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Fairest is the prequel novella to The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. The book focuses on the wicked and vicious Lunar queen, Levana, the series main antagonist, in the years before her tyranny, and takes places on Luna. It was released on January 27, 2015 by Feiwel & Friends.

Synopsis

Who is the fairest of them all?

Fans of the Lunar Chronicles know Queen Levana as a ruler who uses her "glamour" to gain power. But long before she crossed paths with Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress, Levana lived a very different story—a story that has never been told . . . until now.

Marissa Meyer spins yet another unforgettable tale about love and war, deceit and death. This extraordinary book includes full-color art and an excerpt from Winter, the next book in the Lunar Chronicles series.[1]

Plot

The funeral of King Marrok and Queen Jannali Blackburn of Luna, is about to take place. Their daughters, fifteen-year-old Princess Levana and her older sister, twenty-one year old crown princess, Channary, did not have a close relationship with their parents due to their uncaring and neglectful nature, and therefore were not saddened by their deaths. The two sisters detest each other, as Channary is naturally beautiful yet cruel, whereas Levana needs her glamour to make herself seem beautiful, while rumors from the court differ.

During the funeral, Levana sees Sir Evret Hayle, a royal guard who has known Levana for many years and is ten years older than her. Levana has a crush on Evret ever since she was a child, and is immediately jealous and heartbroken when she meets Solstice, a seamstress from A-R4 and his beautiful wife. Evret and Solstice would soon be having a baby as they have a happy relationship. Levana's jealousy causes her to go to Solstice's shop where she uses her glamour to disguise herself. Levana notices that Solstice's work is very beautiful as she spots a quilt that Solstice has made to look like planet Earth. Before she leaves the shop, she reveals her true identity to Solstice, in hopes that she would tell Evret.

Later, Levana is trying out different glamours for Channary's coronation three days after the funeral. She makes herself look like Solstice, pregnant and all, until Channary bursts in. To get Levana to reveal herself, Channary says that she had slept with Evret. This causes Levana to break character, and Channary taunts her. Levana runs off, but Evret sees her. Levana is mortified, embarrassed, and throws away the personalized gloves that she bought from Solstice.

Two weeks later after Channary was crowned queen, Levana turns sixteen. However, she is forgotten during her birthday celebration, which is just a party for the nobles. When she leaves, a guard gives her a present from Evret. Levana opens it and finds a pendant with Earth on it. Inside, there is a note saying that both Solstice and Evret sends her the best of wishes. Levana angrily rips up the part about Solstice.

Channary's royal council devises a way to make the disease they created, Letumosis, succeed. Channary opposes of this before Levana agrees to it, saying that it would weaken Earth, forcing them to look to Luna for help. Soon, shells are taken and their blood is harvested to procure an antidote for Leutmosis, under the impression that they are taken away at birth and killed, because a shell had murdered the former king and queen, "proof" that they were "dangerous."

Solstice is about to have her and Evret's baby. However, he is currently on his shift and Channary has no compassion for him. Levana decides to help Evret by letting him go with her to see his wife, under the impression that she required an escort to bring her to AR-4. Their daughter is born, but Levana later learns that Solstice died during childbirth.

Levana thinks that she and Evret are fated to be together because of Solstice's death and convinces herself that Evret was in love with her. Only a couple of weeks after Solstice's death, Levana reveals her feelings to Evret, who immediately tells her that he thinks of her as a friend. She uses her glamour to make herself look like she was Solstice. She tries to stop Evret from resigning from his position and begins controlling him to make him kiss her. Evret is manipulated into loving her, but always feels restrained and knows that his "love" for her is fake.

Evret tells Levana to stop torturing and reminding him of his wife. Impulsively, Levana asks him to marry her and he's forced to agree, having no other choice. However, Evret never stops being a guard after marrying Levana, refusing to adopt the title of prince. When Channary hears of this, she demands for their marriage to be annulled, saying that she and her father had already promised Levana to other suitors from Artemisia's families. Channary also announces to her sister that she believed she was pregnant but is unaware of who the father was. Nine months later, Channary would give birth to her daughter and heir, as well as Levana's niece, Princess Selene. She later talks about setting up Selene with Kaito, the heir of the Eastern Commonwealth, while also considering marrying his father, Emperor Rikan, hinting at a possible assassination attempt at his wife while also thinking of chopping her own seamstress's feet off so she would have nothing better to do. Channary, however, soon dies of regolith poisoning, and Levana suspects her sister frequently visited regolith caves with her "suitors," which could have been the cause of her cough and eventual death.

Levana becomes the queen regent for Selene, meaning to rule Luna until she was thirteen, at which time Selene would ascend to the throne. Levana' dreads the fact that she only had twelve years to be queen, and ends of conducting a plan to kill her niece, justifying it, thinking that Luna would be better under her, and not Selene, whom Levana believed that she would be as bad of a ruler as her mother was. Shortly thereafter, Selene reportedly died after a fire caught in her nursery, unintentionally caused by her new nanny, who Levana glamoured into doing so. There are rumors that Levana was responsible and Selene may have survived, and Levana confronts Dr. Eliot about this. She assures Levana that Selene was dead, but is nonetheless tortured for more information and presumably killed.

Winter and Evret become friends with Garrison's family. the Clays, Levana feels left out as she was never included in family affairs. Through Evret, she discovers that the pendant on her birthday was really a gift from Solstice, who pitied her and wanted her husband to be Levana's friend. Levana is angered and pesters Evret, who feels like she cannot trust him. Levana shows Evret what she truly looks like under her glamour and he's horrified as parts of Levana's body were paralyzed and scarred, her left eye was sealed shut, and her hair couldn't grow back. This was due to Channary pushing her into the fireplace, which both had a real and fake fire in it, when they were younger.

Levana later decides that an alliance with Earth is necessary for more resources. She also decides to assassinate Evret so she can marry the heir to the Eastern Commonwealth back on Earth and becomes its new empress. Joshua Haddon, a retired head thaumaturge, kills Evret as Levana promises that she'll marry him and crown him King of Luna if he does so. Regretting her decision, Levna stabs Haddon to death with a knife immediately after he murders Evret. Before he dies in Levana's arms, Evret's last wish is for Levana to protect and take care of Winter. As Levana is being taken away from Evret's body, the book ends with a quote from Channary, which she had said to Levana earlier in the book: "Love is a conquest. Love is a war. Here is what I think of love."

Characters

Trivia

  • The ending of Fairest takes place about 12 years prior to the start of Cinder.
  • Marissa Meyer wrote Fairest in just nine days.
  • Fairest was initially planned to be a significantly shorter promotional novella, but later turned into a book due to the sheer amount she actually ended up writing.

Foreign Editions

Fairest is translated & published in the following countries:

References

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