Wyrd Sisters recap

In the small mountain kingdom of Lancre, Duke Felmet and his ruthless wife murder King Verence and seize the throne. The dead king's crown and infant son are carried to safety by three witches, Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and young Magrat Garlick, who pass the baby to a traveling theatre company to raise as an actor and hide the crown among the props. Felmet rules badly, tormented by guilt, while the land itself sickens under a usurper it never accepted. To let the true heir grow up, the witches push the whole kingdom fifteen years forward in time. The boy, Tomjon, becomes a brilliant young performer, and the guilty Duke commissions a play meant to blacken the witches' name and justify his own rule. The company returns to Lancre to stage it, bringing the confrontation to a head. Felmet is undone and dies, and the throne passes not to Tomjon, who wants only the stage, but to the castle's Fool, who becomes the new King of Lancre, with Magrat at his side.

On a stormy night in the mountain kingdom of Lancre, King Verence is murdered so that his cousin, Duke Felmet, urged on by his ambitious wife, can take the throne. In the chaos, the king's crown and his baby son are carried out of the castle and end up in the care of three local witches: the stern and powerful Granny Weatherwax, the cheerful Nanny Ogg, and the young, romantic Magrat Garlick. Granny holds firmly to the rule that witches must never meddle in the affairs of kings and rulers, but the murdered king's child and stolen crown have landed squarely in their hands. Meanwhile the dead king lingers in his own castle as a ghost, and the guilt-ridden Duke begins his uneasy, illegitimate reign, unaware how much trouble three witches can cause when a kingdom's rightful line is at stake.

The traveling players come back to Lancre to perform the Duke's commissioned play, but on the night it is staged the witches turn its own magic back on him. Confronted with the truth of the murder and hounded by his own guilt and the disapproving land, Duke Felmet loses his mind entirely and falls to his death from the castle, his wife's schemes collapsing with him. With the usurpers gone, the question of the crown is settled. Tomjon, the murdered king's son raised among actors, is offered the throne but refuses it: he belongs to the theatre and has no wish to rule. The crown instead passes to the castle's Fool, who becomes the new King of Lancre. He and Magrat Garlick, who have fallen for one another over the course of events, are drawn together, setting up her future as queen. Granny Weatherwax, who spent the whole affair insisting witches must never interfere in the business of kings, has interfered decisively, and Lancre settles under a rightful ruler once more.