Witches Abroad recap

When an old fairy godmother dies, her wand and an unfinished mission pass to young Magrat Garlick: travel to the distant city of Genua and stop a girl named Ella from marrying a prince. Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg invite themselves along, and the three witches cross the Disc, blundering through a string of forced fairy-tale situations on the way. In Genua they find the city trapped inside stories against its will, ruled by another, far more powerful fairy godmother who bends people into fairy-tale roles to control them. She turns out to be Lily, Granny's estranged older sister, who long ago chose to use mirror and story magic to impose her idea of happy endings on everyone. Lily is forcing Ella into the role of a Cinderella figure and a marriage to a false prince. The witches side against her, and the conflict comes to a head at a great masked ball. Granny confronts her sister in a duel of mirror magic and traps Lily in the endless reflected world between the glasses. Genua is freed from its enforced stories, Ella is released from the marriage, and the witches head home.

Previously, in earlier books: in the mountain kingdom of Lancre, King Verence was murdered by his cousin Duke Felmet, who seized the throne with the help of his ruthless wife. The dead king's infant son and crown were rescued by three witches, the stern and powerful Granny Weatherwax, the cheerful and worldly Nanny Ogg, and the young, romantic Magrat Garlick. They hid the child with a traveling theatre company and pushed the whole kingdom years forward in time so he could grow up in safety. In the end Felmet was destroyed, the true heir chose the stage over the crown, and the throne passed instead to the castle's Fool, who became the new King of Lancre with Magrat drawn to his side. Through it all the three had settled into an uneasy, bickering coven, with Granny insisting witches must never meddle in others' lives even as she meddled decisively. That trio, and Granny's discomfort with anything foreign, is what these three carry with them when a new mission takes them far from home.

An elderly Lancre witch, Desiderata Hollow, who secretly also worked as a fairy godmother, knows she is dying. Rather than let her wand and an unfinished task fall to a more dangerous rival, she arranges for both to pass to Magrat Garlick. The task is a strange one: travel to the far-off, hot, and unfamiliar city of Genua, and stop a young woman named Ella from marrying a prince. Magrat, eager to do the job properly, sets out, only to find that Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg have no intention of letting her go alone, despite Granny's loud disapproval of foreign parts. So the three witches begin a long journey abroad, well outside the mountains they know, toward a city where someone with real power is determined to make a fairy tale come true whether the people in it want it or not.

In Genua, the witches discover that the city's ruling fairy godmother is Granny Weatherwax's own older sister, Lily, who left home long ago and built her power on mirrors and stories, forcing the people around her into fairy-tale parts so their lives will end the way she has decided. She is compelling the young woman Ella toward the role of a servant girl destined to marry a prince at a grand ball, the prince being a creature she has raised up into human shape. A rival power, the swamp witch Mrs Gogol, works to overthrow Lily through her own darker magic, so Granny finds herself opposing the enforcing of any story, on either side. The confrontation climaxes at the masked ball. Granny faces Lily directly and defeats her in a contest of mirror magic, leaving her lost in the infinite corridor of reflections, unable to find her way back to the single real world. With Lily gone, Genua is released from its imposed happy endings, and Ella is freed from the marriage that was being forced on her, left to live a life of her own choosing. The three witches, changed by what they have seen of what Granny might have become, begin the long journey back to Lancre.