Red Rising, the first book in the Red Rising Saga, supplies much of the context for Golden Son. In Red Rising, Augustus orders Eo’s death, and Darrow is hanged when he steals Eo’s body to bury it. Eo had introduced him to the idea of fighting back against their oppressive Society overlords, and her death provided Darrow the motivation to undergo carving—the arduous physical transformation into a Gold—and hide amongst the Golds in order to bring them down. Darrow earns a position in the Institute, where he is trained in war tactics. One of his first assignments is to fight a fellow student to the death, and he kills Julian au Bellona, resulting in an eventual feud between himself and the Bellona family. When he enters the Institute, Darrow is unaware of the connections between the Jackal, Mustang, and Augustus, the ArchGovernor of Mars. He also meets a fellow Red who was also carved into Gold, Titus. At the end of their war games, Darrow is declared the winner, or ArchPrimus, at the Institute and becomes Augustus’s apprentice. In Golden Son, the author introduces the relevant information from Red Rising as needed, so that the reader can understand the context for the second novel without needing to have read the first.