CHARACTER
The Assassin's Bladeby Sarah J. Maas

Celaena Sardothien

Celaena Sardothien

Quick Facts

Who They Are

Bold, glittering, and lethal, Celaena Sardothien is a paradox: a pampered assassin who craves music, books, and silk gowns as much as she wields blades. Trained to be a weapon, she is also a young woman learning what her power is for. Her novellas chart a year in which she chooses conscience over command, love over pride, and—devastatingly—pays for it. At heart, Celaena’s story pairs the swagger of a prodigy with the bruised tenderness of a teenager, turning her into a test case for Morality and Justice and the painful beauty of Loss of Innocence and Coming of Age.

Personality & Traits

Celaena’s bravado is dazzling—and strategic. She cultivates beauty as armor (“long, golden hair,” a “lovely face,” gold-ringed blue eyes) and as a weapon, knowing how opulence disarms enemies and steadies her own sense of self. Yet her pride and quick temper mask old grief from Terrasen, and a moral core that keeps breaking through her training.

  • Arrogant, image-savvy: Flaunts her status as heir, her gowns, and her fame—not only out of vanity but because spectacle is part of her battlefield. Her beauty is a blade she “kept honed,” even as it leaves her vulnerable to envy and control.
  • Cunning strategist: In Skull’s Bay, she engineers the plan to free two hundred slaves—improvising allies, timing, and deception with surgical precision.
  • Volatile and fierce: Grief ignites violence; she flips a chair at the news of Ben’s death and picks bar fights when “spoiling for a fight,” revealing a hair-trigger pride and a fear of powerlessness.
  • Compassionate with a code: Gives a fortune to a struggling healer and risks everything to save strangers from the slave trade, aligning her profession against her conscience—and choosing conscience.
  • Vulnerable beneath the mask: After Arobynn’s beating, the “patchwork of bruises” and “vicious black eye” she hides under a hood reveal how control and humiliation are wielded against her—and how determined she is to keep moving.

Character Journey

Celaena begins The Assassin and the Pirate Lord as Arobynn’s brilliant, defiant blade—and fractures that loyalty the moment she decides enslaved lives matter more than orders. Freeing the slaves awakens a personal ethic and forges respect with Sam. In The Assassin and the Healer, a bruised, humbler Celaena funnels her skill and savings into protecting Yrene, proving that even at rock bottom she’ll spend hard-won power on someone else’s future. The Assassin and the Desert reshapes her under the patient discipline of the Mute Master and the intoxicating camaraderie of Ansel; Ansel’s betrayal crystallizes the series’ meditation on Betrayal and Trust, and Celaena’s mercy shows the kind of strength she wants to practice. In The Assassin and the Underworld and The Assassin and the Empire, she seizes Freedom vs. Servitude by paying off debts and choosing a life with Sam—only to have Arobynn’s final treachery destroy it. Sam’s murder and her capture hollow her out, but the white stag—and the whispered promise not to be afraid—plant the ember that will one day blaze.

Key Relationships

  • Arobynn Hamel: Mentor, savior, tyrant—his “gifts” (luxury, training, belonging) are gilded shackles. He alternates indulgence with calculated cruelty to keep her dependent, and his ultimate betrayal doesn’t just cost her freedom; it poisons her memories of love, home, and talent by tying them to his control.
  • Sam Cortland: Rival turned equal, Sam sees the person under the legend and asks her to see herself that way too. Their partnership sharpens her conscience and softens her pride; their brief happiness is her proof that a different life was possible, which is why his death becomes the wound that defines her.
  • Ansel of Briarcliff: The first true female peer she lets in—funny, fierce, and as lonely. Ansel’s treachery hurts because it mirrors Celaena’s own capacity for ruthlessness, forcing her to define mercy not as weakness but as the boundary that keeps her from becoming what she fears.
  • The Mute Master: A counter-mentor whose quiet authority teaches her discipline without humiliation. He reframes strength as rootedness and attention, giving her both the gold and the inner stillness she uses to claim her freedom.

Defining Moments

  • Defying Arobynn at Skull’s Bay: Teams with Sam to free the slaves, choosing her code over command—proof that her ambition will bow to conscience, even at enormous cost.
  • Paying off the debts: Uses the Mute Master’s gold to clear both her and Sam’s accounts, a legal and psychological severing from Arobynn’s ownership—and a declaration that love, not fear, will guide her next move.
  • The sewer kiss: After anger and denial, she admits she would choose Sam. This reorients her from self-protection to shared future, making the coming loss catastrophic.
  • Discovering Sam’s body: The most shattering image of her youth—torture, mutilation, and the end of the life she was about to claim. Grief metastasizes into rage, which Arobynn anticipates and exploits, leading to her capture.
  • Seeing the white stag: Shackled and silent on the road to Endovier, the symbol of Terrasen rekindles identity. That flicker—naming herself, refusing fear—marks the hinge from victim to survivor.

Essential Quotes

"If Gregori’s been caught," Celaena drawled, brushing back a strand of her long, golden hair, "then the protocol’s simple: send an apprentice to slip something into his food. Nothing painful," she added as the men around her tensed. "Just enough to silence him before he talks."

This chilling professionalism showcases the persona she’s perfected: elegant, unruffled, efficient. The offhand cruelty is partly performance, a way to signal control in a room of killers—and partly the reflex her training has carved into her.

"I might do something as foolish as freeing the slaves," she said.

Spoken like a dare to herself, this line is both foreshadow and manifesto. Celaena names “foolishness” as moral courage—redefining what counts as success for someone raised to equate obedience with survival.

"So the people of Terrasen will always know how to find their way home. So they can look up at the sky, no matter where they are, and know Terrasen is forever with them."

Her love of Terrasen is not nostalgia but identity-keeping. The stars become a portable homeland, revealing why symbols (like the stag) can rescue her when nothing else can—she has a compass larger than fear.

"You’re a damned idiot," she breathed. "You’re a moron and an ass and a damned idiot." He looked like she had hit him. But she went on, and grasped both sides of his face, "Because I’d pick you."

The insult-turned-confession captures Celaena’s vulnerability breaking through her pride. Choosing Sam is choosing tenderness over isolation—a risk that deepens her humanity and heightens the tragedy.

My name is Celaena Sardothien,” she whispered, “and I will not be afraid.

This is identity as resistance. In the moment designed to erase her, she reasserts selfhood and agency—tiny, defiant words that seed the endurance she’ll need to survive what’s coming.