The Creative Project: The Cruel Prince By Holly Black

Priya Nayak

Spring 2023

LMC 3212

Project 3: The Creative Project

"The Cruel Prince" by Holly Black is fantasy young adult series that uses contemporary fantasy strategies to get at intersectionality to focus on race, species, and power. The book follows Jude Duarte, a mortal girl who lives in the Faerie world for a greater part of her life. Jude and her twin had a hard time fitting in as they were always ridiculed and loathed for being mortals by other Faeries. She becomes involved in the dangerous politics of the Fae, especially between Prince Cardan, the cruel and inconsistent ruler of the High Court, and all other factions who are trying to control the Faerie kingdom. Through her battles, Jude discovers her own power and outsmarts them

Holly Black re-genders the secondary world and incorporates many character traits of women in fantasy in her narrator, Jude.

Holly Black refuses binary schema and writes Jude in a vast variety of perspectives where she could be seen as the hero and villain of her story. Jude incorporates various character types learned in class just like seen in Catherine Lucille Moore's Jirel of Jory. Jude is a variant of the Amazon warrior, she is strong and has military smarts. Her desire to defend her community more than her desire to expand her territory also reflects this. Jude fights battles and gets involved in political schemes to save her younger brother, Oak, from being used as a pawn by their father. During the book, she says "At least Oak would not grow up as I have, with death as my birthright" (Black 209). Oak and his innocence are part of the community she is defending and she goes to great lengths to preserve it. Additionally, she also fits many characteristics of what feminist critics call a “Shero”. Jude is a smart, strong, and stubborn woman. She mostly operates out of an ethos of connection and caring rather than an ethos of imperialism and expansion. She is also an adventuring female which is established when she

Her face says "mortal" symbolizing how others see her as weak because of her human birth. Her red dress represents blood for those she has killed and the map of Elfame shows that she made it her world. The scars and dagger represent her fighting spirit, while quotes from the book cover the background, depicting both positive and negative impacts on her character. The right side consists of quotes of people undermining her, while the ones on the left side show the negative that pushed her to rise to become the most powerful person in Elfame. Overall, Jude's character whose good and bad experiences give us the language to articulate our own hopes and fears about life in the modern patriarchic era and whose heroic action elucidates us in our own fearless choices to build different