(no subject)

[skygiants]

I kind of can't remember if Sherwood Smith's A Posse of Princesses is hypothetically tied into one of her larger universes or not. It stands perfectly well alone, anyway; one of those charming swashbuckling comedies of manners that involves a bunch of balls and swordfights but the real point is personal growth!

Our Heroine Rhis is the princess of a tiny mountain kingdom who loves BALLADS and ADVENTURE and whose first trip outside the kingdom involves a giant month-long house party in another, bigger kingdom, the point of which is to introduce the prince of said kingdom to ~all the eligible ladies~.

Aside from Rhis, main characters include:

- Prince Lios, who is charming and handsome and clearly having a blast, but seems to spend a lot of time conferring privately with
- Prince Lios' cute scribe, who seems to know massive amounts about foreign languages and diplomacy!

(I called where this was headed from the introduction of these characters, and I do enjoy how it was handled, though I would also have been A-OK with it turning out not that way too.)

- Rhis' new BFF, who like Rhis loves ballads and who also loves boys (but has a boyfriend at home! so she totally can't date any of the cute guys at the party! right? ...right?)
- Lios' sweet foreign cousin who is extremely great at lots of things but extremely bad at speaking the local language
- that warrior princess from the local tribe of horse nomads
- That Beautiful Mean Girl

(Sherwood Smith always has That Beautiful Mean Girl, and I always hope she's going to turn out to have inner depths after a rocky start and it never happens, alas. I did appreciate Lesser Mean Girl who grew out of being a mean girl and into an all-consuming obsession with horses. Well done, Lesser Mean Girl! Make something of your life!)

- that guy who is super into Rhis' new BFF (but she has a boyfriend at home! so she totally can't date any of the cute guys at the party! right? ...right?)
- that guy who's the son of the local troublemaking evil warlord, which obviously was never going to go wrong

So all these people hang out and have courtly drama until something snaps enough that they all get to have swashbuckling chase scenes across the country, and everyone starts growing into themselves and learning important things about their characters, and eventually all turns out well and it's all deeply charming! And Rhis has a romance and that's also very charming!

And then Prince Lios' mom turns up at the end.

PRINCE LIOS' MOM: Well children you are teenagers so obviously you cannot yet wed, you should wait a while and see if you still like each other!
BECCA: Yes, yes, seems sensible, laudable way to push back against the trend of youthful commitment in YA, especially YA involving princesses
PRINCE LIOS' MOM: So you are not allowed to see each other for FIVE YEARS to make sure your love is true!
BECCA: ....hmmm OK well I guess they'll write to each other and grow individually as people in the meantime...
PRINCE LIOS' MOM: ALSO YOU ARE ONLY ALLOWED TO WRITE ONE LETTER PER YEAR OR YOU'LL JUST WASTE ALL YOUR TIME DOING IT
BECCA: ............this is starting to feel kind of like overkill....

And then there's an epilogue in which they meet after five years and have a conversation about how much they respect and admire each other and are totally going to get married for their love which is still true! but also for their valuable qualities which they appreciate in a ruler! because they're adults! Again: valid points. Certainly important to bring up in frothy fantasy about rulers. But, man, after five years with one letter exchanged a year, I now find it a bit hard to believe that they know their current selves well enough to get hitched; people change a lot in five years! Maybe they need another five years of actually dating with normal human contact first?

But perhaps that is just me. And they are certainly sweet and endearing people, so I suppose they can probably make it work!

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Heh. I love most of Smith's work for teen and grownup readers, but I've steered clear of the Wren's World books (this is one) because the younger-reader Sartorias-deles books adjust down too far, for me. (For S-d I care already about the filling in of worldbuilding and large-arc info.)

[skygiants]

Nothing has ever topped the Inda books for me, which are probably my favorite epic fantasies of all time, but I grew up on the Wren books and her younger books still fall into the category of comfort-reading for me (even when I overthink them, as I often tend to do.)

[thistleingrey]

For my part Banner trumps Inda, but I'm very fond of them as well.

[ladysingsthe]

Ohhhhh, is the twist that Prince Lios' cute scribe is actually the prince? I thought the twist was going to be, "So this is awkward, but I'm gay."

(That's probably just the twist that would be in a comedy of manners about a house party that Iiiiii wrote.)

[sovay]

Ohhhhh, is the twist that Prince Lios' cute scribe is actually the prince? I thought the twist was going to be, "So this is awkward, but I'm gay."

HUZZAH IT IS NOT JUST ME.

[ladysingsthe]

IT'S NOT JUST ME. :DDDD

[skygiants]

OBVIOUSLY I haven't read enough fanfic recently!

(But I mean, I would super read your comedy of manners about a house party.)

[ladysingsthe]

(Here's a really good question, whyyyyyy isn't that my NaNo?)

[bookblather]

Is this comedy of manners an actual thing because if so I want to read it.

[hebethen]

Yes, I think it is -- or was at one point -- part of the same universe as the Inda books and such, since it mentions fire sticks and the tiranthe, and Vesarja sounds vaguely familiar.

[skygiants]

I can't keep track of which are and which aren't! The Wren books are the same too, right? But there are totally some that are not? TOO MUCH UNIVERSE. (I kid, I actually do really appreciate how much culturally distinct universe there is.)

[sovay]

- Prince Lios, who is charming and handsome and clearly having a blast, but seems to spend a lot of time conferring privately with
- Prince Lios' cute scribe, who seems to know massive amounts about foreign languages and diplomacy!

So I'm guessing Lios and his scribe did a prince-and-the-pauper switch, but my first reading (before I scrolled down to Prince Lios' mom) was that they get together at the end.

[skygiants]

As you have discovered, you are not the only one! Apparently I'm great at writing accidental slashfic synopses.

[rymenhild]

I really thought this too. And am slightly disappointed.