Kaedlaw Burdun Prince Kaedlaw Burdun was the son of Queen Brianna Burdun of Hartsvale . Description . In his natural form , Kaedlaw was a rather normal - looking child , although he was extremely large for his age . He had gray eyes , a cleft chin , straight nose , and curly , black hair . However , due to the strange circumstances of his conception , when he was first born , he appeared to different people as they expected to see him — either as an extremely handsome child with the features of Tavis Burdun or an extremely ugly , even hideous or monstrous child . Relationships . Kaedlaw ' s mother was Brianna , a descendant of Brun , son of Hartkiller , which made both her and her son descendants of Annam All - Father . As a child of prophecy and carrying the blood of Annam All - Father , Kaedlaw had a unique and miraculous parentage — he literally had two fathers , the ettin Arno and Julian and the firbolg hero Tavis Burdun . In this way , he had three different lines of giant s in his ancestry . History . In 1366 DR , his mother , Brianna was magically drugged and raped by Arno and Julian in disguise as an attractive human prince and under orders from the Twilight Spirit . Shortly thereafter , the ettin was defeated and Brianna was freed of the enchantment . She then married her rescuer , Tavis Burdun . By some unknown magic , the seed of both her rapist and her husband somehow combined with hers within her womb . During her pregnancy , the firbolg seer Galgadayle prophesied that she would give birth to twins , one handsome and one unattractive . She was told that unless the ugly one were killed , he would grow up to bring war and devastation to both human s and giant - kin . Brianna , however , would have nothing to do with the idea of killing her child . Moreover , the queen ' s own priest , Simon of Stronmaus , had used magic to determine that she was only pregnant with a single child . Brianna ' s pregnancy lasted for three years . This was far longer than even a typical firbolg pregnancy , which was two years long . A war with giants took place during the length of her pregnancy . Toward the end of it , the firbolg clans allied with the verbeegs and even the fomorian s of the valley . They assisted the people of Hartsvale against the giants , but then demanded that Brianna hand over her ugly son to them to kill . Brianna escaped , with the help of Tavis and a young man named Avner , who was like a son to them , but she was soon separated from Tavis . While taking shelter in a silver mine , Brianna determined with magic that the baby could not possibly fit through her birth canal , so she ordered Avner to perform surgery and cut the child , who was the size of a typical human two - year - old , from her womb . He reluctantly did so and was horrified to discover that the boy looked more like an ettin than a human or firbolg , yet when Brianna first saw her newborn son , she saw a baby that looked just like her husband and named him " Kaedlaw " , which was a firbolg word for " handsome " . After Avner stitched her womb and stomach back together , and she had used healing magic on herself , her and her entourage continued to escape and were reunited with Tavis . When Tavis met his son for the first time , he only saw him as ugly , but he did not tell his wife this . They successfully retreated to Wynn Castle , but when Brianna learned that Tavis saw their son as ugly , she forbade him to come near him any longer , fearing that his oaths as a firbolg would require him to kill his own son to prevent Galgadayle ' s prophecy from coming true . While Wynn Castle was under siege from the giant - kin armies who were demanding the death of the prophesied ugly child , the Twilight Spirit , Lanaxis himself , arrived by magic , and kidnapped Brianna and Kaedlaw , ripping the tower of Wynn Keep from its foundations and carrying it with him . Once the giant - kin understood what had happened , the humans and giant - kin united against their common enemy and pursued Lanaxis . Lanaxis took Kaedlaw and Brianna all the way north to the edge of the country and imprisoned them in the Bleak Palace within Twilight Vale . There , Lanaxis planned to raise his " nephew " to be the emperor of Ostoria . Tavis , with the help of Galgadayle and the runecaster Basil of Lyndusfarne , recovered Annam ' s lost axe , the " Sky Cleaver " . Using its power , Tavis defeated Lanaxis . Rather than killing Brianna ' s son , he used its power to " cleave " the truth of the matter from the falsehood , and the enchantment on Kaedlaw was broken . He was at last revealed to look like a normal child , neither overly handsome nor hideously ugly . Basil saw this as a sign that his destiny would depend on how he was raised .