A Royal Pain

by Ellen Conford

Being a princess is tough--but someone's got to do it!

Abby Adams of Kansas was born in a tiny European country, where she and another baby got accidentally switched. Now that the mix-up has been discovered, she's on her way back to Saxony Coburn to begin life as the real Princess Florinda XIV.

Being a princess is weird but fun--until Abby finds out she must marry the creepy Prince Casimir on her upcoming sixteenth birthday. Or else!

The Princess Abby Adams Florinda XIV is going to have to take drastic measures--and maybe even become a commoner again!

Genres: Young Adult, Fiction, Childrens, Middle Grade, Teen, Realistic Fiction, Humor

171 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Ellen Conford was an author for children and young adults. Among her writings are the Annabel the Actress and Jenny Archer series. Her books have won the Best Book of the Year Citation, Best Book of the International Interest Citation, Best Book of the Year for Children, Parents' Choice Award, and more.

Reviews

[Erin Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tiny Craig loved!

[Chelsea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well. I loved this book when I was about 10. Loved it a little too much, I think. For a stretch, I took it out from the library every other week or so.

It's pure fluff: a teenage girl who lives in Nowhere, America is informed that a dying nurse in some far off (fictional) European country - where she had been born while her parents were on vacation - admitted on her deathbed to switching the princess with... said teenage girl. So, logically, she gets shipped off to the tiny European country to learn how to rule, as she is destined to do. She can deal with the palace, but when she meets her betrothed (majorly creepy) and realizes what's in store for her, she's less than thrilled. Spoiler alert! She falls for a junior reporter, and it turns out that the deathbed confession was just a ploy to cause trouble for the royal family, so BAM! not a princess anymore.

I'm almost afraid to reread it, because I'm sure it will suck now that I'm not 10. ... I'm still on the lookout for it, however.

[Cinco · Rating 4 out of 5]

The precursor to The Princess Diaries. What female preteenager doesn't want to read a witty book where an ordinary girl suddenly finds out she was switched at birth and is the princess of a small made-up European country? This one earns bonus points when the princess rollerskates through the palace while being towed by a large dog.

[Luisa Knight · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before the movie, The Princess Diaries, there was this! And it was a favorite for 80's kids!

At least it was a favorite with my sister and I ... and the friends we told about it!

It is similar to the movie, but that shouldn't stop you from reading the book. It certainly has it's differences and they're big ones. It's a fun story with some memorable characters, hilarious moments and ... "Toto!" Yes, that word will probably work it's way into your tween girl's vocabulary in gif or quote fashion, just like it did mine ... um ... in quote fashion. *wink

Ages: 13+

Cleanliness: "Oh, God" is said twice. Alcoholic drink is mentioned and a side character is drunk in a scene. The main character is offered wine but declines. This, like the movie, is a romantic comedy, so there is some crushing, dreaming about being kissed/making out with a handsome guy, and later there is kissing with that guy. Also some unwanted attention (kissing, hugging) from a betrothed prince. None of it is described in great detail. The main character ends up being a little rebellious as she decides princess life is not for her and works a plan to return to civilian life.

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[LizthePrude · Rating 5 out of 5]

OOO!!! This is one of my all-time favorite books!!! Thanks to my other friend, Liz, who introduced this book to me like in 4th grade! It's got great humor, romance, and a betrothal to a guy who's "blood boils easily" (meaning he pretty much could fall in love with any girl at anytime) and freaks me out! I recommend this to all girls who love romantic comedies. Yeah, it's written for teen/tweens, but ya' gotta love it!

[Amber Clites · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was fun to reread this book from my childhood. Can't not even begin to list the huge difference between YA from the 80's to the awesome YA of today. It defintely makes me wish that we had had the literature of today, back when I was still a preteen and teen.

[Isa · Rating 4 out of 5]

read this in elementary and thought it was the greatest thing on the planet and what started my book obsession.

[Liralen · Rating 2 out of 5]

A royal pain indeed! Don't let the cover copy fool you: the protagonist is a spoiled brat long, long before she decides to be one to get out of an arranged marriage.

Abby's almost sixteen (but reads like an immature twelve) when she finds out that she was switched at birth and is actually the princess of a tiny, impoverished European country, the chief export of which is plastic raincoats (from their singular plastic-raincoat factory). Abby's all for being a princess, so long as it doesn't involve helicopters. Or work. Or responsibility. Or doing anything that doesn't require being waited on hand and foot...

