BTMM2 - The Two Princesses of Bamarre
Welcome back to A Babbling Brooks! I hope you enjoyed are short interlude & my most recent one shot. This week I'm back with our second issue of Books that Made Me. I hope you enjoy!
“Step follows step,
Hope follows Courage,
Set your face towards danger,
Set your heart on victory.”
― Gail Carson Levine, The Two Princesses of Bamarre
When I was in the 4th grade I picked up a copy of The Two Princesses of Bamarre (TTPB), a children’s medieval fantasy novel written by Gail Carson Levine.
I was never much of a “princess story” kid. A lot of the novels I read at that age were either Harry Potter or Percy Jackson fantasy types, historical romance that featured female protagonists learning to fall in love with conventionally unattractive yet softhearted men, or old school Nancy Drew novels.
Despite not being in my preferred genre, The Two Princesses of Bamarre, quickly became one of my all time favorite novels.
Story Summary
Set in the fictional kingdom of Bamarre this story is a testament to sisterhood and bravery. After her bold & energetic sister Meryl is stricken ill with the Gray Death, a disease with set a timeline that’s already claimed the life of their mother and has terrorized their kingdom for centuries, the timid Addie embarks on a quest where she must face specters, griffins, and dragons to find the cure to save her sister’s life.
The Gray Death will be cured
When cowards find courage
And rain falls over all Bamarre
Among the many devices & themes that cemented my bond to this novel my favorite is definitely the use of prophecies & poems. The above excerpt is the clue Addie clings to achieve her goal, spurring her to seek out devilish Specters that can give her clear steps to find a cure when she realizes her father, the King, is a coward that’s resigned to his daughter’s death.
Another poem or epic that’s important in this story is Drault. In the world of Bamarre, Drault tells the story of the kingdom's history and its greatest hero by the same name. Stanzas from this poem are sprinkled throughout the novel and serve to not only parallel Addie’s journey but also adds depth to Bamarre’s culture and world building as a whole.
A cultural point I enjoyed seeing came at the end of the novel in the form of a marriage ritual between Addie and her romantic counterpart & mentor Rhys. In this marriage ritual couples twist together strands of their hair to store in marriage lockets while reciting the following poem:
Twist and twine,
Your days with mine,
Your years with mine.
Cling close and never part
Twist and twine
Your hairs with mine
Personal Influence & Life Long Lessons
As alluded to earlier, this novel has had a profound and lasting influence on who I was and who I was to become. After finishing the books I rewrote every one of its poems on slips of paper in the same italic font the book used, rolled them up into “scrolls”, and tied them closed with bits of ribbons. These quickly became my most prized possessions and informed my handwriting style for the next three years.
This was also the novel that made me want to write, influencing me to declare my major when I reached college. And during the start of the pandemic I finally picked up embroidering, a skill I’d always wanted simply because it was Addie’s greatest skill and I fantasized about making pieces as beautiful as hers since I was 9-years-old.
Though I read this novel as a little kid in the fourth grade, the lessons it has on unconditional love have stayed with me and events in the novel gave me the context I’ve needed to both understand and contextualize healthier and more feminist definitions of love.
The two biggest examples that come to me were my ability to internalize the presentation of maternal love in the 2014 movie “Maleficent” starring Angelina Jolie, and most recently the notion of “love as an intentional action” as asserted in Bell Hooks’ All About Love.
For those of you who may not have seen it, “Maleficent” is a live-action retelling of Sleeping Beauty that centers on the relationship between the witch Maleficent (Jolie) and Aurora or Sleeping Beauty. You may be confused about where the theme of “maternal love” comes in as these two characters are originally adversaries. But in the 2014 movie the two develop an unlikely friendship and maternal bond as Maleficent sneakily watches Aurora grow up and saves her from the occasional mishap & the latter pursues quality time with the former. Their maternal bond is cemented when it is Maleficent’s motherly love that awakens Aurora from her slumber and not the prince's kiss, emphasizing the notion of “motherly” or “familial” love being a form of “true love”, a title that’s usually reserved for romantic love.
Similarly, in the Two Princesses of Bamarre though there is a soft undercurrent of romantic love in the lives of both sisters, these relationships take the back seat to the familial and unconditional love they have for each other.
If I hadn’t read the Two Princesses of Bamarre first, and bore intimate witness to the labor, display, and journey of sisterly unconditional love as a 9-year-old I don’t think I would’ve been able to appreciate or internalize the lessons in Maleficent as much. Especially during my early teen years, where animosity between mother & daughter were seen as the norm or even celebrated amongst my peers.
Recently I’ve been reading Bell Hooks’ All About Love: New Visions, and naturally many of her teachings provided a new lens for me to view my own upbringing, platonic relationships, and past partnerships through. In early chapters Bell Hooks defines love as:
“an act of will, both an intention and an action" “Love is 'the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth. ”
In short Hooks asserts love as a courageous action compiled of seven principles, which she lists as: care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.
As she points out in her treatise I, like many others, would’ve defined love as a feeling if asked and have aired on the side of passivity. So when I was initially faced with this new definition of what love means I was both interested and a bit defensive. The notion of “nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth” rubbed against the unpleasant idea that I was being asked to “fix” myself or others. But this where the use of the word “growth” (along with ability to set & maintain boundaries, i.e. respect) comes into play.
While doing the mental gymnastics to make room for this new belief in my mindset, memories of TTPB helped me come to terms with what “spiritual growth” could look like, and as I reviewed Addie’s journey it became clear that Gail Carson Levine provided an example of love as an “intentional action”.
Addie’s character development arcs from someone so full of fear they hardly wanted to go outside to someone outsmarting a Dragon to save her sister’s life. The way she asserts herself by the end of the book and grows more confident is indicative of “one’s own spiritual growth”, which she achieved through “the will to extend one’s self”.
The Two Princesses of Bamarre is and always will be a book that’s shaped the way I live and the things that interest me. I had a lot of fun writing this blog post about it and if you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for taking the time to read it. Till next time!