Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination, emotional abuse, animal cruelty and death, and death.

Gold appears as a motif and symbol throughout the novel, connecting the series to the Greek myth of King Midas and his gold touch. Although gold is the prevailing aesthetic in Sixth Kingdom, the gold touch itself kills any living thing it touches, including the plants and a pet bird that Auren named Coin. The only exception is Auren herself, as she is the only living being who has survived Midas’s gold touch.

Gold also symbolizes Midas’s greed and obsession with power. The novel implies that Midas compulsively turns everything he owns to gold because nothing he has is ever enough to satisfy him, and Auren herself comments on the gaudy and excessive décor of the gold castle. Moreover, everyone’s gold attire—from Auren’s fur coat to the guards’ armor—makes them all the more conspicuous outside the castle and places them in enormous danger from poverty-stricken mobs and violent raiders. Yet this excessive show of wealth and power is the entire point for Midas. The gold is an outer representation of his inner greed and his lust for power, both of which fuel his control of Auren and his scheme to murder Fulke and take over Fifth Kingdom.