# The Farseer Trilogy - Work: Book series - Date: 1995–97 - Made by: Robin Hobb (Author) - Houses: Bantam Books - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-farseer-trilogy/ > A royal bastard trained as a court assassin tells his own story of loyalty and loss: Robin Hobb's first-person epic traded battlefield spectacle for intimate, often painful character study. **Why it matters:** The Farseer Trilogy showed that epic fantasy could be as psychologically intimate as a literary novel, and it launched the sixteen-book Realm of the Elderlings, one of the most admired long works in the genre. ## Quick answers **When was The Farseer Trilogy first published?** The Farseer Trilogy was first published in 1995–97. **Who created The Farseer Trilogy?** The Farseer Trilogy was made by Robin Hobb (author). **Who published or developed The Farseer Trilogy?** Bantam Books. **What kind of work is The Farseer Trilogy?** The Farseer Trilogy is a book series in the High / Epic Fantasy and Low Fantasy tradition. **Why is The Farseer Trilogy important?** The Farseer Trilogy showed that epic fantasy could be as psychologically intimate as a literary novel, and it launched the sixteen-book Realm of the Elderlings, one of the most admired long works in the genre. ## Overview Most epic fantasies of the mid-1990s were told from above, cutting between kings, armies and prophesied heroes. *The Farseer Trilogy* is told from inside one bruised head. FitzChivalry Farseer, the illegitimate son of a prince who abdicated in shame, narrates his own life as an old man looking back: a boy handed over to the castle stables, trained in secret as the king's assassin, used, broken and used again by the family he loves. [Robin Hobb](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/robin-hobb/)'s *Assassin's Apprentice* (1995), *Royal Assassin* (1996) and *Assassin's Quest* (1997) became the foundation of one of fantasy's most beloved long sagas, and a quiet revolution in how close the genre could get to its characters. ## Origins Robin Hobb was a new name in 1995, but not a new writer. Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, raised partly in Alaska, had published contemporary and urban fantasy as Megan Lindholm, including *Wizard of the Pigeons* (1986). For the Farseer books she adopted an androgynous pseudonym, partly because the narrator was male and partly to signal a new direction, separate from readers' expectations of her earlier work. The trilogy was published by Bantam Spectra in the United States and by Voyager in the UK. ## The story Fitz is six when his grandfather delivers him to Buckkeep Castle, seat of the Six Duchies. The king's stablemaster, Burrich, raises him; the mysterious Chade, a scarred royal half-brother living behind the walls, trains him in poisons and killing. Fitz possesses two magics: the Skill, the Farseer line's telepathic art, which he struggles to learn under a cruel master, and the Wit, a bond with animals that the kingdom despises and punishes with death. His deepest bond is with the wolf Nighteyes. Meanwhile the coasts are ravaged by Red-Ship Raiders who "Forge" their captives, returning them as soulless husks. The king's younger son, Regal, schemes for the throne; the heir, Verity, exhausts himself holding off the raiders with the Skill and finally goes on a quest for the legendary Elderlings. Fitz's fate is bound to a pale, prophetic jester, the Fool, whose relationship with him becomes the emotional spine of the whole Realm of the Elderlings. ## Reception & impact The trilogy was a word-of-mouth success and rose steadily in reputation. Readers responded to what Hobb did differently: little large-scale battle, great attention to injury, trauma and loneliness, and a narrator who is often wrong about himself. Its twin magics are a tidy example of the genre's growing interest in rule-bound [magic systems](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/magic-system/), but they are always about cost — the Skill is addictive; the Wit is a secret that can get him killed. The books also stand out for their animals. Fitz's Wit-bond with Nighteyes, conveyed in wordless shared sensation, gives the trilogy some of its most moving passages, and Hobb treats the kingdom's hatred of the Wit as a study of prejudice — the Witted are hunted, hanged and burned, and Fitz spends years hiding what he is. Hobb's work arrived in the same years as [A Song of Ice and Fire](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/a-song-of-ice-and-fire/) and deep into [The Wheel of Time](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-wheel-of-time/), and it offered a third model for 1990s epic fantasy: not sprawling, not grimly political, but intensely personal. Unlike many of its peers, the trilogy never became a game or a screen production; its main adaptation has been in comics, notably the French *L'Assassin Royal* (2008–2016), with an English comics adaptation of *Assassin's Apprentice*, co-written by Hobb, scheduled by Dark Horse from December 2022. ## Legacy Farseer was only the beginning. Hobb went on to *The Liveship Traders* (1998–2000), *The Tawny Man* (2001–03), *The Rain Wild Chronicles* (2009–13) and *The Fitz and the Fool* (2014–17), sixteen novels in all, which together form the Realm of the Elderlings. The final book, *Assassin's Fate* (2017), closed Fitz's story. By then the series had sold more than 1.25 million copies in the UK alone. The saga is complete. What it left behind is an example: an epic fantasy whose most memorable scenes are conversations, and whose greatest battles are with memory and grief. ## Facts - Robin Hobb is a pen name of Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, who had already published as Megan Lindholm. - She chose an androgynous pen name to suit a male first-person narrator and to separate the books from her earlier work. - The magic splits in two: the royal Skill, a telepathic power, and the despised Wit, a bond with animals. - The Realm of the Elderlings grew to 16 novels across five series, ending with Assassin's Fate in 2017. - A French comics adaptation, L'Assassin Royal, ran from 2008 to 2016. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farseer_trilogy) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.