53 pages • 1 hour read
Stacia StarkA Court This Cruel and Lovely
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses violence, coercive control, and suicide.
Prisca is a young woman living in Eprotha, a kingdom under the control of the tyrannical King Sabium. In this kingdom, infants are forced to give up their magic to the gods as part of an initiative to protect the people from the fae. Prisca gathers with her brother, Tibris, and her best friend, Asinia, and joins the other villagers to watch a Gifting ceremony. Villagers who have reached the age of 25 are assessed, and a portion of their power is returned to them and stored in magical oceartus stones.
Now, the first villager, Abus, is assessed and found to be free of hidden magic. However, when it’s Lina’s turn, the assessor discovers that she possesses the passive power of luck: a talent of which she may not have been aware. Even so, she is arrested, and her grandparents are executed. The ceremony devolves into chaos as panic spreads and the king’s guards ruthlessly maintain order. Prisca is angry at the injustice of a system that sacrifices lives under the guise of keeping the kingdom safe. She also sees a man whose green eyes match those she recognizes from her recurring dreams. When she returns home, she finds her mother having a vision.
Chapter 2 Summary
Lorian leads a secret mission with his men to retrieve a specific moss from the Cursed City, which was once the capital of Eprotha. The city, now in ruins, is inhabited by dangerous creatures called stone hags. Lorian knows that the mission is likely a trap, he and his team proceed anyway. After tense negotiations, they manage to secure the moss. Lorian then reads a letter from his brother, who goes by the letter C. Lorian’s brother writes that Lorian must meet with a contact at the border with Gromalia, the neighboring kingdom.
The narrative shifts back to Prisca’s perspective. In the aftermath of the vision, Prisca’s mother warns her that she can’t stay in the village, as it will be impossible to hide her magical powers indefinitely. Prisca suggests several ways of getting around the ceremony, but her mother says they won’t work. As Tibris returns, Prisca reflects that after his friend Vicer was taken to work in the capital, Lesdryn, Tibris has become secretive. She takes one of the family’s letters, but Tibris snatches it from her, and she only has time to glimpse the name “Crawyth,” a ruined city tied to the fae. That night, she dreams of the man with green eyes again. The next day, while she prepares for work at the bakery, a kind-hearted villager named Thol arrives to flirt with her. Prisca finds him attractive, but she knows that a future with him is impossible because he is the son of the village’s head councilor.
At the bakery, Prisca sees one of the village men threatening Thol’s sister, Chista, so she uses her magic to momentarily freeze time and protect the girl. However, she realizes Chista will expose her secret, so she rushes home, only to encounter her mother on the way. Her mother hurries her toward the forest, saying that the guards are already looking for them. She also reveals that Prisca is not her biological daughter; instead, she took Prisca in as an infant to protect her. Now, she urges Prisca to find a prince to fulfill her destiny; Prisca assumes that she must mean the son of King Sabium. As the guards close in on them, Prisca’s mother pushes her into the river to give Prisca the chance to escape. She struggles in the freezing water and loses consciousness.
Chapter 3 Summary
Prisca is saved from drowning by a man named Galon. As she recovers, she notices Lorian, the man from her dreams, among the group that saved her. Lorian orders his men, whom she assumes to be mercenaries, to leave Prisca behind, deeming her unimportant to their mission. Before they leave, Galon gives her his cloak. Prisca is hurt and angry at being abandoned and swears to get revenge on Lorian if she ever gets the chance. She plans to find her brother Tibris despite her physical injuries and the ongoing search that the king’s guards are conducting.
Meanwhile, Lorian and his men continue their journey. One man, Cavis, says he regrets leaving Prisca behind, but Lorian says that the act was necessary in order to avoid unwanted attention and delays. Despite his dismissive attitude, Lorian notes that Prisca is not as helpless as she appeared to be.
Chapter 4 Summary
Prisca continues along the river, heading southeast despite her injuries and exhaustion. With no supplies, she hopes to reach a nearby town. However, as night falls and the temperature drops, she runs into a hunter who recognizes her as a fugitive and intends to kill her for the bounty. Prisca fights back, armed only with a rock, and kills him. Although she is horrified by her actions, she takes the hunter’s supplies, including his knife and food. She tries to use his horse, but it bolts, leaving her to continue on foot. Eventually, she reaches a bridge and encounters a young guard. Prisca feigns helplessness, then pushes him into the river when he attempts to call for help. She flees into the forest to find a place to hide for the night.
