The Queen of the Tearling (The Queen of the Tearling #1)

Overall Content
Severity
6.4

Language

9.7/10

Alcohol, Drugs, Smoking

2.0/10

Intimacy, Sex, Immodesty

9.8/10

Violence, Weapons, Blood, Crime

10.0/10

Potentially Intense Themes

0.5/10

The Queen of the Tearling (The Queen of the Tearling #1)

Erika Johansen

With the arrival of her nineteenth birthday, Princess Kelsea Raleigh Glynn is ascending to her rightful place as the new Queen of the Tearling. Surrounded by enemies, including an evil sorceress possessed of dark magic, the young ruler stands little chance of success. But Kelsea possesses fearsome weapons of her own, including the Tear sapphire, a jewel of immense power and magic. As an epic war draws near, Kelsea’s quest to save her kingdom and meet her destiny begins- a wondrous journey of self-discovery and a trial by fire that will make her a legend…if she can survive.
Excerpt taken from book.

Language

H***-17

D***-20

A**-5

F***-17

B****-6

Bas****-6

S***-9

**Religious Cursing:

G**-14

Chr***-11

J****-1

Alcohol, Drugs, Smoking

A group of men are drinking beer around a campfire.

A woman and a group of men drink mead.  It was her first drink of alcohol. Her tongue was loosened, her legs were weak and she became very drunk.

A woman is given some black market liquid opium for pain.

The gate guard is an alcoholic and dreams of whiskey.

The Cardinal drinks at the bar frequently..

A man has a hangover.  He drank three bottles of wine with his prostitute.

Multiple kegs of beer, whiskey and crates of wine are taken from a man.

A man orders two whiskeys at a bar.

“Men are stupid about their beer, their cocks and their pride.”

A queen almost dies of nightshade poisoning, then is rumored to have died by slow poisoning over time.

A man smokes a cigarette a few times.

Men are often drunk.

A man sneaks a drink of whiskey on a journey.  He has three more flasks hidden.

Intimacy, Sex, Immodesty

A queen uses slaves for her sexual pleasure.

A woman asks a man if he impregnated her while she slept.

Women are sold to the palace by poor families to be used as prostitutes.

Prostitutes are commonplace in the city.

A man “gifts” a servant with prostitutes and can be possessive of some.

A man has a statue of a naked woman.

A prostitute who is now freed complains to a man for using her at 3am to “lick Petra’s cunt for your pleasure.”  She was never paid to be his prostitute but her parents were paid when she was fourteen and given to him.

The Regent had antisodomy squads because of his well known hatred for homosexuals.

A whore is wearing a translucent blouse and leaning back so her breasts are poking out.  She offers her services to a man.

A man thinks about his time with a whore where he couldn’t “get it up.”

A whore sitting at a table starts panting and tweaking her nipple.  A man stops her.

A Queen uses slaves for her own pleasure but also gives them as gifts.  She imagines one in particular and has her servants fetch him. She also has her servant drug him.

The Regent wouldn’t let his whore conceive because it would ruin his “sport.”  Most of his whores took contraceptives but for his favorite whore, he laced her food to make her unable to conceive.  He swore to kill any child she bore.

The Church forbade birth control, and the Regent kept his use of it secret.  If a woman got an abortion, her and the surgeon were sentenced to death.

A man thinks back to a time he slept with the evil queen.  “…the air reeked of sex… she laughed a deep bedroom chuckle that got him hard on all it’s own…grabbing at his cock as though it were a toy… entering her and gasping…”

A woman tells another woman that she’s too old to appeal to anyone for sex.

A father is believed to be a pedophile for young girls, especially his own.

There are several high-ranking men in military positions that are pedophiles.

A woman’s nipples “had hardened to tiny points, as though she were cold or excited.”  “Her nipples were rock-hard now, almost aching, and she moaned as the thing slithered off her…”

In a story, many women are raped and murdered during a village raid.

Children were sometimes stolen from families to send into prostitution.

A gate guard had several rape accusations.  He had beaten a whore almost to death then sliced up her face and breasts.   While raiding a village, he took a lot of time in the houses and when he did emerge, the women, especially the young girls, had ripped clothing and were stained with blood. Rape is implied and one young girl cries and cries in the cages because of it.

Violence, Weapons, Crime, Blood

Men ride horses toward a cottage with multiple weapons, including a mace.

A woman has a knife scar that starts at her wrist and ends at her bicep.

During a journey. a woman and her guards are being followed. She determines that when they get to their destination there will be many who try to kill her.

A man tells an intense story about villagers fighting with wood weapons while the other side fought with steel.  When the men died, women and children took their place. There was a young wife who was being raped and who tried to flee and “died…with the…soldier still inside her.”  The soldiers were raping and murdering.  They slaughtered babies. A general strapped a baby’s corpse to his shield. One man was stabbed in the gut but survived. They took his ten year old daughter.

A queen is so bothered by a slave snoring that she orders his tongue and uvula cut out then his vocal cords severed. When done, he is to be offered to other women.  The slave screamed and fought while being dragged out.

A queen dreams of having a young queen’s head for her wall.

People working the fields look hungry while overseers look healthy and carry sticks used for beating the farmers.  The sticks are stained with blood.

A hawk tries to attack a woman with orders from its master.  It punctures her neck and blood oozes.  A man gets it with his mace and it’s a “pulpy mass of blood, feathers, and gleaming innards.”   Skilled killers have tracked them.  They try to kill the woman, the man gets slashed at the collarbone and in response jabs the attacker in the throat.  Another attacker gets his knee severed and the woman watches his blood pulse out of him.  The mace is buried in the  attacker’s head, crushing bone.  The man is injured but throws the mace at the attackers spine and a snap is heard.  They are captured and the man is knocked unconscious.  Eventually she is also.

