The Nature of Power in A Soul of Ash and Blood

In A Soul of Ash and Blood, the fifth installment of the Blood and Ash series, Jennifer L. Armentrout deepens her meditation on power by filtering it through Casteel’s retelling of the past and Poppy’s cataclysmic transformation. This dual lens exposes power’s duality: it is simultaneously a corrupting force—embodied by the Ascended’s institutionalized feeding—and the ultimate instrument of liberation when channeled through a conscience willing to shoulder its weight. Poppy’s metamorphosis into the Primal of Life and Death crystallizes this paradox, framing power not as a monolithic evil but as a volatile energy shaped by the hands that grip it.

The Ascended’s Tyranny: Power as Institutional Oppression

The Ascended offer the series’ most distilled portrait of power unchecked by compassion. Their rule rests on the "natural order" of the Rite, which demands the third and fourth sons and daughters of mortals as tribute—children stolen for sustenance. The plea of the Tulis family in Masadonia (Chapter 27) strips away any illusion of divine sanction. Mrs. Tulis, desperate to spare her sole surviving son Tobias, is met with the Duchess’s hollow condolences and the Duke’s unyielding decree: “Tobias is your third son, and this is the natural order of things.” The scene exposes the Ascended’s power as a mechanism of consumption disguised as piety. They invoke absent gods to legitimize atrocities, yet the kingdom’s rituals are designed to feed the vampry elite, not to honor the divine.

This institutionalized predation creates a society where Poppy Penellaphe Balfour—even as the Maiden—is kept veiled and weaponless, her innate abilities suppressed. The Veil becomes both a literal screen and a symbol of the Ascended’s control over knowledge and agency. To maintain their stranglehold, they literally hide the faces and truths of the very people they exploit. Power here is static, hoarded, and justified by a theology that rewrites murder as sacrifice.

Yet that stasis is fragile. The rebellion chant that erupts from Lev—“From blood and ash, we will rise!” (Chapter 40)—signals that power bred in suffering begets resistance. The mortal realm’s awakening mirrors the stirring of primal gods, proving that oppressive power invites its own obliteration.

The Cost of Resistance: Power and the Dark One’s Burden

Casteel Daneer embodies the moral corrosion that comes with fighting an enemy willing to wield unlimited cruelty. In Chapter 13, he confesses: “The truth was, the Dark One hadn’t been real. Not in the beginning. But he existed now.” His identity as the monster Atlantia needs him to be was forged in blood—through the murders of guards, the slaughter in Carsodonia, the stalking of villages. He acknowledges that some victims “deserved it. Too many were simply in the way.” At night, stripped of liquor and distraction, he feels “not a damn bit of guilt,” recognizing that the line between his cause and the Ascended’s thinness once he abandoned remorse.

This internal corrosion is echoed again when he reflects on the Tulises’ ordeal: witnessing a father beg on his knees forces Casteel to confront a system in which his own violence might inadvertently make him indistinguishable from his enemies. In Chapter 53, he tells himself, “The line between right and wrong is a thin one that is often crossed without intention or knowledge.” His admission that few found themselves on the right side that night underscores how power, even when wielded in the name of liberation, leaves a residue of compromise. The Bloodstone Dagger, used across the series for both rituals and executions, embodies this ambiguity: an object of sacrifice that can sever a life or seal a covenant, depending entirely on the hand that holds it.

Kieran Contou and Malik Daneer further complicate the portrait of power. Kieran’s wolven loyalty grounds Casteel, reminding him of the pack and the country he fights for; Malik’s captivity at the Blood Crown’s hands fuels Casteel’s crusade, yet his prolonged torment illustrates how powerlessness inflicted by an enemy can corrode hope. Even resistance, the book suggests, comes with a tally of souls and a psychological debt that cannot be ignored.

