The Hero and the Crown
by Robin McKinley
Summary
Aerin is the daughter of King Arlbeth of Damar, pale and red haired in a court that expects its royal women to look like everyone else, and the other nobles keep her at a suspicious distance for it. She teaches herself what nobody will teach her: digging through old texts to relearn a lost ointment called kenet that protects skin from dragon fire, then training in secret on Talat, a war horse everyone else has given up on. When the great dragon Maur wakes after a long dormancy, Aerin rides out and kills it, but the fight leaves her badly burned and poisoned by the dragon's blood. A mysterious healer named Luthe finds her, restores her in the Lake of Dreams, and in the process makes her something not quite fully mortal anymore, teaching her real magic before revealing that her own uncle, the wizard Agsded, has stolen the kingdom's Hero's Crown and threatens Damar itself.
Aerin travels north carrying Luthe's sword, Gonturan, defeats Agsded in a magical confrontation, and recovers the crown, only to return home and find Damar already under attack by demons from the north. She helps drive them back using her hard won magic and the crown's own power, though her father Arlbeth dies in the fighting. The novel ends with Aerin marrying Tor, the one person at court who never treated her as an outsider, and the two of them left to rebuild what the war cost.
McKinley writes in dense, unhurried prose that takes its time building Damar's history and Aerin's competence rather than rushing toward the dragon fight, and the payoff rewards a reader willing to stay with a slower opening. It gave fantasy a heroine who earns her place through work and stubbornness rather than birthright alone, and that argument still lands for readers decades later.
Historical Context & Significance
The Hero and the Crown won the 1985 Newbery Medal. That year's honor books were Bruce Brooks's The Moves Make the Man, Paula Fox's One Eyed Cat, and Mavis Jukes's Like Jake and Me. Greenwillow published the novel in 1984, two years after McKinley's earlier Damar novel The Blue Sword, which is set later in Damar's history and had already earned a 1983 Newbery Honor; The Hero and the Crown works as a prequel to it, with Aerin and Luthe both making brief appearances in the later book's own story.
Critic Zena Sutherland judged that the novel impresses by its scope and sweep and by its narrative power rather than by the depth of its characterization, pairing praise with a real reservation about how fully drawn its people are. Writing decades later for Tor.com, novelist Ilana C. Myer credited McKinley's world building and memorable heroine with keeping the book a fantasy classic. The Blue Sword itself had taken a 1983 Newbery Honor, so the two Damar novels between them hold a Medal and an Honor two years apart.