Nicasia

Quick Facts

• Role: Princess of the Undersea; envoy to the High Court of Elfhame
• First appearance: Arrives at court to secure an alliance on behalf of Queen Orlagh
• Key relationships: First love of Prince Cardan; affair with Locke; rival to Jude Duarte
• Affiliations: Cardan’s inner circle alongside bold courtiers like Valerian
• Family: Daughter of Queen Orlagh, ruler of the Undersea

Who They Are

Bold, beautiful, and unbothered by mortal notions of tenderness, Nicasia arrives at Elfhame as a diplomatic pawn who refuses to act like one. Instead, she becomes the glittering edge of Cardan’s youthful cruelty—the partner who laughs at the same vicious jokes and prefers a cutting remark to a courtly compliment. She catalyzes Cardan’s hardening, embodying the idea of Cruelty as a Defense Mechanism: when intimacy threatens, she chooses dominance, spectacle, and pain.

Physical Description

Nicasia’s beauty is honed like a blade. She wears the sea as effortlessly as a coronet: “hair the deep aqua of the sea, drawn back with combs of coral,” and a “dress of gray sharkskin.” The details—coral, sharkskin, the posture of someone who has “never questioned her own value”—cast her allure as perilous. She is less a courtly debutante than a riptide: lovely from the shore, deadly up close.

Personality & Traits

Nicasia’s persona combines glittering charm with a readiness to wound. She gravitates to people who reject sentiment, admires power wielded without apology, and treats intimacy as a contest to be won rather than a truth to be shared.

• Arrogant, with principled contempt: She meets the land-dwelling Folk with “undisguised contempt,” dismissing flattery and gravitating toward Cardan precisely because he is rude rather than sycophantic. Her scorn is not insecurity—it’s policy.
• Cruel, and entertained by it: A ready participant in the circle’s pranks with Valerian and Locke, she aims to “have all of Elfhame kiss her slipper,” later urging Cardan to target Locke and Jude Duarte. Pain, for her, is social currency.
• Proud, thus vengeful: When Locke discards her, wounded pride sparks action. She doesn’t seek amends; she seeks recompense, revealing a code that punishes slight as treason.
• Alluring, strategically: The “lovely, venomous little grin” that ensnares Cardan is a weapon as much as a smile. She bonds with him through shared wickedness, making cruelty feel like intimacy.

Character Journey

Seen entirely through Cardan’s eyes, Nicasia’s “arc” is really the imprint she leaves on his. At first, she is the one person at court who mirrors his disdain. Their intimacy—half flirtation, half dare—makes cruelty feel like companionship, and Cardan, starved of tenderness, mistakes mutual malice for love. The Undersea dive promises a kingdom of fear and majesty, but he experiences it as confinement, foreshadowing their dissonance: her world demands surrender; he, beneath the mask, fears being swallowed. The affair with Locke shatters Cardan’s fragile trust. When she returns not to apologize but to enlist him in revenge, she confirms his worst belief: affection is leverage, not refuge. Nicasia doesn’t transform; she remains consistent—proud, cold, merciless—and that consistency pushes Cardan further into the role of the villain he thinks the world expects.

Key Relationships

• Prince Cardan: Nicasia is Cardan’s first love, the first person to whom he exposes his soft underbelly, even sharing the prophecy that haunts him. Their connection fuses superiority, boredom, and the thrill of doing harm; her betrayal ruins not just trust but the idea that love could be anything other than a weapon.
• Locke: Initially co-conspirators in mischief, she and Locke pursue each other out of appetite for chaos rather than loyalty. His quick abandonment for Taryn reveals the fragility of their bond and ignites Nicasia’s reprisal instinct.
• Queen Orlagh: As Orlagh’s daughter, Nicasia inherits a regal chill—“cold-bloodedness” as birthright. Sent to court as leverage in a political game, she learns to treat people as pieces the way her mother does—starting with Cardan.

Defining Moments

Nicasia’s most significant scenes expose how she wields charm and injury to maintain power—and how those tactics reshape Cardan.

• The first spark: Intrigued by Cardan’s rudeness where others flatter him, she quips that everyone else is “very dull.” Why it matters: their bond is rooted not in tenderness but in shared derision, laying a foundation too brittle to hold.
• The Undersea dive: She tries to seduce Cardan with the majesty of her realm, but he feels “oppressive cold” and burning salt, more captive than courted. Why it matters: the sea, like their relationship, is beautiful but suffocating—he cannot breathe where she thrives.
• The betrayal at Balekin’s Hollow Hall: Cardan finds her with Locke in his own room. Why it matters: the violation is intimate and public, a humiliation that hardens Cardan’s self-concept into something crueler and more closed.
• The demand for revenge: After Locke discards her, she returns to Cardan not to reckon with hurt but to weaponize it, asking him to punish Locke and the mortal girls. Why it matters: love is reduced to strategy; cruelty becomes the only language they share.

Themes & Symbolism

Nicasia personifies a love that dazzles and devours. She is the sea’s promise—vast, glittering, sovereign—and its cost: cold, dark, and demanding surrender. As Cardan’s “education” in intimacy, she teaches that closeness requires armor, reinforcing The Power and Peril of Stories: the tale Cardan learns from her is that love equals vulnerability, and vulnerability equals pain. Her steadiness—never repenting, only redirecting—makes her less a changing character than a tide against which Cardan defines himself.

Essential Quotes

“You’re very rude,” she told him. Across the floor, he saw Princess Caelia rushing toward them, her corn-silk hair flying behind her, too late to prevent the international incident that was her youngest brother. “I have many other, even worse, qualities.” Surprisingly, that made Nicasia smile, a lovely, venomous little grin. “Do you now? That’s excellent, because everyone else in the palace seems very dull.”

Analysis: This exchange sparks their bond: contempt recognizes contempt. Nicasia rewards insolence with attention, reframing rudeness as charisma. From the start, their intimacy is built on exclusions—who they’re above, not what they share.

“Come back with me to the Undersea,” Nicasia whispered against Cardan’s throat... “Live with me forever in the deep. We will ride sharks, and everyone will fear us.”

Analysis: The seduction she offers is power—fear, spectacle, dominion—rather than care. The Undersea invitation promises a throne built on intimidation, revealing how Nicasia understands love: rule together, not heal together.

“Punish them.” She took his hands, her expression fierce. “Punish all three of them. Convince Valerian he’d like tormenting the mortals. Force Locke to play along. Make them all suffer.”

Analysis: After betrayal, she doesn’t seek repair; she seeks a campaign. By turning hurt into strategy, Nicasia converts intimacy into instruction, urging Cardan to codify cruelty as policy. It’s a hinge moment where pain becomes his proof of power.