The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

~Quick Review~

Aerin, the legitimate daughter of the king of Damar, feels like anything but. An outsider for her lack of Gift, for her unusual interests, for her friendship with a crippled horse, she must find her place in her kingdom and come to terms with what exactly it means to her—even as she learns there’s so much more to the world than she could imagine.

While classic in nature, the emphasis on Aerin and her relationship with the people, her role, and her world takes center stage. Even the dragon-slaying eschews traditional tropes—although they do slink in at the end. Regardless, this pointedly feminist YA novel holds a special place in my heart and I heartily recommend it to anyone who doesn’t need the punch of a complicated plot to make fantasy pop.

~The Real Review~

“She could not remember a time when she had not known the story; she had grown up knowing it. She supposed someone must have told her it, sometime, but she could not remember the telling.”

And thus begins both Aerin’s story and the story of my relationship with The Hero and the Crown.

As I feel I’ve established before, I was raised evangelical conservative, complete with a private school that thought the Bible was a suitable history textbook, dancing was a sin, and D&D was direct communication with demons. Naturally, anything fantastical was suspect. So suspect that my favorite book in the whole library—a beautifully illustrated copy of The Princess and the Goblin—was burned in the semi-annual purge. Never mind that if they had bothered to read it, they would have noticed heavy C.S. Lewis-esque Christian themes.

Anyway, despite all that, I don’t quite remember a time when I didn’t own a copy of The Hero and the Crown. Much like Aerin, I’m unable to pin down the origin of my story, and also like Aerin, I struggle in the re-telling of it. I remember—quite vividly—drawing the sword and the spider and the filigree and dragon from the cover in the margins of homework and on the back of notebooks.

Why do I think Heather gave it to me as a present, when her mother made mine seem lenient, and she wasn’t much of a nerd? It couldn’t have been Heather. 

I still stand by this album.

My book inscribed in pink glitter pen with my name suggests a certain age that the book was acquired, but the copyright in the book is from my infancy, and during my pink-sparkle-pen days I wasn’t browsing used book stores, and I certainly wasn’t making un-scrutinized and un-inspected purchases. …unless I could slip away in Wal*Mart long enough to buy and hide an album upon my person. Looking at you, Savage Garden’s Affirmation.

Somehow the indefiniteness of my memory of this book increases its hold over me in a way that other beloved books from my childhood—like Found—don’t. Something just feels mystical about it.

It doesn’t help that the book itself has, for much of it, a drowsily mythical feeling to it. Aerin starts by contemplating her story—and how she learned of it in the first place—and doubles back and surges forward and gets lost on tangents about friendships and rivalries and the reckless acts of youth and by the time she answers the question it almost catches you by surprise, except somehow you never truly lost sight of the goal.

Much like The Blue Sword, the strength of The Hero and the Crown lies in its heroine and her complicated relationship with the world. Unlike The Blue Sword, however, we get a much more intimate look at that relationship—more emotion, more immediacy, clear goals, obvious shortcomings. And while The Hero and the Crown is, too, a classic fantasy, it’s also markedly different. Whereas chosen-one Harry struggled with nothing but feeling accepted, Aerin struggles with everything. Her successes are as hard-won as her failures are brutal.

To prove my impartiality, even though I know full-well that I cannot truly be impartial, this is where I must voice my complaint. 

As I read through The Hero and the Crown, I had a hazy idea of what came next—even though it’s been 20ish years since I last (re-re-re-re) read it, I loved it so fervently that its story is seared on my soul … or at least I thought.

Then, with a good 75 pages left, my memory of the book disappeared. It was baffling. As Aerin charged headfirst into a seemingly brand-new plot with a one-dimensionally evil mage and a chosen one, though, I understood. Without the unique charm that had ensnared me from the beginning, the story lost its weight and evaporated from my memory. Occasionally something delightful would happen that I remembered with sudden clarity, but most of it I read as if it were brand-new.

So when I finally closed the book, with great longing, I wondered what The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown could have been had they been written ten years later, when the world had demonstrated that you could have a deeply satisfying fantasy novel without any of the trappings of a fairy tale.  

It should go without saying that The Hero and the Crown is a YA novel and, thus, is written to the young adult. Aside from the animal frands—who this adult is still a sucker for in every form of life, fictional or otherwise—I don’t think this YA-ness comes with anything, like, insulting or dumbed down. Some romantic tragedy occurs, and of course, there are star-crossed lovers, but there’s far greater depth there than expected. I do remember The Hero and the Crown making me feel a sort of mournful wistfulness, and in my reading as an adult, I found this theme much more painful—and captivating. 

The Hero and the Crown is also, unabashedly, a feminist novel. It might not be so on-the-nose as The Wicked Enchantment, but as a YA novel rather than an MG novel, you’d expect a little more nuance. And it doesn’t depict woman solidarity like The Gate of Ivory, but that makes sense. Aerin’s loneliness and ostracization are integral to her character and the plot.

More depressingly, though, The Hero and the Crown is just honest. Aerin’s mother is scorned as a woman working sinister magics to gain power, and her daughter is treated similarly—or worse. And as Aerin takes life on her terms, carving out a non-traditional niche and trying to find peace, more often than not she’s mocked or degraded for her passion. And yet for all the scorn, she faces, for how much hatred and consternation is thrown at her, Aerin never becomes cruel or calloused. Aerin never stops caring.

And this message resonated with the young me who was a non-traditional girl in a patriarchal world. More than that, it felt empowering. You could stand up to your whole world, but that didn’t make you the villain—so long as you never stop caring.

At the risk of getting mushy, which is not a common trait of mine, I’d go on record saying that I think The Hero and The Crown helped make me a better, stronger, fiercer person. It shows, without pulling punches, that being authentic to yourself isn’t easy and often won’t make you friends, but it also shows that with persistence, passion, and caring, if can also pay off.

At the same time, though, it paints a picture that maybe the you v. them mentality is small and temporary and that the world is far bigger and stranger and more confusing than you could imagine, but that’s also what fills it with magic.

I am feeling feels. This is no good. 

Time to read some pulp.

Cover art by: Unknown :(