as Roland's perspective grows when he gets outside of his kingdom, his "comfort zone" of sorts, because... the outside world is not as simple or sweet as he (or us, the readers) expects (his family overprotects him because reasons revealed in-story), quite the contrary. Evil menaces and manifests in lots of forms (the main villains? are some kind of cult, for example). There's a few twists around, but it all helps in the development of the main cast, even with the tragedies that happen or are revealed within the story.