Mask, and ends the book with Gwydion, the Starsword, in her possession.
Bryce also specifically tells Nesta to figure out what the eight-pointed star connected to her means.
So now Nesta has an ancient sword tied to Prythian's first High King, a giant question mark around an eight-pointed star, connections to the lost Dusk Court, and an entire warrior order behind her.
Yeah. We're watching Nesta.
Elain, Lucien, and Azriel
Obviously we have the romantic mess.
Elain is Lucien's mate. She hasn't accepted the bond, but she hasn't formally rejected it either.
She and Azriel clearly have feelings for each other, and Rhys has already stepped in because the political consequences of that relationship could get ugly fast.
But honestly, Elain herself interests us way more than the love triangle.
She's a Seer and we still barely understand what that actually means.
Her visions are how everyone first learns about Vassa, Koschei, the lake, and the black box.
She was Made by the Cauldron against her will.
And after all these books, we still don't really know what Elain wants.
That feels very intentional.
Lucien's résumé is getting ridiculous
Everybody wants to talk about who Lucien is going to end up with, but can we look at this man's political connections for one second?
Lucien is connected to:
Elain through the mating bond.
Helion, who is secretly his biological father.
The Day Court, which he could potentially inherit.
The Autumn Court and Eris.
Tamlin and Spring.
Vassa and Jurian.
The human lands.
The Night Court.
He can basically walk into every unresolved political storyline in Prythian and have a reason to be there.
And with ACOTAR 6 specifically dealing with the human lands and rebuilding old alliances, that feels a lot more important than who he kisses.
We think everyone is watching Lucien's love life when we should probably be watching his résumé.
Azriel, respectfully, what are you?
We still know almost nothing about where shadowsinging comes from or what Azriel actually is beyond “Shadowsinger.”
His shadows speak to him.
Truth-Teller has belonged to him for centuries, but we don't know how he got it.
He doesn't really claim Illyrianhood.
Vesperus takes one look at him in House of Flame and Shadow and seems to know exactly what she's looking at.
She also recognizes Truth-Teller and basically tells him he doesn't even know what that weapon can actually do.
And let's not forget Koschei's extremely weird interaction with him in Silver Flames, when he tells Azriel that he has been preparing for him.
For him specifically.
We have not moved on from that.
Also, we're now heading into Splintered Harmony and Forgotten Melody and one of the major characters is called a Shadowsinger.
Come on.
Koschei is finally moving to the front of the story
Koschei has been sitting in the background for a while, but that's clearly over.
He's a Death God and the brother of the Bone Carver and Stryga, the Weaver.
Both of them are dead.
Koschei is not.
He's been trapped at a lake on the continent for thousands of years, but being trapped there clearly hasn't stopped him from making moves.
He cursed Vassa.
He worked with Briallyn.
He wants the Dread Trove.
He has some unexplained interest in Azriel.
And now he's gathering powerful allies who want the human lands back.
Then we have THE BOX.
Elain sees a black box when she has her vision of Koschei and Vassa, and we still don't know what it is or why it's important.
Which brings us to actual Koschei mythology.
In Slavic folklore, Koschei the Deathless is difficult to kill because his death exists outside his body. In one famous version, it's hidden inside a needle, inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a hare, inside a chest.
Sarah gave our Koschei a mysterious box.
We are looking directly at it.
Prythian is kind of a political nightmare right now
The Wall is gone and humans and Fae are trying to figure out how they're supposed to exist alongside each other.
There are still surviving human queens.
Vassa's curse is unresolved.
Beron is still High Lord of Autumn.
Eris wants him dead.
Spring is basically falling apart.
Mor has been spending a lot of time on the continent trying to build relationships with the humans.
And now Koschei has allies who want to take the human lands back.
The new ACOTAR 6 information also tells us that former alliances are going to have to be resurrected.
Which means we probably need to talk about Tamlin again.
Sorry.
Lucien even tells Feyre in A Court of Frost and Starlight that they're going to need Tamlin before everything is over.
We did not forget.
And then Crescent City blew the whole thing open
Everything above was already sitting there waiting to be resolved.
Then House of Flame and Shadow gave us about 15,000 years of missing Prythian history.
The Prison wasn't always the Prison.
The Daglan and the Asteri are connected.
Fae from Prythian crossed into Midgard thousands of years ago.
Gwydion originally came from Prythian.
Truth-Teller and Gwydion are connected.
Rhys's bloodline goes all the way back to this ancient history.
And suddenly a bunch of details from ACOTAR that seemed random don't feel very random anymore.
The ancient family tree you actually need to remember
If you only remember one ancient family going into ACOTAR 6, make it Fionn, Theia, Helena, and Silene.
Fionn was Prythian's first and only High King.
Theia became High Queen.
They had two daughters, Helena and Silene.
After everything falls apart, those daughters end up carrying the family line into two different worlds.
Helena stays in Midgard, where the Starborn line continues.
Silene eventually returns to Prythian and mates with a High Lord of the Night Court.
Rhys comes from her line.
She is also the person who turns the old Dusk Court territory into what eventually becomes the Prison.
And she keys the Prison wards to her son's bloodline.
Which is why Rhys's blood works there.
