Item from Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
A tangle of thorns where a nine-year-old boy was impaled and forced to watch his family die — the moment that created the Prince of Thorns.
The briar patch is where Jorg Ancrath was born — not physically, but as the person he became. During Count Renar's attack on his family's carriage, nine-year-old Jorg was thrown into the thorns, impaled on multiple points, and held in place while he watched his mother and baby brother William die. The thorns scarred his arms in a distinctive pattern he carries for the rest of his life. The experience shattered whatever version of Jorg might have grown up as a normal prince. What crawled out of the briar patch was something else — harder, meaner, and permanently convinced that the world offers only two roles: the thing in the thorns and the thing that put it there. The title 'Prince of Thorns' is not metaphorical. It is a scar report.
A dense mass of thorny briars along a roadside — ordinary and unremarkable until it becomes the site of an atrocity. The thorns scarred Jorg's arms permanently, creating the pattern that gave him his title. It is a plant. It changed the course of an empire.
Also known as: The Thorns, The Hook Briar