Summary

In “Ever/After,” the narrator describes a prince who lived in a prosperous kingdom, the castle overlooking a pleasant town where people seemed to be happy and successful. When he turned 18 the prince married a princess from a nearby, less well-off kingdom where everything produced there was inferior compared to the kingdom of the prince. The princess's father had arranged the marriage in order to prevent the soldier from the other kingdom invading this more abundant one. The princess was only married to the prince because she had had no offers by that stage and the king wanted to get his other daughters married off. The prince and princess did not have a good marriage at first, both simply performing their duties, and the princess soon learned that the prince was not as confident as he seemed to be.

The prince had also...