Night soil oozed onto my cloak, and I wondered why all my adventures involved foul odour. Why could I not for once frolic in a meadow of flowers, or escape in a hamper of fresh laundry? No, I must endure night soil and prison cells and unwashed soldiers…

Does this smack of magic to you? Because allow me to inform you, my handsome young prince, that this be not enchantment – it be work!” With that I hurled my slipper at him, not caring if I caused his decapitation. (I did not.) Marshalling what little dignity I yet possessed, I stomped down the corridor – challenging indeed with one shoe – and around the corner.

The situation collapsed completely at dinner one September evening. Perhaps it was the full moon that drove me to madness, or the gnawing, relentless emptiness of my heart. Whatever the trigger, the powder had been well packed, and my explosion, though shocking, was not altogether unexpected.

Better I would have been at pulling parsnips out of my nose than charming any man, even if I so desired it, even if I quadrupled my studies in her unique curriculum.

I trust you are enjoying your stay in our castle?” I asked at last. “Would that I were, Your Highness. But I am afraid my sleep last night was quite troubled. This morning I identified the source of my bruises” – here he reached into a pocket of his waistcoat – “as a pea that had been tucked beneath my mattress.

With time, when I was very old and in my twenties, I might find a man to love, not one forced upon me…

A croaking frog would be nice, particularly a frog that retained Florian’s dark eyes. I should keep it in a box and poke it occasionally with a stick; that would be satisfying indeed.

The truth that our futures are so often determined not by some grand design or deliberate strategy but by an ordinary run-of-the-mill head cold.

How many times I have wondered what my fate might have been had I accompanied my parents that rainy spring morning. Such musings, I recognise, are more than a trifle insane, for envisioning what might have been had no more connection to our own true reality than a lunatic has to a lemon.