Fen Riorson
A spoiler-free guide to Fourth Wing, Iron Flame & Onyx Storm (The Empyrean).
Only showing what’s been revealed up to your current progress. Future events, identities, and relationships are hidden.
Overview
Fen Riorson is Xaden Riorson's father and the Navarrian-labeled Great Betrayer, known as the leader of the rebellion against Navarre.
Xaden describes Fen's rebellion as an attempt to help people beyond Navarre's borders, connecting his father's execution to the concealed venin crisis rather than only to Tyrrish separatism.
Fen's failed rebellion continues to shape the open revolution against Navarre: Brennan says the current effort has learned from Fen's mistakes and is not attacking Navarre or declaring independence.
Appearance
Renderings of Fen show that Xaden takes after him in looks, though Talia's features are also visible in Xaden.
Personality and Behavior
A confiscated aristocratic letter linked to Fen treats marriage as a necessary tool for securing a line rather than an expression of love, without revealing whom he was writing to.
Relationships
Old records say Fen had a sister, making his family line relevant when Violet tries to place Bodhi's resemblance to Xaden.
Before the Battle of Aretia, Fen sent Xaden away for Xaden's safety. Xaden's last words to him were angry, and the separation remains a source of guilt for Xaden.
Lewellen thinks Fen would be proud of Xaden's restored title and political victory, but Xaden rejects that comfort. He says Fen would be horrified by what Xaden has become and implies that Tyrrendor was the only thing Fen loved more than his son.
Talia claims Fen refused to let her take Xaden because Xaden was Tyrrendor's heir. Xaden forbids her to speak of Fen and names Fen's death as one of the sacrifices Talia abandoned him to face.
Abilities and Skills
Fen was remembered as a speaker with the power to hold a crowd with words, a reputation Violet explicitly connects to Xaden's public charisma.
Possessions
Fen's sword is a politically meaningful lost possession: Xaden says Lewellen thinks he may be able to get it back from King Tauri.
Important Events
Violet says Fen killed her older brother Brennan, while Xaden says Violet's mother captured Fen and oversaw his execution.
Violet's evidence for hating Fen includes battlefield reports that Xaden's father put an arrow in Brennan's chest at the Battle of Aretia. She once read the Calldyr execution death roll to confirm Fen's death.
In his last days of interrogation, Fen accused King Tauri and earlier Navarrian rulers of a vast conspiracy before being executed as a madman. His redacted last words are preserved as a defiant accusation against those who condemned him.
Fen's rebellion taught Navarre's leadership that content civilians are easier to control than frightened or disgruntled ones, according to Brennan.
The protection rune on Xaden's stone was made to protect someone of Fen's bloodline. Xaden says he was Fen's only child, making the stone specifically protective of him as Fen's son.
Xaden uses the failed Tyrrish secession under Fen's generation as the immediate historical caution against relying on an Aretia-only alliance without stable wards.
Ridoc describes Fen's rebellion and execution as part of the chain that sent Xaden into the Riders Quadrant and left him responsible for the marked ones at about seventeen.
Xaden opens Tyrrendor's border because he says it is what Fen would have wanted. Violet notes that Fen did not make that choice; Xaden did, committing blatant treason while she was lost in grief.