The Prince recap

Prince Maxon Schreave, raised inside the palace and managed closely by his father, is days away from the Selection that will choose his wife. Before it begins, his oldest friend, Princess Daphne of France, tells him she has been in love with him for years; he refuses to act on it because the Selection is already set, and she leaves hurt. The thirty-five Selected arrive and the first day is a disaster: Maxon is formal and awkward, the girls are coached and nervous, and none of it resembles anything he could build a marriage on. That night he finds America Singer in the palace gardens, crying and angry, and she tells him plainly that she is in love with someone at home and does not want him, but that her family depends on the money she earns by staying. He agrees to keep her on as a friend who will tell him the truth about the other girls, and gains the only person at the palace with no reason to flatter him.

Prince Maxon Schreave's life is arranged for him hour by hour. He has been raised inside the palace, tutored in policy and protocol, and taught by his father to present a flawless surface to the country, and he has met almost no one his own age who was not vetted first. The Selection that will choose his wife is about to begin, and he regards it as another duty to be performed correctly. His mother, who won a Selection herself, is the only person who speaks to him about it as something other than a state function. His father intends to steer the outcome, and Maxon has never seriously considered resisting him.

Princess Daphne of France, Maxon's oldest friend and one of the few companions of his own age he has been permitted, tells him that she has been in love with him for years and asks him to choose her instead of going through with the Selection. Maxon refuses. The process is already public and his father would never allow it, and he does not feel for her what she feels for him. Daphne takes it badly and leaves, and Maxon is left with the one personal relationship in his life damaged and nothing to replace it. The Selected are then drawn and the palace prepares to receive thirty-five young women, none of whom he has met.

The Selected arrive and Maxon meets them one after another in a day of stiff, coached conversations that leave him convinced the whole exercise is hopeless; his father, meanwhile, briefs him on which provinces and backgrounds are worth favoring. That night he finds a girl in the gardens, crying and furious, who shouts at him, insults him, and tells him outright that she is in love with someone at home and does not want to marry him, but that her family is paid for as long as she stays. Instead of dismissing America Singer, Maxon strikes a bargain with her: she remains as his friend and tells him the truth about the other girls and about the country he has only been shown on paper. It is the first honest conversation of his adult life, and it decides how he approaches everything that follows.

The novella ends where the Selection begins. Daphne's confession has closed off the one attachment Maxon had outside his obligations, and he has gone into the competition with no expectation of finding anything in it but a suitable wife chosen to his father's specification. The first day with the thirty-five goes badly: he is stiff, the girls are rehearsed, and nothing about the process resembles courtship. Then, on the first night, he finds America Singer in the gardens, furious and in tears, and she tells him without any of the palace's manners that she is in love with someone at home, does not want to marry him, and cannot afford to be sent away because of what her family gains while she stays. He agrees to keep her on as a friend and an honest source of information about the other girls. It is a bargain he makes out of curiosity, but it gives him what he has never had: one person in the building who is not performing for him. The Selection proceeds under his father's control and his father's rules, and Maxon goes into it already more interested in the girl who wanted nothing from him than in any of the others.