47 pages • 1 hour read
Danielle L. JensenThe Bridge Kingdom (The Bridge Kingdom, #1)
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 12-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary: “Lara”
Lara has kept a low profile since the raiders attacked. She receives a letter from her father, and Lara probes Aren for weaknesses. She picks at old wounds, asking whether he took pleasure in killing the raiders. In return, Aren asks about her worst memory, and she honestly describes being taken from her father’s harem and admits that she never saw her mother again. One of Aren’s guards, Lia, enters and tells him that the season has been declared over, although the meaning of this is not yet clarified.
As Lia and Aren talk, Lara reads her letter and discovers that the Ithicanians did not find Serin’s code. The encoded message states that the goods the Maridrinians have received from Ithicana are all diseased. Lia leaves, and Lara asks about Aren’s parents’ deaths. He will only say that they drowned. She then tries to get information about the bridge, but Aren recognizes her ploy and ends the conversation. He announces that they will visit his grandmother tomorrow. Angered, Lara kicks Aren out of her room.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Aren”
Aren hesitates to send an official missive to Silas. He goes for a walk instead, reflecting on the girls who attempted to leave Ithicana. The law dictates that these girls must be killed for committing treason, as their departure intensifies the risk of leaking information to other nations. Aren disagrees with this law. He recalls that his parents would always fight over the topic; his father would emphasize security while his mother argued that the law made Ithicana a cage. Now, Aren shreds the kill order against the girls. Eli comes to meet him and states that Lara needs his help.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Lara”
In her dream, Lara is reliving the interrogation and waterboarding that she endured during her training. Aren wakes her from her nightmare and asks about the scars on her body. She deflects his questions, claiming that her training punished disobedience harshly. He promises that she will never feel such pain in Ithicana.
Left to herself, Lara exercises, then meets Aren. They go to the Midwatch barracks and their honor guard, including Jor, escorts them to a small cove. Lara is blindfolded, and as they leave the cove in a boat, real terror grips her. She begins to vomit and shake uncontrollably, so Aren instructs their guard to head for the bridge. They make her climb up and inside, then remove her blindfold.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Lara”
Lara’s panic abates when she realizes that she has successfully entered the bridge. They blindfold her again and begin moving, and Lara tries to gain Aren’s trust by playing the role of a meek wife. They discuss her fear of the sea, and Aren reveals that he is equally afraid, given that his parents drowned. They emerge in the jungle, and the guards aggressively protect Aren until they reach his grandmother’s house.
The old woman, Nana, mocks Lara’s seasickness and berates Aren for allowing her into the bridge. She takes news of Ahnna’s marriage to the heir of Harrendell before giving Lara a root to chew for seasickness. She judges Lara to be as cunning as Silas and reveals that she was once an Ithicanian spy in Maridrina when she was young. As they talk, however, Lara begins to doubt the information she’s been given about Ithicana. Nana demands that Lara be left with her, but Aren refuses. They leave and are returning to the bridge when they suddenly hear a call for aid from Serrith Island. Aren and his guards run to help and bring Lara with them.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Lara”
As they run across the bridge, Lara takes note of one of its secret entrances. An Amarid war vessel is fast approaching. Using a grappling hook system, Aren and his group quickly makes their way across the water to Serrith. Lara is ordered to stay hidden, and she watches as Aren leads the others into battle. When she sees a group of raiders that would outnumber Aren and his guards, she quietly kills them all. Then, as Aren is about to be killed, she steps in to protect him. She struggles with the idea of protecting the villagers, imagining a future scenario in which her father and his army invade and kill them. When the villagers who have fled return, they are found to be mostly children.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Aren”
As Aren washes off the blood of his people from his hands, he struggles with the fact that he could not come to their aid sooner. They investigate the carnage; Jor still doubts Lara’s motivations and believes that Lara should be killed because she represents a clear threat. As funeral pyres burn, ships arrive to take the survivors to Eranahl. Aren finds corpses of Amaridian soldiers that neither he nor his guards killed; he theorizes that Lara might have been their killer, but he quashes the thought because she is uninjured. He tells Lara that she will remain with his grandmother while he attends the War Tides meeting.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Lara”
Lara learns about the season of War Tides: the two coldest months of the year, in which the seas are calm enough for others to attack Ithicana. She believes that this season will be the best time for Maridrina to attack in the future. Reminding herself that the Maridrinians are her priority, she devises an invasion plan for her father. Nana makes Lara work around the household, and through communal hardship, Lara befriends Taryn, Aren’s cousin and guard. They go to Gamire Island, and Taryn shows her how to use the catapults. As they feast with other villagers, Taryn tells Lara that she hadn’t wanted to become a soldier; she wanted to study music in Harrendell, but leaving Ithicana is forbidden. They return to Nana’s house, where Nana forces Lara to feed mice to the snakes that are kept in the household. Lara finds venom above their cages and feigns being bitten by one of the mice so that she can surreptitiously snatch a bottle. With Nana and Taryn distracted, she slips some of the venom into Nana’s glass.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Lara”
The venom takes effect, and Nana is incapable of leaving the outdoor toilet. Lara distracts the guard and slips away to the secret entrance to the bridge. She tries to enter but fails, so instead, she climbs to the bridge’s side. She overhears Jor, Lia, and Aren speaking about her and the merchants; they are inside the bridge. When she realizes that they are coming to retrieve her, she hurries to mark the entrance with her blood so that her father and Serin will be able to see it. She returns to Nana’s house moments after Aren, and he gives her the choice of staying with Nana or returning with him to Midwatch; he tells her that 20 Amaridian ships are now approaching. To return to the boats, they must walk through water, which frightens Lara, but she makes it to the other side. As they sail to Midwatch, they see the fleet of ships waiting to attack, and although Lia and the others wish to attack, Aren is determined to remain neutral until the Amaridians make the first move. Lara realizes that Aren is just trying to ensure his people’s survival.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Aren”
Aren and Jor lie in ambush on the bridge, waiting for the Amaridians to attack. They discuss the meeting they had with the Watch Commanders; during this meeting, Aren’s every decision was questioned because of the deaths in Serrith and Lara’s presence. At the meeting, Aren received a letter from the empress of Valcotta, who has declared that she will set an embargo against Maridrina, their long-standing enemy, despite Aren’s marriage to Lara. Aren returns to Midwatch to rest before the battle with the Amaridians.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Lara”
Lara watches as more civilians-turned-soldiers arrive at Midwatch to combat the Amaridians. From her observations over the past three days, she learns about patrol habits, signals, and the types of explosives used against ships—information that she plans to give to her father. As she observes the Ithicanians, however, she realizes that her father and Serin are likely deceiving her. Her hidden position is nearly discovered as she surreptitiously watches the soldiers’ drills, but she is saved by a horn that announces that the Amaridians are on the move. She returns to the barracks before Taryn realizes that she is missing, only to find a snake in her bed because she left the window open.
