verities

| ALINA STARKOV WIKIA
| SHADOW AND BONE (novel) WIKIA
| SIEGE AND STORM WIKIA

GRISHA⇢ Grisha practice the 'Small Science' as it's called in their world. This means that they manipulate matter at its most fundamental matter. They cannot create matter, but only manipulate what exists to their advantage (note: they haven't fully explained how Alina's summoning works at a fundamental level so I'm not for sure on the logistics there myself). Alina is an Etherealki, a summoner. She summons fundamental elements that exist naturally and produces sunlight as a result. Using powers can exhaust a Grisha, even if in the long run the power extends their life. Alina feels more healthy when not suppressing her power, but using it in large bursts can also exhaust her and even make her pass out.

LIGHT : Alina produces sunlight from herself. Usually, she focuses it from her palms, but it can burst from any part of her. This light can produce heat, but she doesn't have the power to make enough heat to be damaging. She has used the heat to help keep herself as warm as possible while sleeping outside in a snowstorm. Alina uses this light in fighting to blind her enemies by bouncing it off reflective surfaces into the eyes of her opponent. She can manipulate the brightness of the light, how large out it goes, etc.

CUT : Recently, Alina has learned how to use her light to cut through matter. She's cut a ship entirely in half with her light and can cut a person cleanly in half as well. She summons and concentrates her light and uses it like a whip or a blade to cut. It's a quick attack to use. This is the only way that she's able to physically harm someone with her sunlight that's been shown in the book.

AMPLIFIER : Generally, Grisha are not meant to have more than one amplifier. There is no standard for having more until Alina. Alina has two amplifiers at this time. Alina's amplifiers are made from two, previously thought to be mythical, animals - a stag and a dragon. The amplifiers come from mythical animals - the stag, the dragon, and a third firebird - that were said to be created by Ilya Morozova, a Saint and a rumored Grisha, and are, as rumor goes, meant for only one person and that person is meant to have all three. The rumor is only known to a small number of people, and Alina's second amplifier is not common knowledge, only trusted with the same small number of people who know the rumor. Alina's amplifiers cannot be removed at all, and the expectation is that removing them will create a natural disaster on par with the creation of the Fold.

The collar around her neck made from the antlers of a mythical stag acts as a way to boost her powers. She cannot physically remove the collar herself. It's unsure if there's a way to remove it, or if only the Darkling can (as he controls half the amplifier). The amplifier helps her to use the Cut and create wider berths for her light. Should the Darkling ever be apped to eastbound, he could also fight for control of her powers through the amplifier. However, it has been shown that the connection goes both ways and she could take control of his own powers as well. In addition to the collar, Alina has a fetter around her wrist made of the scales of a mythical dragon. This amplifier does not tie her to the Darkling, as she killed the dragon herself and chose to make the amplifier herself. Her power hasn't seemed to change as much, slightly brighter and wider berths (up to a mile or more in light expansion) but the Cut remains the same. The fetter has affected her personality more than anything.

"The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak."

Alina's never really had a place she's felt like she belongs in. When she was in the army, she was small and weak and hardly worth her weight as a soldier. As a cartographer, she was mediocre at best. The person she loved in secret never wanted her back. And when she first entered the Grisha world, she couldn't summon her power on command. She never had many friends, no one ever loved her, and she was never good at anything. Alina pined for the day when she could have any one of those things, to the point where wanting consumed her.

Once upon a time, Alina had wanted Mal in a way that consumed her. Mal had been everything to Alina. He had been such a force in her life, that she hadn't even realized the extent of his influence over her. And that was before she had ever known love with him. Before Mal had ever loved her back, Alina had unknowingly sealed her powers away for fear of being taken from Mal at the orphanage. That unknowing suppression had caused her to be weak and sickly throughout the rest of her life, but it kept her near a man that had never been able to love her like she had loved him. She pined for him all her life and kept herself down just to be near him. And when she discovered her power, what she feared happened. She was taken from him. Eventually they found each other again and this time Mal loved her. Mal chased her. And that was always the way of them. One of them was always chasing the other. They tried to make it work, Mal is the most important person in Alina's life. He was there when she was young and he was there when she needed him most. At their cores, however, they are two different peoples with lives taking them down paths that lead them further from each other. And the further apart they grow, they more Alina desperately tries to cling to him for some semblance of her old life. The more Alina clings to him, the more bitter Mal becomes over the discrepancies between them. The two never truly find happiness in each other, and while they can never leave each other they're never really good for each other either. Yet she would rather die than give Mal up forever.

And then there was the Darkling.

