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 13-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
After parting with Lorian, Prisca and Tibris pass through the capital city and are struck by the contrast between the wealthy citizens and the impoverished slums. They witness the upper class’s abundant use of magic, including magical horseless carriages, and this sight enrages Prisca because the villagers back home are left with almost nothing. Tibris leads Prisca to Vicer and the rebels. They talk, and it is revealed that the current conflicts over magic began with King Regner generations ago; he was jealous of the fae and started the war with them. Prisca asks Vicer to help her rescue Asinia. He agrees, but in exchange, Prisca must free a rebel leader named Demos, who is also imprisoned in the dungeon. He tells her about a secret tunnel in the dungeon that could be a likely avenue of escape.
Vicer arranges for Prisca and Tibris to obtain false work papers so that they can infiltrate the castle. Prisca is also taken to visit a narminoi named Ivene, who gives her cryptic clues about her past. Ivene reveals that Prisca’s birth parents had been involved in something dangerous and that her adopted father erased some of her memories.
Chapter 14 Summary
Prisca wakes up to find Vicer knocking on her door, calling her and Tibris to follow him into the slums. They pass through underground tunnels to a hidden market where illegal goods such as charms, potions, and other magical items are sold to help hybrids evade detection. Prisca dyes her hair and gets a magical necklace that changes her eye color; this will help her to avoid being recognized by the king’s guards. While exploring the market, Prisca finds a man who can mark hybrids as if they have successfully completed the Gifting ceremony; this service frees hybrids from being hunted. Tibris reveals that he originally wanted to use this method to protect Prisca but lacked the funds and resources to implement his plan.
Once inside the castle, Prisca assumes the identity of a servant named Setella, whose job is to clean the floors. She meets another servant, Auria, who offers her blankets and shares gossip about the castle.
Chapter 15 Summary
Prisca settles into her new role as a servant in the castle and builds connections with the other staff—particularly Auria, who provides her with valuable information about the castle and its hierarchy. Auria tells Prisca about the queen’s ladies, some of whom were not born into nobility but were chosen for their loyalty or their ability to entertain the queen. Prisca accompanies Auria to a sanctuary with the other servants for worship. She notices one of the servants, Wila, glaring at her, but Auria says that Wila is always like that. At the sanctuary, the sight of the High Priestess and an assessor triggers Prisca’s anger, and she remembers witnessing the same man drag away a boy years ago for using forbidden magic. She silently vows to kill him before she leaves the castle.
Meanwhile, Lorian makes his own plans to infiltrate the castle. He argues with the others about the plan, which calls for him to go on a hunt with King Sabium and convince the king that Gromalia is willing to help him in the fight against the fae.
That night, Prisca sneaks into the dungeon, using her time-stopping magic to avoid detection. She finds Asinia, who is gravely ill, and Demos, who tells Prisca that the prisoners are kept docile through a combination of starvation and poisoning. (The poisoning comes from pieces of fae iron, which are inserted into their shoulders.) Prisca promises to return with a plan to rescue them.
Chapter 16 Summary
Prisca wakes from a dream about Lorian, shaken and embarrassed as the women around her tease her about it. She uses her cleaning duties in the queen’s wing as an opportunity to think. Still haunted by the condition of the prisoners, she decides to free not just Asinia and Demos, but the other “corrupt” prisoners as well.
While cleaning, Prisca meets the queen for the first time. She recognizes the potential to leverage the queen and her ladies in the rebellion and starts formulating a plan. She later meets with her brother Tibris, and they sneak back into the dungeon together. Tibris performs a painful procedure to remove the fae iron from Asinia and Demos’s bodies. When they go back to the servants’ quarters, Tibris gives Prisca a coded note from Vicer, saying that he will help with her plan but will need to find a volunteer to help with the distraction she needs.
Chapter 17 Summary
When Prisca next sees the queen, one of the queen’s ladies, Katina, is gone, having been lured away by a false letter from Vicer about a death in the family. This ruse leaves an opening in the queen’s circle for Prisca to exploit. The distraction that Prisca was hoping for comes in the form of Wila, who is the volunteer that Vicer found. When Wila intentionally trips and sets the queen’s dress on fire with her lantern, Prisca uses her powers to save the queen. Wila is sent to the dungeon as punishment. The queen later summons Prisca to her chambers, offering her a temporary position as one of her ladies. Now part of the queen’s inner circle, Prisca attends a royal dinner. To her shock, she sees Lorian sitting among the nobles, posing as a Gromalian prince. She struggles to hide her surprise and realizes that his presence complicates her plans.
Chapters 13-17 Analysis
This section shifts the novel’s focus to a more complex preoccupation with politics and intrigue, and the pointed absence of Lorian’s domineering presence allows Prisca’s true personality and ingenuity to shine. As she works with her brother and his allies to break the “corrupt” prisoners out of the castle dungeon, her activities catapult her into involvement in a covert rebellion, emphasizing her commitment to The Struggle against Oppression. Her new goals are fueled by her new understanding of The Corruptive Influence of Power as she and Tibris enter the city and behold the stark contrast between the privileged elite and the struggling lower classes. The flagrant use of magic to improve the lives of the rich also indicates that the ruling powers are actively stealing citizens’ magic for their own benefit. The magical opulence of the city is a direct result of the king’s exploitation of his subjects’ powers. When Prisca expresses disbelief over the people’s lack of awareness to this injustice, one of the rebels, Margie, cynically replies:
How do you control a population? You keep the people poor and uneducated. Tell them the same lie for centuries, and tie that lie to religion. Those people will believe you even when the truth is dancing naked in front of them. Because to believe otherwise would mean their entire world has always been a lie. (216)
As Margie indicates, the entirety of the king’s system is built to keep the lower classes in their place through oppressive systems that rob them of agency and personal power. By feeding the citizens so many lies at an institutional level, the king and those in the upper classes can maintain their hold on the realm. The effectiveness of their tactics is demonstrated when Auria, the servant whom Prisca befriends in the castle, professes herself to be a devout believer in the kingdom’s religious practices and views the gods as a source of comfort and guidance rather than oppression. When faced with the idea that the king does not return enough magic to the villagers and favors the people in the city, she unthinkingly remarks, “If they had worshipped more, perhaps they wouldn’t have needed to work so hard. Perhaps the gods would have rewarded them” (266). Her explanation reveals the widespread existence of a mindset that removes the blame from the king and those who work for him and shifts it onto the victims of his cruelest policies. While this mentality does foreshadow the later reveal that Auria is actually a spy for the king, the scene also reveals the layers of oppression that blanket this society. When Prisca goes to the hidden hybrid market beneath the city, she sees the illegal goods and services they use to avoid persecution, but she also knows that such illicit advantages are only available to those who can afford to pay the price. Thus, the systemic inequality that exists in the kingdom extends to the marginalized hybrid community as well.
Prisca is angry enough upon seeing the luxurious lives of the city’s elite that she wants to burn it all down, and her fury represents an internalized form of The Struggle against Oppression. In this moment, the corruption of the upper classes is no longer an abstract concept for her, and she fully realizes the reality of the division between the various classes. However, she aims this anger in a more productive direction when she commits to working with the rebellion and infiltrating the castle. While her initial goal is to save Asinia and Demos, the horrors that the hybrids suffer in the dungeons lead her to decide to save all of them. This inner shift stands as evidence of a more drastic evolution in her character; rather than remaining solely concerned for her own safety and that of the people closest to her, she is now inspired to consider the bigger picture. Once inside the castle, she uses the flaws in the system to manipulate her way into the queen’s favor and pursue her covert acts of rebellion, and only the reappearance of Lorian threatens to undo her scheme.