She convinces Taryn to take her to a cove so she can work on overcoming her seasickness, but Aren soon finds them. He has been injured, and Lara cleans the wound for him. After some questioning, she admits that she and her sisters were forced to learn how to stitch wounds on animals, servants, and guards. She does not tell him of having to stitch up the soldiers they had been ordered to kill. Another horn sounds, and Aren dashes off to fight.
In the following days, Lara helps the injured, including Aren. One day, he offers to have supper with her, but this plan is interrupted as more horns blast. The garrison south of them on Aela Island is being attacked, and their shipbreaker is jammed. Lara convinces Aren to take her there as a healer.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Lara”
Lara and the others rush over and find a giant, 40-soldier-strong Amaridian ship. Its soldiers are fighting on the beach. Aren sends Lara to the healers while the others fight. She genuinely fears for Aren but obeys his orders. Amidst the carnage, Lara resists joining the fray. As she watches more people die and more Amaridian soldiers arrive, however, she decides to help. She runs to save the wounded and bring them back to the healers. Realizing her plan, Aren and the others protect her as she carries more wounded back to the healers. When the ship is successfully damaged, the Ithicanians overcome the Amaridians.
Chapters 12-22 Analysis
This section of the novel intensifies Lara’s character development as she finally begins to judge Ithicana on its own merits. Faced with evidence that Aren and his people are not quite the oppressors that she has been led to believe, she begins to doubt her father’s claims, and this inner shift foreshadows more dramatic developments to come. In many ways, these battle-heavy scenes lessen The Effects of Martyrdom and Zealotry on Lara’s perspective, for she finds herself troubled by the fact that Ithicana is repeatedly exposed to onslaughts of raiders every year. In this light, the righteousness of Lara’s cause is implicitly called into question, and she is forced to reconsider her stance. Lara’s inner monologues reveal her newfound sense of doubt, for after the attack on Serrith, she asks herself, “Do you think it will be any different when your father comes with his army? Do you think they’ll show any more mercy?” (140). As she faces the carnage and misery caused by Amarid’s greed, Lara can easily note the similarities between the raiders’ vicious attack and her father’s plans to invade and conquer Ithicana.
However, although the events in Serrith rouse a burgeoning sense of sympathy in Lara, she does not feel compelled to renounce her mission at this point. Instead, the conflict complicates her understanding of her role in the grander political battle between Ithicana and Maridrina. While she may believe herself to have noble intentions that qualify her as a hero figure for the people of Maridrina, this misguided notion will later be proven false, and she is clearly Ithicana’s enemy and is cast as a villain through her close association with her father. Such is the power of her father’s manipulation that she steels her resolve and rejects her growing sense of sympathy for the Ithicanians. Her father’s insidious influence is apparent in her inner monologue, for she tells herself that the Maridrinians “suffer under Ithicana’s monopoly on trade” and “are dying as surely as if Ithicana were slitting their throats” (148). Although the seeds of doubt have been sown, Lara has yet to realize The Contrast Between Leadership and Tyranny, and despite her father’s abuse, she does not yet see him for the tyrant that he is.
Jensen explores The Struggle to Balance Freedom With Security, and this subtler interplay is shown primarily through the character of Taryn. Although Taryn is of royal lineage and is Aren’s direct cousin, she, like most Ithicanians, is not allowed the freedom to choose her own path and follow her dreams of studying music in Harendell. The only way for her to go would be as a spy, and as she admits to Lara, “[I]t’s not the same. It’s a false life where you aren’t yourself, and I couldn’t abide that” (156). While Taryn’s words strike an ironic note given Lara’s own skills at espionage, this passage is meant to explain the true consequences of Ithicana’s determination to hold the bridge. In order to maintain the veil of secrecy and security that cloaks Ithicana, its citizens must adopt false personas and serve as spies if they wish to leave the country’s shores. Thus, regardless of their social class, ability, or purpose, Ithicanians can never truly leave their country, nor can they be true to themselves even within its borders, for their sole purpose is to ensure their kingdom’s survival amidst endless war.
Lastly, the author uses the snake in Lara’s bed as an element of foreshadowing and a symbol of Lara’s ignorance, for she has left herself unguarded to the real dangers that threaten her. Given that Lara is caught off-guard by the snake’s presence, the moment symbolizes her naïveté amidst the broader political dynamics that surround her. At the moment, she believes herself to be nothing more than her father’s weapon—an extension of his will. However, as the novel progresses, she will eventually come to acquire a greater degree of understanding and will realize that Silas is in fact the real enemy.
