★★★★☆ Dealing with Dragons, by Patricia C Wrede
Sensible princesses and dragons
Dealing with Dragons
Patricia C Wrede
Sensible princesses and dragons
Fairy tales are sometimes more realistic than modern stories. For example, a fairy tale princess is often treated as a sort of trading card, to be sold off to another kingdom as a wife in order to cement a political alliance. Any one familiar with history knows that this was indeed often the way things worked. In fact, the very idea that young people should be allowed to choose their own spouses is more or less modern invention. And of course there have always been young people who were not down with this agenda. That's not a new thing, either.
So, Cimorene... She's the youngest of the seven daughters of the King of Linderwall. Her parents, the King and Queen, have very definite ideas about proper behavior for a young princess. Cimorene, sharp as a tack, finds it boring to be proper. She wants to learn to fence and to cook and to do magic. Her parents don't have any good arguments against her doing those things, except one -- "It's not done! It's not proper!" In the mouth of a parent who gets to make the rules, that's a good argument. Almost an unanswerable one, in fact.
Almost, but not quite. Cimorene's parents arrange her marriage to the prince of a neighboring kingdom, Prince Therandil. Cimorene is not down with this. She knows that dragons sometimes capture and hold princesses. If they didn't, how would knights and princes rescue princesses from dragons? Rescuing princesses from dragons is a well-known component of the fairy-tale ecosystem.
Cimorene decides she'd rather be captured by a dragon than marry Prince Therandil. Lacking convenient dragon captors, she takes matters into her own hands and goes in search of them. She's lucky enough to find a dragon who is as sensible as she herself is.
Then some adventures happen, which of course I will not tell you more about. It's all good fun. It's all about a girl who has good sense and initiative.