The Princess Rules

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020

Published in this ebook edition in 2020

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

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Text copyright © Philippa Gregory 2020

Illustrations copyright © Chris Chatterton 2020

Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Philippa Gregory and Chris Chatterton assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work respectively.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008403256

Ebook Edition © October 2020 ISBN: 9780008403270

Version: 2020-09-15

For Freddie and Sebastian

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Florizella and the Brother

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Florizella and the Pirates

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Florizella and the Woolly Mammoth

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten and a Half, Really

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

There was a tiny silver moon, as thin as a rind, when the queen of the Seven Kingdoms heard a tap on the bedroom window. She opened it, and found a tired and very bored stork balancing on the windowsill with a big parcel under one wing.

‘Sign here,’ his beak yawned as he pushed a scroll with wax seals at her.

‘I don’t think that we …’ said the queen. ‘King? Did you order anything?’

But the king was singing in the bath and did not hear her.

The stork shoved a fat parcel into her hands.

‘Oh! But this is for the king and queen of the Far Away Mountains!’ the queen protested, reading the label. ‘It’s not for us.’

‘They’re not at home,’ said the stork. ‘You’re their registered safe place.’

‘Yes, but …’

The stork flew off into the night. It was his last delivery. ‘I shouldn’t be working this late,’ she could hear him complaining as he disappeared into the darkness. ‘Anybody would think I was an owl!’

‘Bother the king and queen of the Far Away Mountains!’ said the queen. ‘They’re always getting their stuff left here. I don’t know why they can’t leave it under the drawbridge like everybody else …’ Then she ripped the fastening of the parcel and said, ‘OH!’ And then she said, ‘It’s a baby.’

It was the most adorable little prince that anyone had ever seen. The queen, who already had one child – a daughter called Florizella – was delighted to have another. ‘Look what’s arrived!’ she said as the king came out of the bathroom. ‘We’ve got a baby prince at last.’

‘Good thing too!’ said the king. ‘Excellent! Excellent!’ And he got into bed and went to sleep at once, while the queen dressed the baby in the royal christening gown and put him in the royal cradle and rocked him gently.

In the morning the baby had grown and was about the size of a four-year-old child. ‘It seems like only yesterday that he was a baby,’ the queen said.

‘It was yesterday, wasn’t it?’ the king asked. ‘You’d better hurry up and get him christened if he’s going to grow this quickly.’

So the queen invited everyone in the kingdom and sent the messages out by a flock of pelicans. She was just posting the last envelope into the huge open beak of the last pelican when Princess Florizella came into the room.

‘What’s this?’ Florizella asked, looking from the windowsill where the flock of pelicans were squatting, beaks bulging with invitations, to the little boy sitting on the floor and building a train set.

‘This is the new king of the Seven Kingdoms!’ The king was delighted.

‘Your little brother!’ the queen exclaimed.

‘Prince …’ The king paused – he could not think of a name. ‘What shall we call him, my dear?’ he asked. ‘Usually you call a prince after the circumstances of his birth. So I was christened Prince Gooseberry – because my parents found me under a gooseberry bush. And Florizella’s friend was called Prince Bonnet because his mother found him in a hatbox.’

‘Bennett,’ Florizella said. ‘His name’s Bennett.’

‘He didn’t like Bonnet for some reason,’ her mother explained. ‘So, what shall we call this boy – who came to us by mistake of the delivery stork?’

‘Prince Courier,’ the king said happily. ‘Good name. And then King Courier – has quite a ring to it.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ Florizella said. ‘What d’you mean “king”?’

‘Well, of course, he’ll be king when we’re gone,’ the king said cheerfully. ‘Won’t you?’ He picked up the little boy and bounced him up and down on his knee. ‘Um-tiddly-um! Who’s a little king then?’

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Florizella again. ‘It’s me who inherits the kingdom. This is my kingdom, and my palace, and everything.’

‘Yes, but now we’ve got a boy, a prince,’ the queen said. ‘Boys come before girls. Everyone knows that.’ She saw that Florizella was looking astonished. ‘You know that, Florizella.’

‘I know it IN THEORY,’ Florizella said carefully. She looked at Prince Courier. ‘IN THEORY is when it is a plan, or a thought, or even a fairy story. But it’s a very different thing when you see it happening in real life. It’s especially different when you see it happening in your own life.’

‘Where are you going?’ the queen asked as Florizella headed for the door.

‘I’m going to see another prince,’ Florizella said crossly. ‘On my pony. Unless, of course, he’s Courier’s pony now?’

