66 pages • 2 hours read
Holly BlackThe Cruel Prince
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Character Analysis
Jude Duarte
The novel’s protagonist and first-person narrator, Jude is a human teenager living in the magical realm of Faerie. She is impatient, independent, and passionate—and these traits are only emphasized through a first-person perspective that yields special access to the heroine’s inner life. At the beginning of the story, she tends to dwell on immediacy rather than the larger picture. For example, when Madoc forbids her candidacy for knighthood until after Dain’s coronation (no doubt in an effort to protect her, since he knows there will be a coup), Jude is focused on her own immediate gratification: “After the coronation, Madoc said. I try to focus on that. It only feels like never” (39).
Jude’s intense feelings—whether of attraction, betrayal, or trust—sometimes inspire behavior that gets her into trouble. Freeing the mortal girl in Chapter 17, done on the empathic impulse of a moment, is one example of how Jude sometimes acts before thinking through the possible consequences. Jude is therefore like many teenagers, which helps make the protagonist more relatable to the book’s young adult audience. However, Jude gradually learns to control her impulses and think strategically about what is most likely to get her the desired results. After an unsuccessful attempt to get past the guards to the undersea queen, for example, she regroups, talks to Cardan, and he identifies more valuable allies for them to target.
In addition to her impulsivity, Jude’s youthfulness finds its profoundest expression through her search for identity. As a mortal in an immortal world, she feels perpetually displaced through social alienation. Even this alienation, however, she turns to her advantage as she uses it to bolster her independence. Moreover, in the process of learning to strategize and harness her own emotions, she also discovers herself—and discovers an authentic power that comes wholly from within.
Cardan Greenbriar
Cardan Greenbriar holds royal lineage as the youngest child of Faerie’s High King. He is Jude’s chief antagonist at the beginning of the book, and is characterized as arrogant, privileged, and cruel. The first glimpse the reader gets of Cardan, for example, is when he rips the wing off a creature for a minor offense at the party in Chapter 3. Cardan enjoys deceiving and manipulating people for his own amusement, but Jude learns over the course of the story that his bravado and callousness are a front, hiding an emotionally vulnerable core.
As Jude discovers Cardan’s identity, she further discovers her own. For example, as he continually antagonizes her, she responds by gathering an inner strength that surpasses Cardan’s privileged power. At the same time, Cardan provides a source of self-discovery for Jude by eliciting her identification with him; Jude is surprised at her emotional response of empathy, rather than spiteful satisfaction, when she sees Balekin abusing and berating Cardan. She also learns that Cardan has never felt loved or valued by his father. As Cardan’s hidden pain comes to light, he and Jude come to work together as allies and discover their mutual attraction.
Taryn Duarte
Taryn is Jude’s twin sister, and her character development is partly defined by her transformation from ally to antagonist. Hints of the sisters’ central conflict—a shared love interest—first emerge through Taryn’s romantic prospects; she wants to get into the faerie Court through marriage rather than earning her way, as Jude does. This characteristic, apparent early in the book, foreshadows Taryn’s eventual betrayal of Jude when she knowingly enters a secret relationship with Locke. It is after the revelation of this relationship that the two sisters grow most apart.
Taryn is meeker, less assertive, and more conciliatory than her sister Jude. This basic temperamental difference between the sisters is magnified by the fact that they are physically identical twins. Their ostensible sameness, set in contrast to the growing rift between them, is a subtle commentary on the recurring theme of identity and nature versus nurture. This particular conflict of identity—a tension of simultaneous likeness and dissimilarity—reaches a climax in a sword fighting duel. As she thrusts her blade, Taryn tells Jude that she sees herself as the “mirror” that Jude doesn’t like looking at. In other words, Taryn thinks Jude shares her own faults and weaknesses, and that some of the anger Jude directs at her is actually anger at herself. The accusation in itself, much like a mirror, does indeed reveal Jude to herself as she is challenged to confront her own projection (and thus yet another unruly aspect of her identity). The rift between the sisters is unrepaired by the end of the book, suggesting that their relationship storyline will play a role later in the series.
Madoc
Madoc is Jude’s foster father, a faerie who kills her biological parents when he comes to claim his daughter Vivi. Madoc is a top general in the High King’s army in Faerie, and eventually backs Balekin as the next king after first betraying Dain. These actions highlight Madoc’s characterization: He is violent and aggressive in warfare but acts according to a certain ethic marked by loyalty, honor, and respect for his enemies.
Jude says of Madoc, “[...] I will say this for him—he never enchanted away our grief or took our voices” (125). Jude’s words suggest that Madoc does, at least, respect Jude’s identity to a good extent. His influence on Jude as he raises her and her sisters is apparent. Jude shares many of his qualities and yearns for success in some of the same ways he does. Ultimately, however, Madoc is bloodthirsty and will stop at nothing to put a monarch on the throne who will keep the kingdom at war. Jude desires stability and peace more than Madoc does, and she fears that he will use Oak as a pawn for his own purposes, turning her brother into a violent person as well. She disables Madoc at the critical banquet at the end of the book by giving him a small amount of poison, and it is slightly ironic that she doesn’t kill him; While Jude used an act of killing to defy Madoc’s assessment of her, she here lets her victim live.
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