What happens in Graceling by Kristin Cashore?

Answer 1

Well, Graceling is about an 18 year old girl named Katsa. Katsa is a Graceling. Gracelings are people who possess an extraordinary power. Graces can be anywhere from fighting to climbing trees. Katsa's Grace is killing. She lives as an outcast and a thug in Randa City where her uncle, King Randa uses her to deliver punishments to people who wrong him. All of the Seven Kingdoms fear her because of her notorious stories. Katsa, however, forms a Council, a group of people who do kindnesses for people without the king's knowledge. In a Council mission to rescue a Lienid grandfather, Prince Tealiff, who had been kidnapped, she meets a Graced, Lienid prince named Po. Po is the grandson of Prince Tealiff and is searching for him, same as Katsa. Po resumes his search for his grandfather in Randa City where he finds the rescued Prince Tealiff. Next, their mission is to find the kidnapper. Somewhere along the line, Po and Katsa become friends. When Po leaves to find the kidnapper, Katsa joins him in a search across the Seven Kingdoms to Monsea. While on the trip, Po uses his real Grace, mindreading, to his advantage and discovers the kidnapper to be King Leck, of Monsea - a king known for his kind reputation. On the way to Monsea, Katsa and Po realize that Leck has a Grace of his own, a Grace which controls suspisions, and that is why nobody ever assumed he was the criminal. "Because who could suspect someone that controls suspisions?" In Monsea, Po and Katsa see the King's wife, Ashen get murdered by the king himself. Before her death, she tells Po to find her daughter, Bitterblue, who the king wants to torture. In the Monsean forests, they find Bitterblue in a fallen tree and take her to a cave where they will be safe. The 10 year old princess outright says, "You'll have to kill the king if you ever want him to stop chasing us." That is exactly what they are going to do. Though Katsa is the better fighter, Po has to do the deed for his mindreading Grace gives him a mental block to Leck's mind control. Before the battle, Po gives Katsa his ring. In his attempt to kill Leck, Po is shot with an arrow, and falls off a cliff into a pool of water, face first. When Katsa fishes him out, she and Bitterblue dress the wound in his shoulder, slump him over a horse, and set out for the king was not dead and the only one who could kill him was knocked out. Po insists that they leave him behind to save the child because he was slowing them down. Sad as Katsa was, they left him in a cabin and set off for Po's castle on the other side of the Seven Kingdoms in Lienid, an island to the southwest. Katsa supposes that Leck's men will be at the mountain pass, and Monport by the sea. She decides to take the suicidal path through the mountains and the two end up in Sunder where they head to the water to take a boat to Lienid. Disguising themselves as boys, they attempt to board a Lienid ship where they pay a boy for passage. He accuses them of stealing and takes them to Captain Faun for approval. The lady captain shortly realizes that the two boys were not in fact boys. When Katsa shows them Po's ring and says he gave it her, they were not so easily convinced but soon realized it to be the truth. Because of her possession of the royal ring, they agree to travel to Lienid. When they arrive at Lienid, Katsa and Bitterblue head for Po's castle. Once inside, a steward says that his master as recently arrived, assuming that he meant Po, they were astonished. But, as a matter of fact that master, was the mind controling Leck. Leck tries to convince Katsa that it is his castle. He gets her to tell him that Po is alive and in Monsea. When Leck begins to tell the secret of Po's true Grace, Katsa throws a dagger into Lecks open mouth as he's speaking, and pins him against the chair he was in. Katsa, Bitterblue and Po's family then head out to find Po in the Monsean forest. Getting to the spot where they had left Po, he appears, healthy and well. When people start to notice Po's far-off looking eyes, Katsa remembers his face hitting the water. Katsa comes to the conclusion that Po is blind, and he confirms it. Though he can't see, he still can sense the physical energy of people, animals, plants, even rocks, for this is his Grace. "I've no idea what you think of Randa, or what Raffin think of Bann, or if Oll enjoys his dinner. You could be spinning in circles and thinking about how much you hate Randa and all I'll know is that you're spinning in circles." Princess Bitterblue is now Queen Bitterblue of Monsea. And it all has a pretty much happy ending.