The Hero and the Crown was published by Greenwillow Books in 1984, winning the Newbery Medal in 1985. It is a prequel to The Blue Sword (1982) — set in the same fantasy world (Damar) but centuries earlier — and it represents McKinley’s most fully achieved long-form fantasy: a novel that combines the emotional honesty of literary fiction with the scope and wonder of epic fantasy.
Aerin is the king’s only child — and distrusted by the entire court because her mother was a foreign woman from the North, widely believed to have been a witch who enchanted the king. Aerin grows up isolated: her father loves her but cannot protect her from suspicion, and her cousin Tor (heir to the throne, in love with Aerin) cannot overcome the court’s hostility.
Aerin’s path to heroism is not the sudden revelation of power (the lazier fantasy template) but patient, dangerous work: she spends years experimenting with a fire-resistant ointment (kelar), then uses it to begin killing the small dragons that plague the countryside — work that is unglamorous, exhausting, and initially laughed at. When the great dragon Maur appears (a creature of legendary scale and malice), Aerin rides against it alone — and the battle that follows is one of the finest single combat sequences in fantasy literature.
McKinley’s feminism is structural rather than polemical: Aerin does not prove herself by being “as good as a man” but by being herself — patient, intelligent, stubborn, and willing to endure pain that others would flee.
Collecting The Hero and the Crown
First edition (Greenwillow Books, New York, 1984): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $40–$120
- Signed first edition: $80–$200
- Without jacket: $10–$20