The Glittering Court

About The Glittering Court

The Glittering Court moves Richelle Mead away from vampires and urban fantasy into YA historical fantasy: a colonial-era-inspired world where the eponymous Glittering Court trains lower-class and disgraced women to pass as nobility, matching them into advantageous marriages in a new-world colony called Adoria. The Glittering Court opens with Adelaide, a countess who trades her own privileged but stifling life to pose as a servant and enter the Court herself, chasing freedom rather than the marriage the program promises.

Each book shifts to a different young woman moving through the same Glittering Court world and social system -- Midnight Jewel follows Adelaide's friend Mira, The Emerald Sea follows Tamsin -- letting Mead explore class, ambition, and romance from multiple angles within one shared setting and timeline, with the earlier books' events visible in the background of the later ones.

Complete at three books, The Glittering Court is a lush, corset-and-scheming alternative for Mead's YA readers who want something outside her paranormal series.

How to read this series

Read in publication order: The Glittering Court, Midnight Jewel, The Emerald Sea. Each book follows a different young woman moving through the same Glittering Court system during roughly the same period, so while each has its own central romance and plot, publication order lets you watch the same events and world from multiple angles as the series intends. No supernatural elements and no connection to Mead's vampire-focused series -- it's a standalone historical fantasy world.