SPOILER WARNING May contain plot details |
Val Moren is the Court Poet for the High Court and former Seneschal for the High King Eldred.
Physical Description[]
He is stooped and spindly with a narrow face. His long hair is full of sticks. There is a scald crow perched on one shoulder. He leans heavily on a staff of smooth wood that has begun to bud at the very top. He looks like a young man despite being much older, because he has never left Elfhame. Although there are no age lines on his face, you can see it in his eyes.
Personality[]
He is strange, speaks in vague riddles, and is widely considered insane. Val Moren cared for Eldred deeply and keeps his promises to Eldred as if he was sworn under an oath himself, even after Eldred was killed.
While he is mortal like Jude and Taryn, he has never made common cause of their mortality. He never tried to help them, never tried to reach out to them to make them feel less alone.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
He is rumored to have been lured away from the mortal lands, where his father owned a mill, to Eldred’s bed in his youth. He's been in the Court since long before the time Jude and her sisters came.
Val Moren says that when he met Eldred for the first time, Eldred rode up on a milk-white steed, and all the imaginings of his life were as dust and ashes.
The Cruel Prince[]
Val Moren leads the ceremony to crown the new High King, before the ceremony is interrupted by Balekin’s coup. Val ends up kneeling on his hands and knees, on the dais while everyone is being killed around him.
The Wicked King[]
Since Eldred's murder, Val Moren has found himself at the center of the Circle of Larks. Jude sees him in the palace toasting an eel in the flames of a massive fireplace. Faerie artists and musicians sit around him. He's singing softly to himself. He asks Jude why he hasn't come to him for advice yet. Jude asks if he has any. Val Moren replies that he will give her the finest advice anyone's ever given her, but she will not heed it. He tells her that his advice to her is to learn to juggle better than he did. This makes Jude furious and she walks away.
Later, after Jude’s return from the Undersea, Val Moren is seen in the palace gardens beside a faerie boy picking blue roses. Jude asks him if he can get her inside the palace, and Val Moren gestures to the faerie boy and asks Jude what they are. Jude correctly answers faeries, and Val Moren describes the Folk as insubstantial and unable to hold one shape. He tells the story of how he and Eldred met, and warns Jude to never make a bargain with the Folk. He tells Jude that he cannot help her, having promised Eldred that he would never choose a mortal over a faerie. Jude insists, saying that Eldred is dead and that as a mortal he can break his word, but Val Moren only gives her a pitying look, as though she is the one mistaken.
The Queen of Nothing[]
In the halls of the palace, Jude encounters Val Moren when he puts his walking stick in her path, his eyes full of malice. He taunts her, asking how it feels to rise to such dizzying heights and if she’s afraid she’ll take another tumble, referring to her position as High Queen of Elfhame and her fall from the brugh’s rafters. Jude then confronts him about how he never helped her or Taryn learn to survive in Faerie, though they are mortal, and the same as him. Val Moren asks Jude if she thinks a seed planted in goblin soil will grow to be the same plant as it would in the mortal world, and tells her that he doesn’t know what she is, but that they are not the same, him having come to Faerie fully grown.
How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories[]
When Cardan is expected to attend state dinners, and other functions at Court, Val Moren is seen glaring at him with hatred. Val Moren still blames Cardan for killing his human lover, even though it was actually Dain who killed him.
Gallery[]

Trivia[]
- Val Moren can juggle.