The Ordinary Princess
Encyclopedia
The Ordinary Princess is a children's novel written and illustrated by M. M. Kaye
M. M. Kaye
Mary Margaret Kaye was a British writer. Her most famous book was The Far Pavilions .-Life:M. M. Kaye was born in Simla, India, and spent her early childhood and much of her early-married life there...

. It concerns Princess
Princess
Princess is the feminine form of prince . Most often, the term has been used for the consort of a prince, or his daughters....

 Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne of Phantasmorania—Amy for short—who has been given the "gift" of ordinariness.

Like the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault or Little Briar Rose by the Brothers Grimm is a classic fairytale involving a beautiful princess, enchantment, and a handsome prince...

, the story begins with the birth of a princess and the arrival of fairies—invited against the king's better judgment, for the sake of tradition—to give her gifts. The fairy godmother Crustacea, however, tells her, "You shall be Ordinary!" Unlike her six older sisters, Amy grows up brunette, freckled, and plain, preferring playing in the woods to wearing fine clothes.

When she finds out that her parents want to hire a dragon so that a foreign prince can "rescue" her from it and marry her, she climbs down the wisteria vine outside her window, runs away to live in the Forest of Faraway, and makes animal friends, Peter Aurelious the crow and Mr. Pemberthy the squirrel. Realizing that her clothes have grown shabby and she needs a job, she becomes fourteenth assistant kitchen-maid in the castle of the King of Ambergeldar, where she meets Peregrine, a man-of-all-work. They become friends; he eventually finds out that she is a princess, and she finds out that he is King Algernon of Ambergeldar, who, like her, hates his given name, and they marry.

The folk song "Lavender's Blue"—particularly the first two lines, Lavender's blue, rosemary's green, When I am king, you shall be queen—is a motif throughout the book.

Kaye has stated that "The Birches," the house Amy and Peregrine build together in the book, was based on a house that she and her sister Bets built in the Wilmcote
Wilmcote
Wilmcote is a village and since 2004 a separate civil parish in the English county of Warwickshire, about north of Stratford-upon-Avon. Prior to 2004, it was part of the same parish as Aston Cantlow and the 2001 population for the whole being 1,674....

Hill woods.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK