44 pages • 1 hour read
William GoldmanThe Princess Bride
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1973A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Bride”
An unnamed narrator considers the world’s most beautiful women in the years following Buttercup’s birth. The first is a maid named Annette, who works for a French duke and duchess. The duchess sees that her husband finds the maid attractive and begins feeding Annette chocolate to make her less appealing. Annette happily marries a chef, and the duke falls in love with his mother-in-law instead. Later, the most beautiful woman in the world is an Indian woman named Aluthra, until a plague ravages her skin. The next most beautiful is a British woman named Adela; however, she begins to fret that she will lose her beauty as she ages and ruins her complexion with worry lines. At this point, Buttercup is nearly the most beautiful, but she doesn’t groom or wash herself. She prefers riding her horse and teasing her farmhand, Westley. She orders him around mercilessly, to which he only responds, “As you wish” (31). As Buttercup grows older, she notices the village boys paying her more attention and the village girls growing cold and distant. Goldman briefly interjects to explain the author’s less-than-reliable use of parentheses to clarify textual details.
One day, Count Rugen of Florin hears of Buttercup’s beauty and comes to see for himself. He and his wife approach Buttercup’s parents and ask about their cows, claiming to want to learn the secrets of successful dairy production. When Buttercup arrives, Count Rugen is awestruck by her beauty. The countess asks Westley to show her the farm, clearly besotted with him. That night, Buttercup lies awake and wonders what attracted her to him. She becomes enraged with jealousy and finally goes to Westley to confess her love. To her astonishment, he shuts the door in her face. Buttercup is heartbroken but puts on a brave face. Westley arrives later to tell her he’s going to America to seek his fortune so that they can marry. They kiss dramatically before he leaves. Buttercup starts tending more to her appearance and finally becomes the most beautiful woman in the world. However, Buttercup soon learns that Westley’s ship has been attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts, who never leaves any survivors. Believing Westley to be dead, Buttercup vows never to love again.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Groom”
Goldman explains that he cut a substantial portion of Chapter 2, which deals with Florinese history. The narrator introduces Prince Humperdinck, who loves hunting above all else. To facilitate his passion, he and Count Rugen developed the Zoo of Death, a controlled sanctuary filled with dangerous animals for him to hunt. The zoo has five underground levels, with the fifth left empty, waiting for his ultimate challenge. One day, Humperdinck is hunting when Count Rugen arrives and tells him that his father, the king, is dying. Humperdinck realizes he will need to take a wife.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Courtship”
Humperdinck, Rugen, and the king and queen meet to discuss their options. They decide their best route is to marry Humperdinck to Princess Noreena of Guilder, the neighboring country. Noreena is beautiful and famous for her hat collection. Goldman interjects to explain another abridgement: 56 pages devoted to the packing and unpacking of women’s clothes. A Florinese professor explained to Goldman that these chapters were meant to satirize both countries.
Humperdinck, Noreena, and their families meet for dinner. They get along well until a gust of wind blows into the dining room and tosses everything about, including Noreena’s hat. The guests realize that Noreena is bald, and Humperdinck storms out. He announces that he’ll simply conquer Guilder and that he wants a wife who is unequivocally beautiful. Count Rugen leads him to Buttercup’s farm, where Humperdinck is awestruck. He tells Buttercup that she must marry him, but she refuses because she doesn’t love him. He scorns the idea of love, and they agree to marry.
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Preparations”
Goldman interjects to say his father always skipped this chapter; it explains how the royal court crowned Buttercup princess of Hammersmith to sidestep the rules about Humperdinck marrying a commoner. Then, Buttercup went through intensive training on how to be a princess. Goldman removed the entire chapter because “from a narrative point of view […] nothing happens” (69).
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
These chapters begin the main narrative and introduce the three central characters: Princess Buttercup (who only becomes a princess in the deleted Chapter 4), Westley, and Prince Humperdinck, the novel’s primary antagonist. Structurally, the novel presents Buttercup as the protagonist, though she takes a passive, fairy-tale-inspired role compared to the more active male characters in the novel’s cast. Her beauty and the way she compares to other women distinguish her, both in the wider world and in her home village, establishing The Value of Beauty as a thematic thread that will carry throughout the novel. Nevertheless, she undergoes an internal shift as she falls in love, experiences cataclysmic loss, and emerges more worldly and pragmatic than she was before. She makes a notable choice at the end of Chapter 3 with the closing line, “Then by all means let us marry” (66). Although Buttercup is clearly not happy with the arrangement, she accedes to it of her own free will. No one kidnaps or forces her into submission; instead, she makes a conscious, adult choice in which her own terms are clear. This subtle shift is later mirrored at the end of the novel, when Buttercup comes into her queenhood and faces down the palace guards.
Another element of Buttercup’s characterization is her descent into all-consuming love, her heartbreak, and her emergence from this internal change, all of which parallel the arc the fictional Goldman goes through when he falls in love with the adventure genre, discovers that there are limits to the world’s fairness, and recalibrates his own expectations in response. Although the novel’s portrayal of women is in some ways stereotypical, the fictional Goldman relates to Buttercup and her internal journey.
These chapters also introduce key plot elements that Goldman expands on later in the story, such as the social and political relationship between Florin and Guilder, the Zoo of Death, and Humperdinck’s relationship with Count Rugen. Despite the novel’s focus on its central love story, male friendships also play a strong role—particularly those between Humperdinck and Rugen and between Inigo and Fezzik. These chapters begin to explore the dynamic of the former pair; despite their difference in status, they share a mutual respect and even affection for each other. By showcasing the Zoo of Death, the novel hints at the strengths of each of these men, as well as Humperdinck’s key weakness: his pride. The empty fifth floor represents his trust in his own superiority and foreshadows its role in later chapters, creating suspense.
Chapter 4 is missing completely from the narrative, and Goldman’s notes take up a single page. He explains that the chapter centered on the logistics of an unconventional marriage and the satirizing of Buttercup’s ascent into society. A traditionally masculine perspective frames the novel, and the “good parts” reflect what the young Goldman enjoyed. Due to his own preferences, the fictional Goldman discarded many of the more introspective possibilities in favor of action and adventure. In making these choices, the real Goldman highlights the role—and limitations—of the author in shaping narrative, exposition, and ultimately the experience readers have with the story.