Prince Bennett was in a hammock in the orchard of his palace, reading a fairy tale, when Florizella marched in. ‘Hi, Florizella!’ he said as soon as he saw her. ‘You know, the weirdest things happen in books …’

‘Something rather weird has happened here as well,’ Florizella said shortly.

‘Great!’ Bennett said. ‘I love it when something happens. Was it SUDDENLY? I like it best when it’s SUDDENLY. Are we going on an adventure? Shall I get my sword?’

‘It’s more of a thinking adventure,’ Florizella said. ‘Bennett – if you had an older sister, would she be queen and you stay prince all your life?’

‘No,’ Bennett said. ‘I’d be the king and she’d stay a princess all her life unless she was lucky enough to marry a king. That’s the Prince Permit. You know: princesses have the Princess Rules and we princes have the Prince Permit, which tells us how everything happens and everything we should do.’

Florizella was fascinated. ‘I knew about the Princess Rules, because I had to learn them and everyone wanted me to obey them, but not about the Prince Permit. What sort of things do princes have to do?’

Bennett laughed. ‘We don’t have to do anything! It’s a permit – it allows us to do things; it’s not like rules that tell you what you can’t do. It’s a prince thing. We get the throne, no matter how many older sisters we have, and we write the laws – no matter what people say about them. We own all the land and we get really, really rich, but we never, ever talk about it. We get a twenty-one gun salute on our birthday, and people bow to us. We’re first in the charge into battle but last into lifeboats – I think the lifeboats is the only time we’re ever at the back of the queue, and of course that hardly ever happens. We get to fight all the dragons and monsters, while princesses can only watch. We get the best horse and we get to choose our bride. She can’t choose us, and she can’t say “no”. We can behead people if we want to. You know, just regular prince stuff.’

‘But that’s not fair,’ Florizella said. ‘I get the Princess Rules, and you get a whole load of permissions?’

Prince Bennett shrugged. ‘It’s not fair at all!’ he agreed happily. ‘It’s completely in favour of princes. But it’s always been like that, so nobody questions it—’

‘I’m questioning it!’ Florizella interrupted him.

‘Yes. But we princes don’t. And most people don’t even think about it because it’s always been this way. Best of all is when they say it’s “natural”. As if us getting first place in everything is how it’s always been, and always has to be.’

‘But it isn’t natural!’ Florizella exclaimed. ‘It’s been made up so princesses don’t get a fair chance at things! It was invented by princes, and enforced by kings!’

‘I know!’ Bennett grinned. ‘And we can be bad princes too – which princesses never are. We can be bad kings. We can grind the poor—’

‘Grind them?’

‘Be mean to them. We can declare wars for no reason, we can be tyrants and tell everyone what to do, and if people object, we can say that’s treason, and cut their heads off. It’s just great being a prince.’

‘I can’t be a bad princess,’ Florizella said regretfully. ‘A princess can get locked up in an unscalable tower for just being eighteen. Imagine what people would do to a princess who was actually bad!’

‘Put her to sleep in a glass coffin?’ Bennett suggested.

‘Snow White got that just for being pretty,’ Florizella said gloomily. ‘Little Red Riding Hood got swallowed by a wolf just for visiting her granny.’

‘And Sleeping Beauty …’ Bennett reminded her.

‘Don’t even get me started on Sleeping Beauty! But anyway – that’s not what’s just happened.’

‘Something’s happened? Oh! Yes! You said. Was it SUDDENLY?’

‘It was rather suddenly,’ Florizella agreed. ‘We’ve suddenly got a prince. A mistaken delivery. It was supposed to go somewhere else.’

‘Take it round to them?’ Bennett suggested. ‘When they’re in?’

‘I thought of that, but they don’t want it. They meant to order a Baby Belling, not a real baby. It was a substitution. A really bad substitution.’

‘What’s a Baby Belling?’

‘A sort of cooker,’ Florizella said gloomily. ‘So you can see they don’t want a real baby. But my parents really do. And they’re saying he’s going to be king. Of MY kingdom.’

‘Well – that’s the risk you take,’ Bennett said cheerfully. ‘When you’re born a girl.’

‘But I don’t want to take that risk,’ Florizella replied. ‘I didn’t mean to take it.’

‘Those are the Princess Rules,’ Bennett replied. ‘Like the Prince Permit – it’s just how it’s always been done in fairytale land.’

‘Well, I don’t obey the Princess Rules,’ Florizella objected. ‘You know I don’t. I have my own horse, Jellybean; I’ve killed my own dragon. I get a twenty-one gun salute on my birthday, all to myself. And I am going to inherit the Land of the Seven Kingdoms.’

‘You were going to inherit the Land of the Seven Kingdoms,’ Bennett corrected. ‘But not any more! Not now they’ve got a prince.’

Florizella thought hard. ‘Well, this is one Princess Rule I’m going to break for sure,’ she said. ‘I’m not giving up my kingdom.’

‘Then you’ll have to teach your little brother not to use his Prince Permit,’ Bennett said. ‘Because the Prince Permit says that boys are better than girls, that they become king whether or not there is a girl. And you’re going to hate that.’

‘We’ll both teach him,’ Florizella decided.

‘Whoa! Not me!’ Bennett took a step back.

‘Yes, you,’ Florizella said firmly. ‘If you’re a real prince, a true prince, then you’ll want things to be fair. A real prince cares about sharing and everyone being happy, doesn’t he?’

Bennett thought for a moment. He did care about Florizella and he did want to make things fair. He did think that girls were as good as boys and should have an equal chance. ‘I s’pose so,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But we’re going against all the fairy tales ever told …’

‘We are,’ Florizella agreed. ‘Let’s do it!’

First things first: in order to teach Prince Courier, they had to get hold of him.

‘We can’t just take him out of his cradle!’ Florizella said. ‘I know that’s not allowed.’

But actually, when she went to look, the prince had grown again, and wasn’t there. He no longer fitted the royal cradle.

‘How they shoot up,’ the king said fondly. ‘Look, Florizella, he’s going to be taller than you.’

‘Yes,’ Florizella agreed. ‘By tomorrow at this rate. But that still wouldn’t make him king. Because if it was just about how tall you were, then basketball players would be kings. If it was about how strong you were, then all the kings would be weight lifters – and that isn’t so.’

‘Undoubtedly!’ said the king who was quite short and rounded. ‘Undootedly!’

‘So, you agree that it doesn’t matter how big you are to be king?’ said Florizella.

‘No,’ the king agreed. ‘It doesn’t matter how big you are.’

‘And it doesn’t matter how strong you are to be king?’

‘No,’ he said cautiously.

‘Then why should it matter if you’re a girl or a boy, or anything else?’

The king stroked his chin and looked thoughtful. ‘It’s a tradition, that’s why,’ he said. ‘Dating back to the time when kings did everything and princesses were mostly goose girls, or sometimes servants. Or sometimes they were hardly people at all but grew out of fish or flowers. Some of them were locked up in towers that they couldn’t climb down. Quite a few were fast asleep until they were woken up by the prince. Poor things! Fancy having your birthday and falling asleep in the middle of your first ever party, and not waking up for a hundred years! Girls are so ridiculous!’ The king laughed and when he saw Florizella’s face he turned it into a cough. ‘Poor things,’ he said more seriously. ‘Terrible, really.’

‘Those days are gone,’ Florizella said firmly. ‘Long gone. Can we take Courier out for a walk?’

‘You can take him for a ride on his pony,’ the king said.

‘He’s got a pony? Why has he got a pony all of a sudden?’

‘He’s a prince!’ said the king. ‘He gets everything.’

So they all went out on their ponies to the Purple Forest and showed Courier where Florizella had found the wolf cub, Samson, who now lived at the palace, and where a dragon had found Prince Bennett. As they rode home Bennett said very nicely, ‘Look here, Courier, you can’t be king you know; it’s Florizella’s kingdom.’

‘I did wonder,’ Courier said cautiously. ‘But it seemed as though all I had to do was just turn up and get everything.’

‘Well, you can’t.’ Florizella had been feeling a bit awkward about saying that the kingdom was hers – which is odd really, since it was hers, and always had been. But it is sometimes hard to stand up for yourself, even if you are a princess. She had not yet learned that one of the lessons of being a princess is learning to stand up for yourself. You can do it quite nicely.

‘But it’s called a kingdom,’ Courier pointed out. ‘So it sounds as though it should naturally be for a king. For me!’

‘The name will have to change too,’ Florizella said.

‘And there are a few other things about the Prince Permit that we might as well get rid of,’ Bennett suggested. ‘While we’re at it.’

‘Like what?’ Courier asked. ‘Don’t be too hasty, Bennett. It seems pretty good to me. I’ve been studying it. Princes go first into battle, we get the best horse—’

‘But, Courier, that’s the point. It’s not fair that princes get everything just because they’re boys,’ Bennett interrupted.

‘And vice versa,’ Florizella offered. ‘We’ll rewrite the Princess Rules too. I want it to be fair for boys and girls.’

‘Why? Do girls get anything that boys don’t have?’ Courier asked, interested.

Florizella thought for a moment. ‘Dancing lessons?’

Bennett shook his head. ‘I can tell you: boys get dancing lessons. I had to dance with one hundred and twenty princesses at my princess-choosing ball. I had lessons. For months.’

‘We get girls’ toys,’ Florizella said. ‘Dolls to dress up and cuddle.’

‘Isn’t that just to teach you how to be a mum?’ Courier asked. ‘So that you have something to do while I’m being king?’

‘We get to wear dresses?’

‘I would really like a great dress,’ Courier agreed. ‘A long one that goes swish.’

‘We can wear dresses if we want,’ Bennett pointed out. ‘We just call them robes. I have some fantastic capes. And wow! You should see my uniforms. I’m an admiral.’

‘What’s that?’ Courier asked. ‘Could I be one?’

‘Course you could,’ Bennett said. ‘The Prince Permit says so. You can be an admiral and a general.’

‘People give us play kitchens? And pretend food,’ Florizella continued. ‘And nurse uniforms.’

‘That’s mum-training again,’ Courier told her.

It was surprising, Florizella thought, how much Courier knew about everything, given that he’d only recently been delivered to the wrong address by an overtired stork. ‘How come you’re such an expert?’ she asked.

Courier shrugged. ‘The Prince Permit,’ he said. ‘Boys act like they know everything.’

‘And anyway,’ said Bennett. ‘Boys can play kitchens. We can be chefs, really important shouty chefs.’

‘We have long hair that we can braid and plait?’ It was Florizella’s last point and her heart wasn’t really in it.

The boys just shrugged. They did not want plaits and if they had wanted them, they could have grown their hair as long as any girl anyway.

‘I have beautiful curls,’ Courier said nonchalantly. ‘The queen says I have golden curls like a princess.’

‘I know you do,’ Florizella said through her teeth. ‘I think everyone knows. I think they have been pointed out to everyone who came to your christening. Several times.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t know, because I’ve only just arrived, but I don’t think girls get anything especially good, do they?’ Courier asked. ‘Boys get loads of things: swords and army toys, tools and train sets, footballs and boxing gloves, and uniforms. When we grow up we can be firefighters and pilots, astronauts and engine drivers, wrestlers and kings.’

‘Girls can have all of those things, and be all of those things too!’ Florizella insisted.

‘Yes, but it’s not expected of them,’ Bennett pointed out. ‘People don’t talk to girls about doing it, and tell them they should do it, and tell them their mothers did it, and it runs in the family. And then, when girls do something good but normal, everyone makes a huge fuss about it and says they’re the only girl ever to do it and how come they did? And did their dad teach them? But being brilliant and owning loads of stuff and being fantastically brave and clever is what you aim for if you’re a regular boy. It seems like girls have to be ten times better at everything to get the same rewards as a boy.’

‘And then, if anything goes wrong, everyone says that it doesn’t come naturally to you,’ Florizella said gloomily.

‘You know, I wasn’t born yesterday …’ Courier started.

‘Day before,’ Florizella reminded him.

‘But that can’t be right,’ said Courier.

They rode in silence for a little while, thinking about everything they’d talked about, when suddenly there was a crash and a clatter, like someone riding very fast through the bushes towards them.

‘Watch out!’ Florizella exclaimed. ‘Something’s coming, and it’s coming very fast!’

‘Suddenly!’ Bennett said, pleased. ‘My favourite word! Stand fast!’

Florizella and Bennett got either side of Prince Courier on his smaller pony, and they turned to face the danger.

‘We’ve got no swords,’ Bennett said crossly. ‘I thought we were just going out for a ride.’

‘I’ve got a dagger in my boot,’ Florizella said.

‘Course you have,’ Bennett said enviously as five horse riders rode out of the forest, scaring the birds and frightening Courier’s pony. ‘D’you always carry it?’

‘Course I do,’ Florizella replied.

‘Stand and deliver!’ Courier shouted at the horse riders.

‘What does he mean?’ Bennett asked Florizella over her little brother’s head. ‘Does he think he’s a highwayman?’

‘No idea,’ she said. ‘He’s very keen on deliveries – because of how we got him. I think he means “Halt!”.’

‘I DO! That’s what I mean!’ Courier shouted. ‘Halt! Who goes there?’

‘We’re a kidnapping party,’ the riders said helpfully. ‘Sir.’

‘What?’ Bennett yelped.

‘We’ve come to kidnap the new prince,’ the first man said. ‘We heard that the Land of the Seven Kingdoms had a prince at last. So we’re going to kidnap him. If you could just hand him over, then we’ll take him off to our villainous lair, and wait for the sacks of gold for ransom money.’