There is a LOT going on in that family.
Gwydion and Truth-Teller
These two weapons now feel like a giant flashing sign.
Gwydion, aka the Starsword, is back in Prythian and currently belongs to Nesta.
Truth-Teller belongs to Azriel.
In House of Flame and Shadow, we learn what happens when the two are used together, and it's a lot more than “cool sword plus cool dagger.”
Meanwhile, Azriel apparently has no idea what Truth-Teller actually is.
Again, sir. Where did you get this thing?
The Dread Trove is definitely still relevant
Quick refresher:
Mask: dead
Crown: mind
Harp: space and time
Horn: worlds and portals
Nesta can wield the Trove because she's Made.
Bryce still has the Horn.
Koschei wants the Trove.
Then we also have Narben, the missing death sword, floating around somewhere.
And Nesta accidentally created three NEW magical objects in Silver Flames: Ataraxia and two daggers.
One of those daggers was given to Eris.
Surely none of this will become relevant later.
Okay, but why can Amren read the Book of Breathings?
This is one of those little details we cannot get past.
The markings on the Horn are written in the same language as the Book of Breathings.
In Crescent City, Rigelus says that language comes from the Asteri homeworld.
And Amren can read it.
WHY?
Also, the Book of Breathings shows up in Jesiba's collection alongside books from the lost Library of Parthos.
So now it's not just people and magical objects crossing worlds.
Apparently books are getting around too.
“What was broken will be remade”
That's the tagline for A Court of Splintered Harmony.
Obviously Prythian itself is broken politically.
The alliances are broken.
Relationships are broken.
But the Cauldron was also literally broken.
We know it has a will of its own, we know the Asteri corrupted it from its original purpose, and we know its existence is tied to the survival of Prythian itself.
So could “remade” be much more literal than we're assuming?
Maybe.
We're keeping it on the board.
The Dusk Court
At this point, the Dusk Court feels like one of the biggest things to watch going forward.
We now know the Prison island had an entire life before it became the Prison.
It was connected to this ancient Dusk territory, Theia's family, the Asteri/Daglan, and an enormous amount of buried history.
Silene later turns it into a prison and hides what happened there.
Now ACOTAR 7 is called A Court of Forgotten Melody and its tagline is:
“What was lost will be reclaimed.”
Then there's the eight-pointed star imagery.
And Nesta's eight-pointed star.
And Bryce telling Nesta to figure out what it means.
If we finish all of this and that island is still just “the Prison,” we will be genuinely shocked.
Vesperus is extremely Valg coded and we need to talk about it
If you've read Throne of Glass, Vesperus probably made you sit up a little straighter.
Dark-haired ancient female.
Pale skin.
Red lips.
Worldwalker.
Black blood.
Spider imagery.
Has to be beheaded to die.
HELLO MAEVE.
Maeve is a Valg Queen and a worldwalker. She has dark hair and pale skin, uses mental manipulation, bleeds black blood, is killed by beheading, and has a major connection to the Stygian spiders.
And now ACOTAR 7 has spider and thread imagery all over it.
This does not automatically mean Vesperus is Valg.
But are we personally convinced she's Valg?
Pretty much.
Throne of Glass is officially part of this conversation
The biggest reason we can't completely dismiss TOG connections is simple.
Aelin literally fell through Prythian.
She saw Rhys and a heavily pregnant Feyre, and Rhys helped slow her fall.
That happened.
So these worlds are connected somehow. We just don't know the rules yet.
We also now have Urd, Wyrd, and the Mother.
Wyrdgates.
Ancient magical symbols.
Worldwalking.
Valg.
Similar ancient histories.
The farther this story goes, the harder it is to keep all three series in completely separate boxes.
And then we found the Wagner thing
This is where we really started losing it.
ACOTAR 6 is:
A Court of Splintered Harmony
The Valkyrie Cycle: Movement I
ACOTAR 7 is:
A Court of Forgotten Melody
The Valkyrie Cycle: Movements II & III
And we know there's still a Movement IV coming. That sent us straight to Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle, a four-part epic that includes The Valkyrie and ends with:
Götterdämmerung
aka
Twilight of the Gods.
And then it gets weirder. Sarah announced the Valkyrie Cycle titles on August 17, 2026. Wagner's Twilight of the Gods premiered on August 17, 1876. Exactly 150 years apart.
The questions we need ACOTAR 6 to answer
Honestly, we'll take anything at this point.
Who are Koschei's powerful allies?
What are the betrayals inside the Night Court?
What truths have been revealed?
How are they going to free Vassa?
Is Beron finally going to die?
When is Lucien finding out Helion is his dad?
What can Elain actually do?
WHAT IS AZRIEL?
How did he get Truth-Teller?
Why did Bryce leave Gwydion with Nesta?
What does Nesta's eight-pointed star mean?
Is the Dusk Court coming back?
What is underneath Ramiel?
What actually happened between Mor and Eris?
And for the love of God, what did Papa Archeron give Koschei?
Watch the full episode for the much more chaotic version of all of this, plus all the details we couldn't fit here.
And if you have an ACOTAR 6 theory we somehow missed, we absolutely want to hear it.
Get Booked,
Olivia, Emily + Dani