by Kenyon Morr
A Boulevard Book, Copyright 1996
ISBN: 1-57297-174-6, 235 pages
When the royal family of Daventry are invited to a wedding in faraway Cumberford, Princess Rosella plays sick and gets to stay home. With her parents away she becomes the highest-ranking royalty in Daventry,
and plans to make the most out of it. After losing interest in the more formal business of the court, she takes charge of the planning for the upcoming harvest festival. She is accompanied by her new tutor, Farquhar, who clearly knows much more about the world than Rosella does, but also has a hard time treating her in a princesslike manner. To begin with, everything goes as planned, but when Rosella orders a group of workmen to remove an old stump in the middle of the festival site despite the warnings of an old legend, things starts to go horribly wrong. Millions of magical weevils pour out of a hole under the removed stump and starts to consume the crops on the surrounting fields. And as if this wasn't enough, dozens of three-toed sloks herded through Daventry gets loose shortly thereafter and starts to wreak havoc around the kingdom. Rosella now has to come up with a way to fix both of these problems before her parents gets home. It will prove to be the hardest challenge she has ever faced, but she is fortunately assisted by Farquhar, seneschal Oswold, his son William and many others who are more than willing to help their princess save Daventry...
Book Facts:
When the story begins, Rosella is fourteen years old and will soon turn fifteen.
The Rosella we meet in the beginning of this book is pretty childish and has very specific ideas about what a princess is entitled to do and how she should be treated by others. But when she has to face the problems she has caused without her parents to help her for the first time in her life, she learns important lessions about taking the consequences of her actions and matures a lot in the process.
Some of the charactes in the castle staff who plays important parts in this story were already introduced in the previous King's Quest book, but appeared only briefly there.
