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The Parson
One of the characters in the monster’s first tale. The young prince is the grandson of a king, and his stepmother is the evil queen. When the king passes away, the evil queen wants to marry the young prince to retain her throne, and so the young prince runs away with his lover, the farmer’s daughter. But as they run away, the young prince murders the farmer’s daughter and then convinces the townspeople that the evil queen did it so that they would turn against her. The young prince thus demonstrates the complexity of human nature: even though he rules justly and kindly for many years, he had also committed an evil deed in order to do so.
The Young Prince Quotes in A Monster Calls
The A Monster Calls quotes below are all either spoken by The Young Prince or refer to The Young Prince. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Rest of the First Tale Quotes
You think I tell you stories to teach you lessons? the monster said. You think I have come walking out of time and earth itself to teach you a lesson in niceness?
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There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere in between.
Conor shook his head. “That’s a terrible story. And a cheat.”
It is a true story, the monster said. Many things that are true feel like a cheat. Kingdoms get the princes they deserve, farmers’ daughters die for no reason, and sometimes witches merit saving.
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Life After Death Quotes
You were merely wishing for the end of pain, the monster said. Your own pain. An end to how it isolated you. It is the most human wish of all.
“I didn’t mean it,” Conor said.
You did, the monster said, but you also did not.
Conor sniffed and looked up to its face, which was as big as a wall in front of him. “How can both be true?”
Because humans are complicated beasts, the monster said. How can a queen be both a good witch and a bad witch? How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour?
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The Young Prince Character Timeline in A Monster Calls
The timeline below shows where the character The Young Prince appears in A Monster Calls. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The First Tale
...course of the king’s rein, battles and hardship had taken the lives of the four princes, as well as the king’s wife and daughter. All he had left he had left...
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The king decided to remarry, setting his sights on a princess from a neighboring kingdom. She was young and fair, and soon became the queen. Time...
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The prince, meanwhile, had fallen in love with a farmer’s daughter, and the kingdom “smiled on the...
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The prince cried out that the queen was responsible for this—that she was trying to frame him...
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The Rest of the First Tale
...The monster clarifies: it never said that she killed the farmer’s daughter; only that the prince said so. Conor asks who killed the girl.
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...show Conor what happened. Where his backyard once was, Conor sees a field with the prince and the farmer’s daughter sleeping under the yew tree. He sees the prince wake up,...
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The monster goes on, saying that when the prince asked for help, he told the monster that he had done it for the good...
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Conor asks if the prince got caught; the monster explains that the prince became a beloved king and ruled happily...
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Life After Death
...that humans are “complicated beasts,” referring back to the stories it told. “How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour?” it asks. “You wanted [your mother] to go at...
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