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Princess Ben: Being a Wholly Truthful Account of Her Various Discoveries and Misadventures, Recounted to the Best of Her Recollection, in Four Parts

Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Fiction

Ages 12 and up

Houghton Mifflin, 2008, 978-0-618-95971-6

  Princess Benevolence has had a charmed life so far. Her parents have done their best to keep her away from the artificial life in the palace, and she has had a grand time playing normal dirty games, having playmates from the town, and eating way too much. Now everything has changed. While visiting the tomb of a family member, Ben’s uncle, King Ferdinand, and her father and mother are attacked by some unknown force. The King and Ben’s mother are dead and her father is missing. Before she has had time to adjust to these terrible changes Ben is moved away from her home and taken to live in the palace with Queen Sophia.

  The Queen is determined to make up for lost time and she sets about trying to teach Ben how to be a ‘proper’ princess. Ben has to take dancing, needlework, history, “comportment,” and other wearisome lessons. Then Ben finds out that the reason for all this improving is so that the Queen can marry Ben off. The Queen needs all the allies that she can get because it is feared that the people responsible for the death of the King and Ben’s family were from Dranchensbett, the country that surrounds Ben’s homeland of Montagne. It is likely that they will now try to take the country over. A marriage between the two kingdoms could save Montagne from invasion. Ben is appalled by the idea. She is convinced that the Dranchensbetts are responsible for the loss of her family and she wants nothing to do with them.

  Plump, sour, and pouty Princess Ben is a not a very attractive proposition for a prince, and her uncouth behavior only makes things worse. Will the prince of Dranchensbett still agree to marry her, or can something else be done to save Ben’s beloved homeland?

  In this wonderfully crafted novel Catherine Gilbert Murdock takes her readers on an extraordinary adventure that is peppered with magic, myth, and colorful characters. The story is told from Ben’s point of view, and it is interesting to see how she changes over time and she better understands what is happening and as she finally understands what her role should be.

 

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