Lord of Emperors
core novel 2000 The Lions of Al-Rassan / The Sarantine Mosaic
Record
| First published | 2000 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.31 (14,688 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 560 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780670880928 |
Synopsis
Lord of Emperors, the second and concluding volume of the Sarantine Mosaic, picks up with the mosaicist Crispin continuing his monumental commission in Sarantium's great sanctuary while the empire, under Emperor Valerius II, prepares for a major military campaign. A physician named Rustem, arriving from the rival eastern empire of Bassania, becomes entangled in the same web of court politics and rivalries that surround Crispin, as the story follows the interplay between the lives of the powerful, such as the empress Alixana and the supreme military commander Leontes, and the fates of ordinary people caught up in their decisions. Tensions over succession, religious iconography, and imperial legitimacy continue to build around Crispin's art and the empire's ambitions as the volume unfolds.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Lions of Al-Rassan / The Sarantine Mosaic
- Series: The Sarantine Mosaic core; position 2 of 2 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Guy Gavriel Kay
Notes
- From the series record (The Sarantine Mosaic): A Byzantium (Sarantium) analogue set generations after The Lions of Al-Rassan, in the same invented world. Sailing to Sarantium was a 1999 World Fantasy Award Best Novel nominee (FictionDB, corroborating the award body's own shortlist; winner was The Antelope Wife).
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series The Sarantine Mosaic: position 2 of 2: previous Sailing to Sarantium (1998)
Sources
← The Lions of Al-Rassan / The Sarantine Mosaic dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.