The Cruel Prince romantic connection?!🫣🦆

     At this point in time, I have been delaying an actual book blog, but I’m finally at a point in my book where I can talk about it! Over the past few weeks, I have been reading a book called The Cruel Prince. Many people know of this book and the series in general; I’m giving a head up now that there will be spoilers in this post. There are 2 main characters (I use MC as abbreviation), who are named Jude and Cardan!  

Jude has a slightly altered backstory opposed to Cardan’s, which is just the fact she currently lives with the man that murdered her parents. Somehow this was quickly normalized, and she continues living a regular life as if he didn’t, this kind of confuses me but it adds to the storyline. Jude has 2 sisters named Taryn and Vivienne; she shares a close bond with both sisters but has secrets she must keep from them to protect someone else. Another thing to add is that for a while Jude has been in competition with the other MC, Cardan, since they were younger. Since Jude wants to become a knight, entering the summer tournament that puts her in competition with her enemy further added resentment between the two. From the very first interaction we see between Cardan and Jude, there is certainly some sort of emotion in their relationship with each other. They seem to both act like they hate each other but secretly have feelings that say otherwise. There is a scene where Jude has been fed faerie fruit and she was going a little bit crazy because that is what the side effects of the fruit are, and while Cardan’s friends were making her do all these weird things, Cardan just simply redirected what she should do. He insisted she kiss his foot which she did not end up doing but it’s the simple idea that his hatred only lead him to allow her to be humiliated, but not physically hurt. 

Since that was Jude’s paragraph, it’s only fair that Cardan gets one too. Cardan is part of the royal family; he has 5 other siblings, and he is the youngest! His sibling's names are Balekin, Elowyn, Dain, Rhyia, and Caelia; Dain was the king-to-be but unfortunately that was sabotaged by Balekin. Cardan had an interesting relationship with his brothers, from Jude’s perspective when she was in the tower while Cardan and Balekin were training, she describes a rather brutal punishment towards Cardan. As I mentioned earlier, both Jude and Cardan were entering the summer tournament to become a knight which increased tension between the two. Because Cardan came from the royal family, he did have an advantage in the battle between their teams. Ultimately Jude’s team did end up being victorious and Cardan didn’t take that too well. Jude hated Cardan, but she still helped him at times where it seemed he did need it. After the coronation of Prince Dain when chaos broke loose, Jude navigates Cardan to escape the wild mess before either of them get hurt.  

Now for my personal thoughts on their relationship.  Overall, I think the both of them could make an impressively powerful duo if they worked together all the time. When we saw them together, they often rebelled against each other but as stated in both of their paragraphs, they can be beneficial for the other even if it isn’t meant to be that way. They obviously seem to have some sort of opening for new emotions each time they interact together, and I think they are in a good position at this point in the story. I’m not fully finished with the book yet, but I do hope to see more of them together and hopefully the examples of them helping each other can be added to. For now, I’m finished with my yapping...until next time! 

-Chloe B.🦆