The Cruel Prince recap

Jude Duarte and her twin, Taryn, are mortal girls raised in the High Court of Faerie by Madoc, the fey general who murdered their parents. Despised at court for being human, Jude wants a knighthood and a place no one can take from her; her chief tormentor is Cardan, the High King's youngest son. To gain power of her own she swears herself to Prince Dain, the king's chosen heir, and becomes one of his spies, learning lockpicking, poison tolerance and courtcraft while Cardan's circle escalates from humiliation to attempted murder. Jude kills one of them in self-defence, discovers that the boy courting her has been courting Taryn at the same time, and falls out with her sister. At the coronation the eldest prince, Balekin, murders the High King and most of his heirs, and Madoc is revealed as his ally. Jude gets hold of Cardan, the only remaining heir who can pass the crown, and learns that her small brother Oak is secretly Dain's son and the true heir Madoc intends to rule through. She crowns Cardan instead, on the condition that he obey her for a year and a day, and sends Oak to the human world for safety.

Jude Duarte and her twin, Taryn, are mortals raised in the High Court of Faerie. When they were small, a redcap warrior named Madoc came to their family's house, killed their mother, who had once been his wife and had fled him, killed the human man she had married, and then carried all three of the daughters, including his own half-fey child, Vivienne, back to Elfhame to raise. Ten years on, Jude and Taryn take lessons with the children of the gentry, who despise them for being human. The worst of their tormentors is Cardan, the High King's youngest and least regarded son, with his companions Nicasia, Valerian and Locke. Jude wants a knighthood and a place at court; Madoc, indulgent in everything else, refuses to treat the ambition as real and suggests she would be safer in the mortal world. Taryn wants only to be inoffensive enough to marry into Faerie without incident, and Vivi wants all three of them to leave. At a revel, Cardan's circle forces Jude to eat enchanted fruit, which strips away her self-control and leaves her dancing and weeping for their amusement while the court looks on.

Determined to be something other than a target, Jude goes looking for power. Prince Dain, the High King's chosen heir, offers it: he keeps a private company of spies, and if she swears herself to his service he will knight her once he is crowned. Jude accepts and is bound to him, joining the Court of Shadows, three fey agents known as the Ghost, the Bomb and the Roach, who begin teaching her to pick locks, to fight without honour and to gather what is said at court. To make herself harder to kill and harder to control, she takes small daily doses of faerie poisons to build a tolerance. The realm is preparing for High King Eldred's abdication and Dain's coronation, and Madoc, as grand general, is busy with the arrangements. Locke, alone of Cardan's circle, starts seeking Jude out, and Taryn, who has a suitor of her own she will not name, warns her sister that provoking the gentry will get her killed.

Jude works as Dain's spy, listening at revels and reporting what the gentry say about the succession. Locke's pursuit of her becomes open enough for the court to notice: he brings her to his family's estate, dresses her in finery and enjoys the discomfort her presence causes, and Jude cannot tell whether his interest is genuine or a performance staged for an audience. Cardan's hostility sharpens as Locke's attention grows. Valerian's threats stop being idle; he corners Jude and makes plain that he means her real harm, and she begins carrying a knife and sleeping badly. Taryn, still refusing to name the boy courting her, urges Jude to stop competing with the fey on their own ground, and the distance between the sisters widens.

Valerian breaks into Jude's room at night and tries to kill her. She fights him off and kills him, and the Court of Shadows quietly disposes of the body, leaving Jude shaken and further committed to her double life. At a revel held at Locke's estate she and Cardan are thrown together away from the crowd, and the loathing between them turns briefly into a kiss that appals them both. Working for Dain takes her inside Hollow Hall, the household of Cardan's eldest brother, Balekin, where mortals are kept enchanted and drugged as servants, and where the resentment of a prince passed over for the crown is on open display.

Jude discovers that the suitor Taryn has been hiding is Locke, and that her sister knew all along that he was courting them both. Taryn defends herself: she wants a settled place in Faerie and a husband who can give her one, and she believes Jude's refusal to bend is what endangers them. The quarrel splits the sisters. Jude learns how far Balekin's grievance runs and that he has been gathering allies, and she sees that Cardan lives under his brother's control and violence. The coronation approaches, with Dain expected to take the crown, Madoc arranging the ceremony, and Jude still sworn to a prince whose graciousness she is beginning to distrust.

At the coronation, High King Eldred prepares to pass the crown to Dain before the assembled court, and Balekin springs a coup. His people fall on the royal family: Eldred is killed, several of his children die, and Dain is shot dead by the Ghost, who has been Balekin's man inside the Court of Shadows all along. Madoc is revealed as Balekin's partner in the plot, having chosen the son who will give him the wars he wants. The crown can only be passed by the hand of one of the old king's blood, and the only heir left in the hall is Cardan, who flees with it. Jude hunts him down, takes him prisoner and hides him, which leaves Balekin holding the palace but unable to make himself king.

Jude keeps Cardan hidden with what is left of the Court of Shadows while Balekin searches for his brother and Madoc plays his own game, wanting a war and a king he can direct. Jude then learns the secret at the centre of the succession: her small brother Oak is not Madoc's son but Dain's, born to a lover Dain had poisoned, and Oriana has hidden the boy's parentage since infancy. As Dain's child, Oak is an heir of the blood who can pass the crown, which is why Madoc has been raising him. Madoc means to have the boy crowned and to rule as his regent for as long as it takes, with the campaigns he wants along the way. Jude, who has spent her life being told what she is permitted to want, decides that neither of the men who raised her will get what he is after.

Rather than let Oak be crowned and used, Jude makes Cardan an offer: she will put him on the throne, and he will swear to obey her for a year and a day. He agrees, and at the ceremony Oak, as Dain's son and an heir of the blood, sets the crown on Cardan's head, making him High King of Elfhame. Cardan's first commands, all of them Jude's, undo the coup: Balekin is imprisoned in the Tower of Forgetting, and Madoc is stripped of his command and sent from the palace, beaten by the mortal daughter he trained. Jude sends Oak to the human world to be raised by Vivi and her girlfriend, Heather, out of reach of every faction until he is old enough to rule alone. Taryn stays in Faerie, engaged to Locke, with the rift between the sisters unhealed. Jude holds no title, only the fact that for a year and a day the High King of Faerie must do as she says.

Jude breaks Madoc's plan by making Cardan an offer he cannot refuse: she will put him on the throne, and in exchange he swears to obey her for a year and a day. Oak, as Prince Dain's son and an heir of the blood, sets the crown on Cardan's head before the court, and Cardan's first commands, every one of them Jude's, undo the coup. Balekin is stripped of his standing and imprisoned in the Tower of Forgetting. Madoc loses his post as grand general and is put out of the palace, outplayed by the mortal daughter he trained and half-admiring of how she did it. Jude sends Oak to the human world to be raised by Vivi and her mortal girlfriend, Heather, keeping the true heir out of every faction's reach until he is old enough to rule without a keeper. Taryn stays in Faerie, engaged to Locke, the breach with her sister unhealed. Cardan sits on the throne of Elfhame as a king nobody expected and nobody trusts, resentful of the leash and unreadable about Jude herself. Jude holds no title anyone would name, only a secret: for a year and a day the High King of Faerie must do as she says, and the clock has already started.