The Ordinary Princess Quotes

″‘Hmm!’ said the Fairy Crustacea. ‘Wit, Charm, Courage, Health, Wisdom, Grace ... Good gracious, poor child! Well, thank goodness my magic is stronger than anyone else’s.’ She raised her twisty coral stick and waved it three times over the cradle of the seventh princess. ‘My child,’ said the Fairy Crustacea, ‘I am going to give you something that will probably bring you more happiness than all these fal-lals and fripperies put together. You shall be Ordinary!’

″‘A seventh princess!’ sighed the romantic maidens. ‘And of course she will be the most beautiful of all. Youngest princesses always are.‘”

“For though she was ordinary, she possessed health, wit, courage, charm, and cheerfulness. But because she was not beautiful, no one ever seemed to notice these other qualities, which is so often the way of the world.”

“They were in every way all that real princesses should be, for their hair was as yellow as the gold that is mined by the little gnomes in the mountains of the north, their eyes were as blue as the larkspurs in the palace gardens, and they had complexions like wild rose petals ad cream.”

“Lavender’s blue, Rosemary’s green, When you are king, I shall be queen”

“So that is how Her Serene and Royal Highness, Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne, Princess of Phantasmorania, became an ordinary kitchen maid in the royal castle of Amber. She was soon to find out that a great deal of work was expected in return for two pfennigs a week and her keep.”

“Dear Everyone, I think this dragon idea is simply silly and I won’t be shut up in a tower, and what’s more I won’t marry any stupid dragon-slaying prince. In fact I’ve decided that I don’t think I’ll marry anyone ever, so I’ve run away and it’s no use trying to find me, and please don’t worry because I shall be quite all right. Love and kisses Amy”

“Peregrine put out a hand and caught the hem of her skirt. Since it is almost impossible to continue walking up a staircase in a stately manner while someone is holding onto your dress, the Ordinary Princess stopped and said very haughtily indeed, ‘Will Your Majesty be so good as to release me.’ ‘Don’t show off!’ said Peregrine. ‘I can talk just like that too, if I want to. And I was going to tell you. I really was. That’s what I waited for. Only of course that flatfooted fathead of a Court Chamberlain had to go and spoil it all.’ ‘So you were a real prince—I mean king—all the time,’ said the Ordinary Princess.”

‘Dragons!’ said the Ordinary Princess. ‘I’ll give them dragons. So they think they can push me off on to any silly prince who kills a dragon, do they!’ And she stamped her foot and stuck out her tongue at the palace walls just to relieve her feelings. ‘Well, you just wait and see!’ she said.”

″‘I’ve heard of you. And if it hadn’t been for you, Godmama, I wouldn’t be here at this minute.’ ‘Does that make you glad or sorry?’ asked the old lady. ‘Glad!’ said the Ordinary Princess promptly. ‘Though I ought to say,’ she added truthfully, ‘that there have been times when I’ve wished I was a really proper kind of princess ... but not very often.’ The old lady laughed a high cackling sort of laugh. ‘You’re a sensible child,’ she said. ‘Come and sit beside me and tell me all about it.‘”

“The Ordinary Princess hardly ever had anyone to talk to, so she had made friends with the forest creatures and talked to them. It tended to make conversation rather one-sided, but that was sometimes an advantage. At least they could not answer back!”

″‘Well, Your Majesty knows what romantic minds these young princes have, so suppose we hired a dragon to—to lay waste the countryside—?’ (Here the Minister of Public Safety looked alarmed and the Minister for Agriculture and Fishery was heard to protest.) ‘We might then imprison Her Royal Highness in a tower and send out a proclamation to say that any prince who slew the dragon should be rewarded by the princess’s hand in marriage.‘”

“Presently he said, frowning more than ever, ‘So you were a real princess all the time. Amy, you are a little fibber! And for two pins,” said Peregrine, “I’d give you a good hard spanking!’ The Ordinary Princess stopped looking ashamed of herself and giggled instead. ‘You can’t spank a Royal Highness,’ she said.”

″‘All right,’ said the Ordinary Princess. ‘I’m listening.’ ‘Well, first of all,’ said the King, ‘will you marry me?’ ‘Perry!’ gasped the Ordinary Princess. ‘Yes or no,’ demanded Peregrine. ... ‘Yes,’ said the Ordinary Princess promptly. ‘Darling kitchen maid!’ said Peregrine, catching her into his arms and kissing her. ‘I knew you wouldn’t desert me. Then that’s all right. And now to business. You can’t go on being a kitchen maid, and anyway, you’ve been fired. So you can’t go on staying here.‘”

″‘I thought it would be fun to build ourselves a house to picnic in when the winter comes,’ said Peregrine. The Ordinary Princess clapped her hands with joy. ‘You do have the nicest ideas of anyone I know,’ she said. ‘Now where shall we build it?‘”

“And once again it seemed to the Ordinary Princess as though the sky had fallen into the Forest of Faraway, as she lay on her back in a sea of bluebells and watched a pair of orioles building their nest in the branches over her head.”

″‘Hello,’ said the nice young man. ‘Hello,’ said the Ordinary Princess. They looked at each other in the candlelight, and the nice young man smiled. It was a nice smile that made his eyes crinkle up at the corners, and the Ordinary Princess smiled back. She had a rather nice smile herself, and it wrinkled her freckled nose.”

“For the little hut was still standing in spite of the winter storms and snow. The moss was greener than ever, and primroses, windflowers and wild cherry brightened all the forest. The Ordinary Princess, who had once been an ordinary kitchen maid and was now Queen Amethyst of Ambergeldar, wore Clorinda’s ragged dress, which she had most carefully mended, and cooked the brown trout that Peregrine—who was always Peregrine—caught in the forest streams for their dinner.”

″‘Well, first of all, they are very beautiful,’ said Peregrine, leaning back against a tree trunk and ticking off the points on his fingers. ‘Then secondly and thirdly and fourthly, they all have long golden hair, blue eyes, and the most lovely complexions. Fifthly and sixthly, they are graceful and accomplished. Sev enthly, they have names like Persephone, Sapphire, and Roxanne. And lastly,’ said Peregrine, running out of fingers, ‘they are all excessively proper and extremely dull ... except when they are make-believe princesses who are really kitchen maids!‘”

“You can imagine the sensation there was the next morning when the missing Princess Amy calmly walked down to breakfast as though she had never been away.”