Red Queen: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

The protagonist and narrator, Mare Barrow, walks through the marketplace of her hometown, the Stilts, picking pockets. It is the first Friday of the month, which means everyone is out of school and work early. It is swelteringly hot, and Mare would rather be in school even though she learns nothing there. Soon, she will no longer be eligible to go to school: at eighteen, everyone who is not apprenticed or employed is drafted into the army.

Mare’s three older brothers, Shade, Bree, and Tramy, have all been drafted. Upon leaving, each of them left Mare and her younger sister, Gisa, a set of earrings to split to remember them. Mare is saving up to give Gisa a set of earrings next year upon her own conscription. Mare’s family may never be reunited. Her mother always tells her, “Don’t think about it.”

Mare’s “only real friend,” Kilorn Warren, catches up with Mare and shuffles her along to “the show.” Attendance is mandatory for everyone except “essential laborers,” like Gisa, who embroiders silk. Mare and Kilorn enter a massive arena, the largest structure in the Stilts, which is staffed by security guards. The guards are “Silvers,” and Mare reflects that, “We are not their equals, though you wouldn’t know it from looking at us,” except that the Silvers do not stoop under the pressure of hard labor and disappointment.

Kilorn, a fisherman’s apprentice whose father died at war (unlike Mare’s father, who came home missing a leg and a lung), wonders what kind of creatures will fight in the arena today. A “strongarm?” A “telky?” These super-powered creatures are all Silvers. While Kilorn enjoys watching them rip each other apart, Mare knows the fights are reminders that her people could never survive conflict with Silvers.

The fights, called “Feats,” began as the executions of enemies of the state. Silvers found the Feats entertaining. Eventually, Reds were granted admission, and then arenas were built all over, and Reds’ attendance at the Feats became mandatory. Today’s match is between an incredibly muscular “strongarm” and a weak-looking aristocrat of the type who governs a region, like that of the Stilts, without ever setting foot there.

Silver security officers toss bread and electricity rations into the crowd as Mare seethes about how the match is clearly meant to scare the Reds into submission. Kilorn cheers as the match gets underway. Mare knows that he wants to see silver blood. This is what marks Silvers and Reds apart: Silvers have silver blood, while Reds have red blood. “This simple difference,” Mare states, “somehow makes them stronger, smarter, better than us.”

It appears that the aristocrat is going to lose soundly to the strongarm. Suddenly, however, it seems that the strongarm begins doing the bidding of the aristocrat. Everyone grows quiet, and Mare speaks what everyone is realizing: the aristocrat is a “whisper,” a person whose power is to control minds. “Whispers,” Mare reflects, “are rare, dangerous, and powerful, even among Silvers, even in the capital.” The whisper makes the strongarm plunge his sword into his own stomach.

The crowd, including Silver officers, is shocked because Silvers never die in the arena. “After all,” Mare states, “they aren’t Reds.” The whisper walks out of the arena, unfeeling. Mare contemplates the stories she has learned in school about the kind and loving gods who used to exist. She thinks they still do, only now, “They have come down from the stars. And they are no longer kind.”