Poppy’s Transformation: The Liberating and Terrifying Primal of Life and Death

All threads of the thematic argument converge in Poppy Penellaphe Balfour. Throughout the series, she has been denied the use of her gifts—her “touch” kept secret, her strength corseted by the Maiden’s role. A Soul of Ash and Blood pushes her past suppression into apotheosis. In stasis, she is dormant while Casteel speaks their history back to her, and when she finally stirs, her eyes are “the pure molten silver of churning eather”—the eyes of the true Primal of Life and Death (Chapter 81). The very floor fractures around her bed, etching the intertwined symbols of life and death into the stone, a permanent mark of her new reality.

This ascension embodies liberation at its most elemental: Poppy is no longer a passive receptacle for divine power but the Primal herself, able to create and to erase. Yet the text does not present this as an uncomplicated triumph. The prophecy that haunts her—that she must become “the Harbinger of Death and Destruction”—reminds the reader that such raw power can just as easily annihilate. The Weeping Willow, which appears in earlier installments as a symbol of loss and mourning, seems to whisper through this moment: to hold the power of life and death is to be perpetually acquainted with grief. The Red Pearl, originally a token of hidden desires, takes on a secondary resonance as the core of vitality that Poppy now commands.

Contrast is sharpened by Millicent and her own Revenant nature, a corrupted perversion of divine power. Where Poppy’s transformation is chosen—her body acting as a vessel of love and sacrifice—Millicent and the Revenants represent power that consumes its host, leaving only hunger. Alastir Davenwell, who once used wisdom and authority to fracture Atlantian loyalties, illustrates how even a trusted leader can twist authority into a weapon of betrayal. Together they map the spectrum: power might liberate, corrupt, or mutate, depending on the soul that channels it.

The Thin Line and the Choice to Wield

Armentrout refuses to grant her characters easy moral clarity. Casteel’s admission that most of us live “with one foot planted on each side” of the line between right and wrong (Chapter 53) challenges the reader to see power as fundamentally relational. It is not inherently good or evil; what matters is the consciousness with which it is applied. The Ascended’s unthinking cruelty, Casteel’s willful brutality, and Poppy’s deliberate awakening form a continuum of choice.

When Poppy’s fingers finally twitch and her lips part, the realm holds its breath not because her power is unprecedented, but because it is unmeasured. The question that carries the novel forward is whether she will wield it as the Ascended did—to dominate and consume—or as something new: a Primal who has known suffering and refuses to perpetuate it. The answer, hinted in the softness of Casteel’s plea and the silver light that does not burn but illuminates, lies in the very nature of power itself: it magnifies what already exists within the heart. For the Ascended, that was emptiness; for Poppy, it might yet be love.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the Ascended’s use of power differ from Poppy’s emerging power?
   The Ascended hoard power for sustenance and control, disguising murder as religious rite. Poppy’s primal power is intrinsic to her being—creative and destructive—but her choices, rooted in compassion, aim to protect rather than exploit.

2. Why does Casteel claim the Dark One “wasn’t real” at first, and how does this feed the theme?
   Casteel created the Dark One as a tool of terror to combat the Ascended. His admission reveals that power enacted without moral reflection can erase the self, turning a liberator into a reflection of the very tyranny he opposes.

3. What does the Tulis family’s plea in Chapter 27 reveal about the nature of power?
   It strips the Ascended’s authority of legitimacy, exposing that their power depends on dehumanizing their victims. The scene shows that institutional power crumbles when empathy is absent, because it relies entirely on fear rather than loyalty.

4. How does the symbol of the Veil relate to power?
   The Maiden’s veil represents the Ascended’s control over information and identity. To keep power, they must literally blind others to truth. Its removal signals Poppy’s reclaiming of agency and foreshadows her primal awakening.

5. Is power ultimately portrayed as corrupting or liberating in the book?
   The book argues it is neither inherently. Power magnifies the nature of its wielder. In the hands of the Ascended it corrupts; in Poppy’s emerging grasp it holds the potential for liberation. The caution lies in the knowledge that every exercise of power leaves stains, and one must choose daily which side of the line to stand on.