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.
Themes
The Contrast Between Leadership and Tyranny
Much of the plot in Jensen’s narrative is driven by the different leaders’ contrasting methods of wielding their authority. Specifically, the author juxtaposes Silas’s authoritarian regime with Aren’s more egalitarian brand of leadership in order to highlight the stark differences in the two men’s values and priorities.
Although he initially hides his true motives, Silas cultivates a tyrannical style of leadership by spreading hateful propaganda and playing upon the fears of his people in order to incite their hostility against Ithicana. Silas even goes so far as to starve his own people to intensify this tension, placing far more importance upon feeding his own greed than upon taking proper care of his nation. Although he has the option to buy provisions for his citizens, he chooses to hoard weapons instead, framing Ithicana as a scapegoat for his own excesses. With this strategy, he also uses his people’s ire for their neighbor to justify his plans for conquest. Just as he indoctrinates Lara and his other daughters to infiltrate and destroy Ithicana from within, Silas also cultivates and weaponizes the fear of his people to feed his avarice and thirst for power.
By contrast, Aren is Ithicanian first and a king second, and he always prioritizes his people’s best interests, even when such a commitment comes at great personal cost. Unlike Silas, Aren demonstrates that his version of kingship is based upon earnest and even-handed service to his people, and he does not hold the attitude of royal entitlement that so thoroughly characterizes Lara’s father. Instead, Aren willingly sacrifices himself both in battle and as an individual in order to ensure the greater good of his country; even his decision to marry Lara and accept the terms of the Fifteen-Year Treaty reflects his values and priorities.
Significantly, Aren’s lack of entitlement is exhibited in how others treat him and in his own exacting expectations for himself. As Lara observes, “unlike [Silas], who was constantly surrounded by his cadre of soldiers, [the incident in Aela] was the first time since their wedding that she’d seen Aren treated like a king” (123). Lara’s limited understanding of treatment fit for a king involves a protective entourage always poised to defend their king or attack when ordered. However, Aren is a soldier in his own right, and he also refuses to place his worth above another Ithicanian. Given that Ithicana must often defend its borders against raiders and invaders, Aren does not have the luxury of using his status to avoid the dangers and hardships that plague his people. Instead, he leads by example and demonstrates that his priorities lie in maintaining the well-being of his kingdom rather than in chasing self-serving ambitions.
The Struggle to Balance Freedom With Security
In his role as king of Ithicana, Aren struggles to provide his people with the means to survive the frequent raider attacks, threats of war, and invasion attempts, while also giving them the space to live their lives freely. Traditionally, Ithicana has ensured its security from external threats by capitalizing on the innate isolation of its geography; it is described as “a series of islands stretching between two continents, the land masses guarded by violent seas […] [and] defenses [that] the Ithicanians had placed in the waters to ward off infiltrators” (15). However, while these measures keep spies and raiders out of Ithicana, they also severely compromise the Ithicanians’ ability to choose their own paths in life. Therefore, the setting of Ithicana stands as something of a paradox, for although it is the central point of trade among kingdoms, empires, and continents, the country itself is never connected to other nations through anything but tariffs, tolls, and war.
This situation creates a vicious cycle; Maridrinians hate Ithicanians because they know nothing of them other than what their king claims, while Ithicanians know nothing about Maridrinians other than the bloodshed of previous wars. This dynamic is worsened by the fact that Ithicanians are essentially caged within their own lands. Because maintaining Ithicana’s security requires complete secrecy, no one is allowed to leave—not even someone of royal lineage like Taryn. With the exception of “highly trained spies” (104) whose mission is to infiltrate other kingdoms, any citizens who leave or attempt to leave are severely punished.
Thus, although Aren is deeply committed to ensuring his people’s well-being, his goal is hampered by the fact that collective security for Ithicana is maintained through a type of imprisonment, whereby the borders of the country simultaneously keep danger away and keep citizens restricted to their own country. Thus, dedicated to the pretense of security, Ithicanians give up their own autonomy and languish in an endless cycle of war that compels them to become soldiers—regardless of whether they prefer a different lifestyle.
The Effects of Martyrdom and Zealotry
The most important part of Lara’s journey requires her to acknowledge and overcome her misconceptions about her father’s intentions and become a more conscious, strategic player in the true political games at work between Maridrina and Ithicana. Because Lara has been indoctrinated to prioritize the needs of her country over everything, her deep sense of responsibility toward all Maridrinians leads her to sacrifice her own well-being and best interests in order to unthinkingly support Silas’s agenda. Lara’s tendency toward martyrdom, while well-intended, can be easily manipulated by those with a greater grasp of the truth. Thus, Lara’s deep empathy for others ironically makes her the perfect weapon for Silas—a fact that he exploits when he repeatedly reminds her of Maridrina’s collective misery and poverty. Silas takes advantage of Lara’s willingness to put herself in danger for the sake of her people, and he often invokes images of Maridrina’s suffering in order to pressure her into providing him with a way to conquer Ithicana. In this way, Lara’s penchant for self-sacrifice prevents her from discerning that Silas is merely feeding her a line of propaganda to serve his own ends.
Jensen accentuates Lara’s naiveté in her early days with her new husband, for the protagonist’s determination to take down Ithicana becomes a zealous devotion that overcomes any incidental doubts she may have about her upbringing. Even though she witnesses the carnage that Ithicanians routinely face, Lara holds to the belief that she is working for the greater good of her people. As the narrative reveals, she has freely “condemned herself to [being a spy] in order to save the lives of her sisters” (291), and even though she knows that her actions will bring devastation to Ithicana, she willingly provides Silas with the information he needs to attack it.
The author thus illustrates that although Lara understands the amorality of her decision to reveal Ithicana’s secrets to Silas and is fully aware that this intel will result in the deaths of thousands, she nevertheless clings to the problematic belief that Ithicana’s destruction is necessary for her people to flourish. While she initially speaks of sacrificing only herself as a martyr to the cause, she initially sees the sacrifice of Ithicanians as no more than an unfortunate consequence of her mission. In this way, Jensen emphasizes the fact that by indoctrinating Lara with a willingness to sacrifice herself, Silas has gained a perfectly malleable agent to fulfill his plans for invasion.
