Seventeen-year-old Princess Alera of Hytanica is pursued by suitors as she approaches the age of eighteen, when she will become the Queen. Should she choose to wed the man her father thinks has the best qualities to be the new king, Lord Skeldor, or will she decide to marry out of love? After a bitter war that occurrs between Hytanica and Cokyri, in which the first-born boys of the Hytanicans are captured and killed by the Cokyrians, will she fall for the one boy who returned alive from his captivity, the sixteen-year-old who goes by his Cokyrian name, Narnian, in defiance of his Hytanican father, Baron Koranis? Will she choose to carry out the duties expected of her, or to live her life as she desires?