Chapter 5 Summary
Prisca decides to avoid the main roads and stick to the woods despite her worsening physical condition. By nightfall, she spots a campfire in the distance. Driven by hunger and desperation, she approaches cautiously, hoping to steal supplies. However, she soon realizes that the camp belongs to Lorian. Her attempt to sneak close enough to steal his group’s supplies is thwarted, and Lorian confronts her. She holds a knife to his throat, but he manages to overpower her. He then offers her a deal. In exchange for using her magic to help them enter Lesdryn undetected, his team will provide her with food, warmth, and protection. Although she is reluctant to trust them, Prisca agrees, knowing that she has few other options. As they settle down for the night, a man named Rythos gives her food and supplies.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
The main purpose of the book’s first chapters is to deliver much-needed exposition on the rules and social structure of Prisca’s world, and Stark finds multiple ways to establish the kingdom’s oppressive stance on magic and its cruel treatment of people who are discovered to be “hybrids”—those who have both fae and human heritage. Deeming such people to be inherently “corrupt,” the kingdom summarily hunts and executes them, and this callous treatment of innocent citizens reveals one aspect of The Corruptive Influence of Power. Specifically, the Gifting ceremony allows Stark to demonstrate just how ingrained the kingdom’s problematic hierarchical structure has become, for the king’s guards, the assessor, and the priestess all represent different arms of the same oppressive regime. Just as the guards enforce physical control, the assessor ensures magical conformity, and the priestess provides spiritual justification for the violence and sacrifices demanded by the state. Together, these officials uphold a system that dehumanizes certain individuals and judges the rest by the extent of their ability to adhere to the rigid expectations of the ruling class. Lina’s fate forcefully demonstrates that any deviation from the norm leads to death for one’s family and the burning of the “corrupt” on Gods Day. These events precipitate the novel’s primary focus on The Struggle Against Oppression as Prisca strikes out on her own in an attempt to improve her situation.
Significantly, every character in the story who has wealth and power is portrayed as an antagonist and relies upon the oppression of the people to maintain their station. Prisca notes this issue when she describes the fancy, brightly colored clothing of the guards, the priestess, and the assessor and declares, “To them, our faces probably all blurred into a mass of poor, barely educated peasants dressed in rough homespun” (2). By promising a bounty as a reward for exposing anyone who possess magic, these corrupt authority figures spread their corruption by turning the citizens against one another. Thus, those in power perpetuate fear and distrust in order to maintain control and stifle any rebellion before it can begin. Stark makes this dynamic plain when Chista betrays Prisca despite the fact that she considers the protagonist a friend and a rescuer.
This inciting incident forces Prisca is forced to flee the town, and although she is injured and alone in a precarious position, her separation from an orderly, law-abiding setting allows her to step into her role as the hero of the tale and take actions that exemplify The Struggle against Oppression. However, her initial struggles highlight the more realistic challenges of such an undertaking, for in addition to the external issues of injury and exposure, Prisca suffers deep emotional wounds due to the revelation that she is not biologically related to her family. This discovery shatters of her sense of self and introduces the novel’s focus on The Implications of Identity and Heritage, which is further explored later in the story. During the last conversation with her mother, Prisca is told that she “must find the prince […] and meet [her] fate” (41), and although Prisca assumes that her mother is referring to Sabium’s son, this wording will eventually be clarified to mean the fae-born Bloodthirsty Prince, Lorian, who is directly responsible for the demise of Prisca’s birth parents.
These chapters also establish the baseline for the “enemies-to-lovers” dynamic that plays out between Prisca and Lorian as the novel progresses. Whereas Prisca is ruled by her survival instincts and her anger, Lorian is defined by his pragmatism and cold calculation; thus, his initial decision to leave the injured Prisca behind is born of practicality, not cruelty. In his mind, taking her along would slow his team’s progress and jeopardize their mission. However, when he observes that “[t]hose with nothing left to lose make the most dangerous enemies of all” (52), his statement reflects his understanding of both Prisca and his own mentality, for both characters are driven by the combined emotions of loss and the desire for vengeance. His pragmatic recognition of Prisca’s useful powers also fuels his later decision to offer her a temporary position with his crew. This part of the story therefore closes with the formation of an uneasy alliance that marks a significant shift in the story’s direction.
