55 pages • 1 hour read
Legendary
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Prologue-Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Isla de Los Sueños”
Prologue Summary: “Seven Years Ago”
Tella loves to play pretend and create imaginative scenarios for her adventures while she roams her family’s estate. One day, as she pretends to rescue an elfin prince from a wicked queen, she sneaks into her mother’s room to examine the forbidden jewelry box. She knows the contents well and only plans to investigate the opal ring that never fits her; however, her plans change when she sees a familiar satchel flicker between two different appearances—a satchel and a deck of cards. She opens the deck of cards and reveals two cards with grotesque images. One depicts a woman’s head caged with pearls, while the second shows a prince with bloody tears. She flips over a third card, which seems to be a mirror, but the image seems wrong in a way Tella does not understand.
Before she can investigate the deck further, her mother finds her with the cards and sees the two cards that Tella placed on the floor: the Maiden’s Death and the Prince of Hearts. She does not notice the third card, The Aracle, which is still in Tella’s hand. Her mother takes the deck and the first two cards, then explains to Tella that the Deck of Destiny can write a future for someone before they can write it for themselves. She makes Tella swear never to touch the deck, or any deck like it, again. Tella outwardly agrees even as she hides the third card from her mother.
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Tella wakes up lying on the ground after a night with Dante, one of the Caraval performers. Though Caraval is over, some of its mysteries remain, and she desperately wants to reread the note from her friend demanding that she retrieve Legend’s real name. She sneaks away from the others who sleep in the woods and makes her way to Legend’s estate to find her sister, Scarlet; it no longer houses the Caraval world and is now a regular home. She finds Scarlet and Julian (Scarlet’s boyfriend) embracing. Julian offers to have them come to the capital city for another game of Caraval. Scarlet hesitates because of the count—her former fiancé, who worked with the girls’ father during the first Caraval—but Tella wants to take the chance because she needs to play this game to obtain what her friend desires—Legend’s real name. Scarlet and Tella discuss the topic alone, and Scarlet quickly agrees to go; she does not want to live her life ruled by fear, and she does not want to let her father win by surrendering the freedom they have already won. Scarlet makes Tella swear to be careful, and she agrees, although she feels the weight of the letter in her pocket.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary
While Scarlet confirms their travels with Julian, Tella reflects on the debt she owes her friend.
She incurred this debt because she endeavored to change the image in The Aracle card, which revealed impending futures. Before the last Caraval, the card depicted her sister crying and dressed in a bloody wedding dress. Then, it showed her mother in a cage. Tella reached out to her friend, who obtained information about Legend for her so that she could get the mysterious man’s attention. For this service, her friend’s price was Legend’s real name. When Tella saw the future in the Aracle card, she reached out again for information about her mother, and her friend quickly found information but refused to divulge it until he received payment for the assistance he already rendered.
Now, Scarlet interrupts Tella’s reminiscing as Tella remembers a coin that came with her letter and is no longer on her person. Tella leaves Legend’s estate to find the coin and encounters Dante.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary
Dante approaches her, and Tella fights the feelings that led to her spontaneous fling with Dante on the previous night. He offers her the missing coin and informs her that it is a luckless coin, which the Fates used to track someone. There is a rumor that spinning the coin will reveal which Fate owned it, so Dante spins the coin. The coin shows the Prince of Hearts—the card that predicted Tella’s loveless future. When Dante asks about her feelings toward the prince, he speaks as though the Fates are still present rather than having vanished ages ago. Before he leaves, he warns Tella to be careful because he has never known someone to benefit from carrying a luckless coin.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary
Tella remains by the bench, spinning the luckless coin and wondering about the story of the Prince of Hearts, whose kiss would kill everyone except his true love. Because of this curse, the Prince of Hearts became a symbol of unrequited and impossible love. Now, Tella turns toward a door that opens down the street and sees Nicola d’Arcy, Scarlet’s former fiancé. She moves to attack him, but Julian intercepts her and prevents her from attacking the figure who is really Armando, one of Legend’s performers. Julian reveals that Scarlet never met the real Count d’Arcy; the man she believed to be her fiancé is one of Legend’s actors, who has been paid to draw her further in. In exchange for her promise not to tell Scarlet about Armando, Tella asks Julian for help in acquiring Legend’s real name. He won’t tell her anything, but he reveals that Nigel, Legend’s fortune-teller, might have information for her.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary
Legend’s ship, La Esmerelda, leaves the Isla de los Sueños and sails for the capital city, where the next Caraval game will occur. Tella mistimes her sleep on the first day and misses the chance to search for Nigel. On the second night, she stays awake and explores the ship in an effort to find him. A rose petal path guides Tella to Scarlet’s room, where her sister is enjoying a romantic moment with Julian. Tella does not trust the moment but hopes that Julian is sincere about his feelings for Scarlet. The next room is Nigel’s. Tella bargains away her rest in exchange for information about Legend. Nigel reveals that nobody can say Legend’s name because of an ancient magic, but she can win the name in the next Caraval. Nigel also delivers a prophecy that winning Caraval will leave Tella with regrets. After receiving this information, Tella fulfills her part of the bargain by falling asleep; she will remain asleep until they arrive, and all the rest that she receives while sleeping will be transferred to Nigel.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
Tella struggles as sleep takes her and stumbles into Dante’s room rather than her own. When she wakes up, she is in her room, and Scarlet gives her a tray of food and indirectly asks what Nigel gave her that justified paying such a price. Tella considers telling Scarlet but does not want her sister to worry. Scarlet confronts Tella about her fling with Dante and reveals slippers and a note that Dante left after carrying Tella to her room. Tella tells Scarlet some lies about how far it went but is honest in her assertion that she does not trust Dante or any of Legend’s actors. She then tries to convince Scarlet to team up and play Caraval with her. At first, Scarlet hesitates, but she agrees when Julian arrives to help carry their luggage off the ship. He also silently reminds Tella about Armando. Scarlet refuses to back out, which leaves Tella wondering about Nigel’s prophecy that winning Caraval will saddle her with regret.