A woman’s uncle offers a large sum of money if her head is recognizable when delivered to him.  He also demands her scarred arm and necklace as proof.

A man is bound and blindfolded.  He has a rope around his neck like a noose.

A woman tries to take power over New Europe and in doing so slaughters democratically elected representatives, their wives and children.  Any people who resisted her found their families dead and their homes on fire.  The army fought against her but their weapons were inferior.

A healer promises to heal a sickly boy in exchange for the child’s finger.  After the boy is healed his father cuts off the finger in his sleep.  It becomes infected with gangrene and the son dies.

A woman dreams about the bleeding body of a girl who has her eyes torn out and the sockets filled with blood.

There is a story of a king throwing a man over the castle walls for proselytizing in secret.

A princess learns and see that people and children are stolen from their families to be paid to the evil queen. They are placed in cages to transport and sold into different forms of slavery.

If the people try to flee the entire family is sent away.

When seeing her child in the cages, a mother hysterically screams and is dragged away by her husband grabbing her hair.

A soldier is known for roughing up whores.

After escaping capture, a child is tortured to death in front of the parents. Both parents were sent away as slaves. The mother caught pneumonia and a soldier left her body on the side of the road for vultures.

A woman has bruises on her body from her husband beating her.

A young girl is hit by her foster mother.

The acting king is an alcoholic who ties a prostitute with a rope around her neck.

During her coronation, a woman has a knife thrown at her back.  She has to fight against attackers and stabs a man upwards between his ribs.  Blood splatters on her face.  The attacker falls dead upon her. She removes her knife and gets ready for more.  Her knife and hand are coated in blood.  A soldier chops off a man’s arm and buries the sword in his ribs.  The man shrieks as the arm lands several feet away.  Blood drips off a soldier’s arm and he has blood streaked in his hair.  Soldiers have blood dripping off their swords, one has a gash that looks like a bite.  A priest stares at a corpse nearby.  Soldiers throw two bodies over a wall with a wet thud.  Blood is pooling at a woman’s back from an injury.  Another woman is barely alive and has blood streaked all over her.

A man took several beatings from the antisodomy squad due to some effeminate qualities but it’s rumored that those men were killed because of it.

Each Gate Guard carries a sword and a knife.

A man is poisoned and deals with gut-wrenching pains until he agrees to do something for the antidote.

A man breaks into a woman’s bathroom with a knife and places the knife against her throat.  When he makes her get out of the tub he places the knife against her breast.  When startled, he cuts her enough to have blood trickle down to her nipple.  He grabs her (naked) as he prepares for a soldier breaking in.  He dug the knife into her throat multiple times.  Blood has dripped down and is pooling at her midriff.  The assassin grunts, goes still and crashes to the floor dead.  He has no mark on him and it is believed a certain magic killed him.

The assassin’s body was taken to the plaza and was placed on a pole to rot in the town square.  The townspeople ripped it down and tore it to pieces.

A woman sees heads on top of sticks, some weathered down to the skull, others freshly decaying.

It’s rumored that the Queen’s Guard’s set fire to an assassin’s house.  Some people didn’t make it out alive.

A gate guard had several rape accusations, he had once flung a woman through a wall and was once found drunk with a blood-covered hand and razor.  He had beaten a whore almost to death then sliced up her face and breasts.

A group of men build cages to kidnap about 200 women and children to give to the evil queen.

A man gets stabbed in the knife and dies with a gurgling sound.  He had fallen with his throat gashed wide open and lays in a pool of blood with his eyes open.  Two more get shot with arrows in the head and chest.  Another gets his head slammed against the ground and thumbs shoved in his eye sockets.  He felt his left eye fill with liquid.   A man kills another man by taking his head off with an axe.

A man knifed another man over a game of poker.

In a dream, a woman hears a child scream in pain, then a woman scream outside until it is cut off in a grunt. Her children are ripped from her hands, causing pain to the children and all are placed in cages, including herself. One of the men has a knife.  Another woman and her children are taken from their house and the woman has a bloody gash down her arm and her hands are bound.  Many more are taken and placed in the cages.  They traveled for days with no food and water.  Most of the women and children had grown silent because their throats were too dry to beg.

A woman uses a certain kind of magic and it throws her guards backwards.

During an attack, while shouting a warning, a man gets cut off and gurgles instead due to an arrow.  Another gets an arrow in the back.  A cage full of women gets lit by one of the men.  They are screaming hysterically.  It engulfs most of cage and two women catch fire.  One is pregnant.  Both die.  The other women are crushed against one wall.  A man tries to break the cage to let the women free but he catches fire also.

A man tries to find a torch and trips over many bodies.  The ground is littered with corpses. A man kills another man by slicing his throat with a knife. The dying man gurgles for breath then his body thumps when it hits the ground.

A man decides to kill another man but doesn’t get the chance.

The evil queen wants her servant to bring her a young boy and to drug him.  She slices a knife along his arm making him bleed but he is so drugged he doesn’t even stir.   She then takes her clothes off and calls on the “dark thing” that is similar to dark magic.  It requires the boy as payment.  The dark thing likes his innocent blood, he says it is good to taste. It shoots a spear of flame at the queen and she has to roll until the fire is extinguished.  Her hip is burned black and swollen.  It goes to the boy and the boy screams intensely. When she notices the dark thing next his lips are smeared with blood.  The boy had been bled dry.  His spine had been arched nearly to breaking, one arm pulled so far from its socket that it hung limp and twisted..  His mouth was frozen in a scream.  His eyes were empty sockets, also drained.

Potentially Intense Themes

The evil queen would take babies and give them as gifts to barren families.

A woman had three abortions before finally having the fourth child.

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