Okay, okay. It's a cute enough story. Written in the 80s, so the feel is a bit different than it might be today, but the basic idea is classic and solid. I just, gosh. I mean, I think Mia of Princess Diaries fame is wildly immature, but Abby makes her look like...a placid sage. I know this isn't really supposed to be probable (among other things, none of the parents seem to care all that much which child they end up with, if any), but I had a pretty hard time suspending disbelief.

Oh well. Chalk it up to being too old for this, I suppose!

[Janemjemerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! What girl hasn't dreamed that she is actually a princess of a foreign country? Here, Conford takes this dream, makes it a reality for a normal American (U.S.) girl, and watches her life unfold. This book is fairly clean with a little touch of a more child-like romance (not the awful teenage romance as seen in some unfortunately popular novels these days), with kissing at a minimum. Here is a poem (no spoiling the end, I promise):
Prince Creep,
Watch him seep,
Underneath her doorway.
Casimir is his name,
And Marrying him is Abby's game.
She'll be a royal pain,
And try to drive them all insane;
But as a princess she can do no wrong,
And Geoffrey will be her sweet, sweet song.
Enjoy! :)

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

After rereading:

I bought this book at a Scholastic Book Fair in elementary school and loved it! Revisiting it as an adult was probably a mistake. Still, based on my childhood love of this book, I can’t rate lower than a three.

I think this was a big influence on the Princess Diaries series by Meg Cabot.

[O'neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

For book-lovers of all kinds: This is a covert teen book. Judge it by its cover and you are missing out on a great story. This book contains a Royal/down-to-earth story that tickles, as well as shows you the truth about something, like, grass being, uh, "what?", on the other side?...

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rerwding September 2017.

[Kristine Schmidt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as a preteen... it's a modernized, sanitized version of The Prince and the Pauper with princesses instead of princes.

[Michelle Llewellyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am on an Ellen Conford kick right now. Two of her other books "And This is Laura" and "Me and the Terrible Two" have previously been read and reviewed here on Goodreads/Amazon. Like those two YA novels, "A Royal Pain" is also worth a revisit. Ellen Conford knows how to craft an entertaining story allowing the reader a willing suspension of disbelief and she keeps everything PG so nobody is offended. Like her other books, it had been a long time since I dug this one off the shelves of my home library and gave it another whirl. I wasn't disappointed.

Disney (and Meg Cabot) owes Ellen Conford an apology for copyright infringement, except "A Royal Pain" is MUCH better than "Princess Diaries" in both text and movie formats. I vote "A Royal Pain" should get the Hollywood treatment especially with the book celebrating its 40th anniversary next year having been published in 1986. It's time for another "Princess Reveal/Switched at Birth" movie trope.

Here's how the "A Royal Pain" screenplay should go: Abby Adams is only 15 in the book so we'll make her 17 for the movie-soon to turn 18. Just after graduating high school, Abby returns home with her "sort-of" boyfriend and best girlfriend to get ready for the big high school graduation bash to be held later that evening somewhere in the small Kansas town where she lives. (Abby and her friends are only preparing for their end-of-year final exams in the book) But there will be no party tonight for Abby, there's a fancy black car parked in front of her house and two strange uniformed men with sashes and medals standing in her living room with her parents and little brother. Everyone looks very solemn. The two men bow over "your royal highness" while her two friends look in disbelief at Abby like she's suddenly turned into an alien from outer space.

Abby learns she was switched at birth and is really Princess Florinda, future ruler over a very tiny, fictional, European kingdom wedged somewhere between France, Belgium and Luxembourg (Saxony Coburn still sounds better than Genovia). Princess Florinda is set to inherit her title and responsibilities upon her official coronation on her 18th (16th in the book) birthday which is only a few weeks away. She must come with these official-looking men now and take her rightful place as heir to the throne. The "commoner" Abby's doppelganger, her Kansas parents' true blood daughter back in Saxony Coburn, Dolores, will be dealt with later.

We can skip the silly helicopter ride in the book where Abby is deathly afraid of heights and screams bloody murder soaring over the French boarder into Saxony Coburn accessible only by a single mountain road, set high up in some mountain range, only the size of a small US state like Rhode Island, with a population of only 100,000 or so. Their exports are goat products and plastic raincoats. Still, the helicopter ride makes for a dramatic entrance into the capital city (and ONLY major town) of her new home. Her earlier terror forgotten, she exits the helicopter walking a red carpet and is all smiles and waves to her adoring subjects and flashing cameras, including TV, delighted to have the true Princess here to save them from economic ruin.

And here is where the movie can reveal The Big Plot Complication which is also in the book. What nobody bothered to tell Abby is that Princess Florinda, whether she is named Abby or Dolores (the Saxony Coburn officials don't care,) must marry the Creepy Prince of Arcania who is more than 10 years her senior that she's been betrothed to since childhood because Saxony Coburn has racked up a national debt to rival the USA's!

