Prince of Thorns
core novel 2011 The Broken Empire
Record
| First published | 2011 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.82 (126,560 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 373 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780007423293 |
Synopsis
The story opens with Jorg Ancrath as a thirteen-year-old noble who witnessed his mother's murder and his younger brother's death at the hands of Count Renar's men, an attack during which he himself was trapped, helpless, in a thicket of thorns. When his father the king declines to pursue vengeance for the killings, Jorg turns his back on his old life and falls in with a band of hardened outcasts who become his brotherhood, roaming a kingdom scarred by long warfare, walking corpses, and other supernatural dangers left over from an earlier age, determined to carve out power on his own terms.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Broken Empire
- Series: The Broken Empire core; position 1 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Mark Lawrence
Awards (verified)
- Readers' Choice Awards (Fantasy), 2011: nominated; Reader-vote finalist round; did not win.
- David Gemmell Morningstar Award (Best Fantasy Newcomer), 2012: nominated
Notes
- From the series record (The Broken Empire): Jorg Ancrath's ascent from road-brigand prince to emperor (2011-2013). No universe-wide internal chronology is recorded: the companion Red Queen's War trilogy runs CONCURRENTLY with this one, depicting overlapping events from a different POV (shared scenes appear in both, e.g. Jorg's duel with Sir Galen), so any single linear ordering across the universe would be false precision, the author himself says the two trilogies 'can be read in either order' (recorded in prose rather than forced into integers).
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 Broken Empire: position 1 of 3: next King of Thorns (2012)
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Broken_Empire_Trilogy
- Mark Lawrence's official site
- https://fantasy-faction.com/2011/prince-of-thorns-by-mark-lawrence
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