The Darkling was a more dangerous force than Mal had ever been. Alina could weather Mal's indifference, but the Darkling's attention had been unknown. It had been intoxicating. Alina had fallen into a trap she hadn't even realized was laid out for her. The Darkling said all the right things, did all the right things, and when he touched her it was like something inside her burst at his calling. He was the darkness to her light. Alina wouldn't realize until much later how accurate that would be. They were always in opposition of each other, yet neither could live without the other. The realization of the Darkling's betrayal and terror taught Alina what the monster beneath the mask really looked like. But the damage had already been done. Alina had learned to need him. Ever after, her life was filled with a need inside her that was entirely unable to be ignored. Something inside her demanded him no matter how much she rejected it. She fought it and hated it and reviled all that he was, but when she stopped fighting it and answered his call nothing in Alina ever felt more right. There was something in her that she had no control of that answered his calling, because he had always been right. Like calls to like, and there was no one else like them in the world. Just each other. But Alina knows the terror of him and knows the danger of wanting him. And always she denies that wanting, fearing the weakness that it draws out of her.

That was how the Darkling got to her. He knew how she ached with wanting and he fed her lies and promises until she fell madly in love with him. She fell so fast and trusted so fully, that she never stopped to think about why he was obsessed with Morozova's stag and getting her that amplifier. Alina learned from Baghra the truth of the Darkling. He had created the Fold, he wanted to control Ravka, and he had used Alina's wanting to make her do whatever he wanted. Alina was crushed by the truth of this. She was crushed by the knowledge that her wanting had made her blind to everything, and the Darkling had nearly put a collar around her throat she could never escape from. He had tried to control her and the wanting of him had made her nearly allow it.

That was when Alina vowed never to be weak again. Alina had depended on Mal and lost herself in him until her power was literally consumed by her need to be with him. And when she lost Mal, she replaced him with a man that sought to control her and put a collar on her. Alina realized that she had been so lost in the wanting of a place to belong, that she had forgotten how to think for herself and exist for herself.

Alina has a natural tendency to become co-dependent on others. She feels loneliness constantly, and the slightest sign of affection can cause her to sway. But though the Darkling and his servant Genya. who had become Alina's best friend at the Darkling's behest, both taught Alina to distrust people, she finds herself falling into the same trap with Mal all over again. Mal serves as a safe haven for her, though. They grew up together, and therefore he exists before her distrust. However, Mal ends up breaking her heart and running off to be with Zoya. A fresh sort of betrayal. Then there's Nikolai Lantsov, whom she meets after the Darkling's betrayal and tells lies like he was born to it. But slowly, Nikolai makes himself worthy of someone she can trust, even allowing him to choose her bodyguards among the people he trusts. And thusfar, Nikolai hasn't proven himself to be worthy of that trust. But Tolya and Tamar, the bodyguards Nikolai gives to her, are people Alina believes in wholly, and in the end even they betray her as she realizes they always worshiped her as a Saint and bought into her religion and worked with the Apparat. These betrayals take their toll on Alina, and she strives to keep herself isolated for her own sake. But at the heart of it all, she will always be the girl left wanting.

The Second Army soon becomes a place that can fulfill some of that ache, though. Where once the Little Palace was a house of lies, Alina's made it into a better place without the Darkling. And in doing so, found a place for herself in leadership and her own power.

Power and duty are two things Alina cannot escape. Despite what the Darkling did to her, Alina's place was always in the Little Palace among the rest of the Grisha. She was a Grisha. It was where she was born to be. And she was the Sun Summoner. The only Sun Summoner to have ever been found. The Fold can't be defeated without her.

Alina struggles under the knowledge that she is such an important figure. While she feels like she was born to be Grisha, she fears the responsibility pushed on her. Ultimately, she has to be spirited away and taken back to Ravka mostly against her will. She struggles with the desire to be nothing but a normal girl, but power and leadership find her still. And when Alina lets herself stop fighting it, she takes to both like she was made for it.

Leadership was never something Alina intended to seek out, but when forced back to Ravka she decides it'll be on her terms there on. To keep herself from becoming too dependent on anyone else, and strengthen what remained of the Grisha army after the devastating loss of the Darkling, Alina took command of the Grisha. Alina is the most powerful of the Grisha, and she knows more about current events than them. She knows secrets about the Darkling, what they are all really up against, and what needs to be done to defeat him. She's never been a leader, and she's newer to being a Grisha than the others, but she knows she's the only one who can do the job. And, despite not wanting her power before, she wants to see an end to the terror that is the Darkling. She wants to save her country and take care of the people she's lived amongst.

The people of her country, though, seem to be confused with what she is to them. Alina seeks to save them from the Fold and the Darkling, the darkness that her powers were always meant to fight against for them. The people come to see her as a Saint, though, and the Apparat only further builds this up. While Alina slowly embraces her duty to save Ravka, she never accepts the way the people of Ravka view her as Saint. Not everyone shares this view, most of the higher classes seem to regard it as nothing more than religious propaganda nad frankly Alina is more inclined to agree with them, but a growing number of the population at large do see her as Saint. Alina never feels comfortable with the worship they give her or the refugees that camp outside Os Alta and paint their faces with the sun for her or the people who sell fake bones as 'genuine Sankta Alina.' No matter how much Alina comes to accept her power and duty, she never can accept that she's anything more than a girl at the heart of it all. Worship sits uneasily with her and is the one thing she's positive she will never embrace.