Prince Dain Greenbriar

Quick Facts

• Role: Third-born son of High King Eldred; heir apparent of Elfhame; leader of the Circle of Falcons; secret patron of the Court of Shadows
• First Appearance: Early court scenes in The Cruel Prince; first private encounter with Jude occurs in Madoc’s study
• Key Relationships: Jude Duarte (recruits and binds via geas), Madoc (general and chief backer turned assassin), Prince Cardan Greenbriar (younger brother he exiles and scorns), Oak (biological son he tries to erase from succession)

Who They Are

At first glance, Prince Dain Greenbriar is everything Elfhame wants in a future king: regal, restrained, and competent. He wears civility like armor, projecting a steadiness that contrasts with his brothers’ cruelty and decadence. Yet his elegance conceals a strategist who understands that rule is rarely secured in daylight. Dain’s dual nature—princely poise over predatory instinct—defines both his political style and his relationships.

His appearance encapsulates this tension: a polished prince with the Greenbriar wildness on display—hooves and deer-legs below finely cut breeches, small horns peeking through golden curls. The image is a promise and a warning: refined power rooted in something older and more dangerous.

Personality & Traits

Dain curates an image of honorable ascendance while building a covert empire of secrets. He is the candidate polite society can endorse—and the tactician the battlefield of court requires. His power is the kind that looks like safety until it’s already circled your throat.

• Ambitious and strategic: Dain turns information into leverage, commanding the Circle of Falcons in public while cultivating the Court of Shadows in private—proof that he understands power, politics, and ambition are won as much through silence as spectacle.
• Perceptive and manipulative: He recognizes Jude’s unique value the instant he sees her lie. By praising her gifts and offering belonging, he reframes exploitation as mentorship, recruiting her precisely by feeding the hunger others mock.
• Ruthless and pragmatic: Behind the respectable façade, he orders the poisoning of Liriope to obliterate evidence that he fathered Oak. Threats to his claim—no matter how intimate—are problems to be removed.
• Controlling: His “gift” of a geas grants Jude immunity to all enchantments but his own, a masterstroke that markets itself as empowerment even as it ensures her obedience.
• Image-conscious: From exiling Cardan to policing his public restraint, Dain manages optics as tightly as he manages spies; the moral high ground is part of his campaign strategy.

Character Journey

Dain’s arc is one of revelation rather than transformation. Introduced as the sensible alternative to brothers like the cruel Prince Cardan Greenbriar and the decadent Balekin, he looks like Elfhame’s best hope. His recruitment of Jude exposes a second self: the spymaster who does his cleanest work in shadows. The knife-edge between image and reality snaps at his coronation, where his abrupt murder detonates the illusion of stability he embodied. Only in death does the full picture emerge—Cardan’s disclosures about Liriope, Oak, and Dain’s machinations recast him as the most dangerous Greenbriar: not because he was the most vicious, but because he was the most respectable while being so. For Jude, Dain becomes a case study in Faerie’s paradox—where virtue is a costume and power is the trick beneath it.

Key Relationships

• Jude Duarte: Dain identifies Jude’s mortal capacity for lying as a tactical edge, recruits her into the Court of Shadows, and binds her with a geas that both protects and subjugates. He validates her ambition to harness it, modeling a version of power that looks like permission even as it tightens a leash. After his death, the tools he gave her remain—stripped of the master who intended to use them.

• Madoc: As general and member of the Circle of Falcons, Madoc champions Dain as the “hungry” king Elfhame needs, aligning military might with Dain’s political machinery. That support becomes a blade at the coronation, where Madoc kills Dain—an act driven by the explosive truth of Oak’s parentage and the recognition that Dain’s reign would imperil Madoc’s own designs.

• Prince Cardan Greenbriar: Dain’s contempt for Cardan translates into exile and neglect—he banishes his brother from the palace, leaving him vulnerable in Balekin’s orbit. Cardan’s later revelations strip Dain’s sanctimony bare, turning the scorned younger brother into the storyteller who breaks Dain’s carefully managed myth.

• Oak: Oak’s existence—the hidden son Dain tried to erase by poisoning Liriope—undermines the legitimacy Dain sells to the court. In trying to obliterate the threat, Dain creates the very catalyst that topples his succession plan and reshapes the board.

Defining Moments

Dain’s turning points chart a steady tightening of control followed by a swift unraveling—the classic arc of a statesman whose greatest talent is concealment.

• Recruiting Jude in Madoc’s study: He tests her lying, praises it, and offers a place in the Court of Shadows.

  • Why it matters: It inaugurates Jude’s espionage career and reveals Dain’s preference for clandestine tools over chivalric ones.

• The geas of “protection”: Dain grants Jude immunity to glamour—except his own—binding her to silence and obedience.

  • Why it matters: A perfect emblem of Faerie bargains and of family, loyalty, and betrayal: every boon is a shackle, every safeguard a claim.

• Exiling Cardan: Dain pushes his brother out of the palace and into Balekin’s reach.

  • Why it matters: It displays Dain’s appetite for optics and scapegoats, sowing the resentment that will later narrate his downfall.

• Murder at the coronation: As the crown nears his brow, Madoc strikes and kills him.

  • Why it matters: The kingdom’s stabilizing figure is removed in an instant, exposing how much of that stability was theater—and thrusting Jude into a vacuum she must navigate without the patron who drafted her.

Essential Quotes

"I know humans can lie, but to watch you do it is incredible. Do it again." This is recruitment as seduction. Dain admires not Jude as a person but the utility of her lie, turning a human vulnerability into a faerie weapon. The repetition—“Do it again.”—reads like command disguised as praise, establishing the power dynamic that will define their bond.

"I need someone who can lie, someone with ambition. Spy for me. Join my Court of Shadows. I can make you powerful beyond what you might ever hope." He names the very hungers others shame Jude for and sells them back as a vocation. The promise of power functions as both carrot and contract: he recognizes that ambition is easiest to bind when it feels chosen.

"Jude Duarte, daughter of clay, from this day forward no Faerie glamour will addle your mind. No enchantment will move your body against your will. None save for that of the maker of this geas... Now no one will be able to control you. Except for me." The rhetoric of liberation collapses in its final clause. Dain performs benevolence while writing himself into the exception, a neat illustration of his governing style: grant the right, reserve the override.

"Although we are brothers, we are very different from each other. I will never be cruel to you for the sake of delighting in it. If you swear yourself into my service, you will find yourself rewarded." He distinguishes himself from his brothers not by rejecting cruelty, but by refusing the performance of it. The reward he offers is conditional loyalty—proof that his “difference” is one of presentation, not principle.