Prologue-Part 1 Analysis
In the prologue, the author uses a carefully crafted tone to lay the groundwork for the critical components that will dominate the novel. Tella’s memory becomes a key element and introduces The Tension Between Free Will and Fate, which initially manifests in the form of the Deck of Destiny. The transformation of the unattractive sachet into a pristine deck of cards is a prime example of this dynamic, and the inherent magic of Garber’s world is emphasized in the immediacy of the transformation. As the narrative states, “One moment it looked like a bundle of rot and smelled of decay. A blink later, in its place rested a gleaming deck of cards, tied with a delicate satin ribbon” (3). When Tella discovers the Deck’s true appearance, it sets her destiny in motion; however, just as the illusion of the sachet remains, so too does Tella’s free will remain a key component in her own actions. Although the protective illusion around the deck shatters, Tella will retain her own choices and will challenge the Fates as she sees fit rather than succumbing to the whims of fate itself.
Tella’s character arc is complex, for her progress is marked by her connection with the Fates. As the story unfolds, she also grapples with personal loss through the absence of her mother, overcomes a volley of impossible challenges in the game of Caraval, and struggles with self-worth due to her fraught past. When she experiences love, her first question is, “What in all the hells had she been thinking?” (12). Tella’s character flaws revolve around the recurring trend of believing that she can never experience romantic love and must therefore reject anyone who wants to offer her those feelings. This emotional stumbling block creates both internal and external conflicts for Tella as she navigates the distinction between Discerning Illusion From Reality during this second game of Caraval. She also questions herself and her feelings for Dante, and this internal conflict challenges her long-held personal beliefs about love and her capacity to experience it.
While many of these incipient conflicts will evolve as the novel progresses, Garber uses the prologue and the novel’s opening chapters to establish The Power of Familial and Romantic Relationships by presenting the baseline for Tella’s key relationships. For example, she determinedly avoids her connection with Dante even as she seeks out a deeper connection to her sister, Scarlet. The dynamic between these two relationships will shift as Garber uses the novel’s events to comment on the significance of knowing when each type of love must take precedence. Garber establishes this theme in such a way that her narrative runs counter to the traditional tropes of the romance genre, for Tella does not attain her stereotypical “happily ever after” scenario at the end of the story. Whereas Scarlet found her own “happily ever after” at the end of Caraval by saving her sister, being with Julian, and winning Caraval, Tella’s journey must ultimately continue beyond Legendary because by the end of the novel, she finds love and must watch as the man she loves walks away. Significantly, Legendary has no ready-made hero because Tella must actively work to become the story’s hero. Rather than waiting for someone else to step up and save her and her family, she must take action to do so herself. While Dante will eventually be revealed as the mysterious Legend himself, he cannot be her hero because that is not Dante’s purpose. Because Tella cannot understand this, her character development will conflict with the novel’s thematic progression, for just as she learns to love, she will lose her “happily ever after.”
The Luckless Coin symbol appears only a few times throughout the novel, yet its appearance always marks a turning point in the plot. The first time Tella reveals the coin, Dante identifies it and explains that it brings bad luck to all who carry it. In this scene, Garber uses Dante to foreshadow the novel’s conclusion, in which Tella will lose him because she holds the luckless coin. The coin’s implicit connection to the Prince of Hearts also foreshadows the choice that Tella will eventually have to make between Dante and the Prince. At this early point in the plot, she is unaware that the Prince already plays a role in her life, yet she keeps his coin all the same. As the narrative progresses, she will continually choose the Prince.
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By Stephanie Garber