If the Princess doesn't marry and this merger between the two fictional countries, poor in-debt-up-to-its-ears-Saxony Coburn and wealthy Arcania, doesn't take place, it will mean a Crash worse than the one that led to America's Great Depression of the 1930's. Abby's real parents, the Current Princess and Prince Regent, are nice and friendly but still determined to hold Abby hostage and not let her return to her former life in the United States. She can't leave. She is the True Princess and must be the one to marry Creepy Prince who needs a better name than Casimir.

Dolores, the forgotten "other Princess" is quietly throwing a tantrum over the whole situation. She hides out in front of the TV, refusing to speak to anyone and will only talk to her stuffed Snoopy dog. She really should have been given more to do in the book. If she is the enemy, she is not a very formidable one. In the movie I'm suggesting, maybe she SHOULD be allowed to poison Abby's food in one desperate effort to take back her stolen throne and Prince that she is very much in love with but I don't really like the Prince either, he's practically a Donald Trump rapist, so for the movie let's have Abby and Dolores conspire together, after the poison incident where Abby only gets a little sick but quickly recovers and they become friends, then let the fun commence! In the final scenes in the book, Dolores just tosses Snoopy out the window and is suddenly a ready and willing accomplice to help Abby spread the rumor that the switch did not really take place and Dolores is the True Princess after all. Instead of her only motive being Get Married to My Prince, let's have her really want to rule Saxony Coburn because she has lots of good ideas to improve its economy but because she can't be an official ruler and be taken seriously until she gets married, everyone will realize how wrong and archaic this is. A new money solution will be found, Creepy Prince gets his comeuppance, Dolores will be allowed to ascend to the throne, Abby can get her happily ever after, and a sequel can allow Dolores to get married later, like in "Frozen" or something. That should please all the Woke Viewers and critics to my proposed movie.

So, in the book, Dolores only makes a few minor appearances. Shenanigans ensue as Abby tries everything she can think of to get out of her new duties. She's too young to get married! She'd rather run off to Vegas with the cute Saxony Coburn newspaper reporter, Geoffrey, who is also older than her by a few years but not as many as Creepy Prince of Arcania. Geoffrey seems to like Abby too and wants to help her plan an elaborate escape but Abby's guardians are too clever. Abby pulling up her fancy ball gown showing her jeans like the picture on the cover is not in the book. Instead, Abby dresses like an 80's punk rocker, wears a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and roller skates around the palace carrying a boom box blaring hard rock music hoping to drive everyone so crazy they'll fire her and take away all her Princess Privileges.
No such luck for Abby.
For the movie, many of these humorous scenes can easily be updated to whatever 21st century teenagers are doing to rebel these days and get all the grown ups in a state of disorder "sixes and sevens" if you know what I mean *wink wink!*

There is no makeover for Abby like in the "Princess Diaries" movie and Abby's "Princess Lessons" to learn French and being drilled on her scripted responses for both her wedding vows and when she undergoes the formal, official, coronation ceremony are overseen by a woman who is NOT her Grandmére. There is some etiquette and decorum instruction but Abby is thankfully not some hopeless klutz like in the Disney movie which tried too hard to go for humor like a bad rom-com.

The Royal Ball scene in the book where Abby's metal hoopskirts keeps banging into everyone, such as Creepy Prince's head, and everything around her, should definitely be in my movie version. It would make for some great visual humor.

Hopefully I haven't given away too many spoilers from the book. Read it, if you can find a copy as many of Ellen Conford's books are now out of print and most libraries no longer have any of her work in circulation. Judy Blume, yes, which is why Ellen Conford's work needs to be memorialized in a Hollywood or streaming service platform movie before she is forgotten by the next generation of readers.

[Beverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although she is American, she had been born prematurely in a tiny country in Europe--Saxony Coburn--where her parents were tourists. Her mother gave birth to her in the royal palace, on the same day that Saxony Coburn's reigning princess also gave birth to a daughter. Fifteen and 11/12 years later, two gentlemen from Saxony Coburn arrive at the Adams' home in Kansas. Abby first thinks that the gentlemen are FBI agents: "Teddy's been kidnapped! They're in disguise. They plan to infiltrate the vicious gang of roving butlers who snatched my brother." However, the gentlemen have come to inform them that Abby and the princess of Saxony Coburn had been switched at birth. It seems that the doctor who had attended both births had died the week before and had left a letter revealing that he had switched babies. Finally convinced that she is a princess, Abby decides to go to Saxony Coburn with the gentlemen and assume her rightful place as Princess Florinda XIV.
Abby's new parents are Princess Florinda XIII and Prince Albert. To her relief, Abby finds out they speak English, even slang. When she first sees her private bathroom, she saw "it had all the standard fixtures, but they would have appeared in Chapter One of The History of Western Plumbing. A few days later, Abby learns that the Prince and Princess plan to marry Abby to a Prince Casimir of Arcania on her 16th birthday, only month away. The problem is, Abby doesn't like Prince Casimir. At all. Instead, she falls in love with Geoffrey Torunga, a reporter who interviews her at the palace. Her first impression of Geoffrey was: "To be perfectly honest, he looked like a member of the Olympic Gorgeous Team. Blonde division."
Abby very nearly causes a scandal by trying to tae a walk with Geoffrey unchaperoned. Her royal parents confine her to the palace. It is then that Abby decides to become "a royal pain" so that she can get "unbetrothed and deprincessed."
One day, when Prince Casimir comes to see Abby, she dresses up in "punk peasant" in order to shock him. Instead of being shocked, Prince Casimir pursues Abby through the palace maze in a slapstick chase scene.
Finally, Abby engages the hlep of the hostile ex-princess, Dolores. She is to create a diversion during the wedding ceremony so that Abby can escape with Geoffrey. Dolore creates a lovely diversion--setting fire to the royal palace--and as Abby and Geoffrey drive away in a jeep, she sees her American family just arriving in a Land Rover.
Back at the palace, everything and everyone is sorted out. The letter about the switch is proven to be a fake, so Abby returns to America with her real parents. This story will keep readers rolling in the aisles as they root for the spunky and ingenious Abby.
(Too bad DNA testing wasn't available when this story takes place!)

[Don Heiman · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1986 Scholastic Inc. released Ellen Conford’s novel “A Royal Pain.” The novel is about a 16 year old Kansan Abby Adams who became the Princess of a 22 square mile European mountain-sovereign nation of Saxony Coburn. The Saxony nation was in a state of economic peril and in desperate need of a princess. Sixteen years before the economic crisis, a Kansas couple on a vacation in Europe experienced an emergency need for a premature infant delivery. The Kansas couple fortunately found a doctor who had just recently delivered the infant of the Saxony ruling royalty. The doctor immediately performed an emergency delivery for the vacationing Kansas couple. Fifteen years after the doctor died, a note was found in his documents stating that the Royal couple’s baby was declared to be the Kansan baby when in fact the baby was the Saxon’s Royalist child. When the mixed delivery document was discovered, arrangements were made between American and Saxony Coburn officials to transport the “true” princess from Kansas to the Saxony Coburn nation. The book uses a first person narrative writing style to describe the impact this discovery had on Abby Adams and how she escaped the piratical tactics of the Saxony Coburn nation. Ellen Conford ‘s narrative style puts the reader in “the present moment.” The novel’s present moment storylines are captivating, very humorous, and full of surprises. (P)

[Aneesah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh my, somehow the cover of this book landed on my homepage today. Talk about memory lane! I read this book a couple times back in elementary school. I loved Ellen Conford. I may have to re-read this one just to see if it still holds up!

[Alyssa Skinner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have liked the book better, in spite of how cheesy it is, but I have a little bit of a problem with the fact that the 15-year-old in this book gets into a relationship with a man in his 20s, and no one seems to have a problem with that.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my goodness, this book popped up on the feed of an author I follow, and I remembered I owned this book as a kid, in fact I think I still have it buried in a box somewhere. What a throwback! I loved this book, and read it several times over the years!

[Addie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hilarious story of a girl who inherits a royal standing. Worth the read!

[Aubry · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cute light read. Though Delores bothered me.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is almost forgotten this gem! As a kid, I would’ve given this 5 stars, but I’m pretty sure it hasn’t aged well lol. So, 3 for nostalgias sake. Gotta love the 80s.

[Sharon Buxton · Rating 3 out of 5]

C+. fiction, teen, humor, identity mix-up, Mom's stash, keep

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny and very 1980s, in all the best ways.

[Melynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remember reading this as a preteen, many years ago, and feelingnlike it was very mature, so that's the 4 star. Would like to read again for that nostalgia.

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the few books I reread when I was younger. Couldn't help but pick it up again. It doesn't stand the test of time very well, but I enjoyed reading it nonetheless.

[Sandra Sweazy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The kids just didn't get into it.

[AS · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read for kids : )

[Bec · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of fun. And an interesting twist on the commoner-who-was-switched-at-birth-royalty trope.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember liking it as a kid when the references were just a bit old, but it's extremely dated now.