The trilogy

Characters:

Mantra: The Healing witch, the Beast Prince's foster mother

Princess Blossom: The girl of the prophecies and the Beast Prince's protegee

Name of the empire: Garima; After Mantra disintegrates, Nature of Garima becomes the personification of Mantra

Dyret: The name of the Beast Prince as christened by Mantra. Dylan was his original name. 

Princess Hoshi: She is the love interest of the Beast Prince. Hoshi means 'star' in Japanese. Hoshi is so higher up petty considerations in life and has so much loyalty for her Prince, the Beast Prince, that she is ready to leave her own people and join him. Hoshi brings the downfall of her own people at the end when they are all convinced that the Beast Prince is dead and Blossom has escaped for her life. She is the reason why these people, who are her ancestors, are able to redeem themselves of their sins. 

Queen Himawari: Himawari is the Japanese word for sunflower. Queen Himawari is a devout woman but she is hopeless because her faith has become obsolete. The preachers preach the scriptures with fervour but no emotion. She is a scholarly woman and knows a lot about her religion. Yet, she does not understand how this knowledge could be of any use in her world. She sees injustices in her empire and weeps but her scholarly knowledge of religion stops her from taking any practical action and saving her people. Torn between her formal education and her tender heart she seeks a way out. And, the way out she finds when she finds her son in beastly form. She knows that it is still her son and no matter how tainted a beast is supposed to be, he is still her own son. Though the Beast Prince recognizes her as his mother, he refuses to acknowledge it because he would rather not shame her. Queen Himawari is heart-broken and furious when Mantra tells her the truth about her son. She believes Mantra and begins a quest for the boy of the prophecies. Only, it turns out to be a girl and a flower princess in the Cloud kingdom. This Princess along with her sisters is entrusted with the responsibility to make the flowers bloom and look beautiful and smell sweet. How can this Princess be the stereotype warrior like a knight? But she reminds herself of how her son can be a Beast and therefore, Blossom, the twelve year old, could also be a warrior. She had all the so-called masculine qualities of the prophecies with feminine tenderness. So, Queen Himawari cross-checks the prophecy and this time takes up an arduous journey to the sacred place beating all odds to read the prophecy in its original form. It is engraved in golden letters in a cave. It describes a child and not a boy as her masters had told her. The Queen is measured that Blossom was the child-the girl, and there had been no boys after all. When she returns back home, she learns that her empire has fallen to the enemies and the King is dead. So, the Queen goes to seek refuge in Cloud kingdom where she is granted asylum. She meets Blossom and tells her to go meet the Beast Prince. It is because Mantra had already told Queen Himawari that her own son was the Dyret of the legends, the rebel leader against the enemies of her empire.  She too enters Dyret's place and fights a scholar's battle. When Mantra disintegrates after the fall of their glorious empire, Garima, Dyret does not call Himawari as mother but loves her as one. Queen Himawari tells him that she knows Dyret's truth towards the end of the first part. Blossom does manage to defeat the enemy king but the nasty core lives on and after a period of calm, the enemies regroup themselves and return. The respite was temporary and Blossom and her party knows that the real war had not begun yet. 

Animosity: Animosity is the evil mother of enemies. She has bred all the evil ones like the Queen bee breeds the entire hive. So, youth is very important for her so that she can remain fertile and lay eggs. These eggs are reptilians and the evil ones are reptiles deep down. But, even with reptilian abilities a person can do good things and even love. It is because love is the greatest virtue. 

How did princess Hoshi overcome the evil within her and become capable of falling in love?

 I believe that Rowling never explored the character of Remus Lupin enough. It was more like using a wonderful real-life person to give depth to the story. This isn't a work of fanfiction. Rather, it is a work unto itself. The protagonist is Princess Blossom. The story is a bildungsroman for her. In flashbacks and flash-forwards, the series shows how Princess Blossom learns to love from her mentor, the Beast Prince. 

The story raises questions on the issues of love and worth and appearances. The Beast Prince thought he was unworthy of prestige. But, then he finds himself as the leader of the rebels. He thinks he can hold no formal power but then towards the end of the first book, he realizes that he had a noble birth and he had been a prince of the great and glorious but now subdued empire anyway which he has vowed to defend. 

The story is about how an empire that was once so glorious became subdued by some barbarians and their cruel machinations. It is because every good thing can disintegrate into superfluous selfishness, prejudice, and vanity. People of a civilization which was at its peak some day have disintegrated into a vain and vile society that still keeps the pretense of their ancestral goodness. The old good things needed to change but the people of Garima detest changes. They want to hold on to their age old beliefs without ever truly understanding what those beliefs truly mean. This is how despite their pretense of strength, they are weak inside, their pride has eaten them up from inside, and now a change is needed. And, change comes in the form of their own beloved Prince whom they thought long missing and dead.

When the people of Garima win at last and are ready to recognize the Beast as their Prince then all their old prejudices break apart. Their old beliefs suddenly become meaningful in these changed circumstances and the empire thrives again. Though there is a lot to take care of even now. 

There is also the question of glorious martyrdom. The Beast Prince chooses to surrender to the enemies to save his people. The enemies had destroyed his beastly part while the human part lives still. These opponents who had once laid a curse upon him to be a Beast now end up freeing him from his curse to be human again. When the Beast dies, the human lives in a vegetative state. But, when Blossom devours the core of the nasty powers then he wakes up again. They are not able to belive that Blossom could ever betray them and run away from the war like a coward. When Hoshi does discover Blossom though, Blossom still lives on as good as dead. Mantra comes to life once again in the spirit form and revives the girl of their prophecies who had now fulfilled it. 

The Beast Prince's foster mother was a great healing witch who often rescued the wounded oppressed of the empire. Compassion and loyalty to the cause is what the Beast Prince has learned from her. 

The Healing Witch, Mantra, is already

The first part of the trilogy:

The rebel leader, Beast Prince, discovers that he is no filthy beast who should live in a den. He discovers that he is really the Prince of the subdued nation by the end of the Trilogy. The story is told from Blossom's point of view. Blossom is already a teenager when she leaves her home and shifts to the rebel army camp. 

The second part of the trilogy:

The Beast Prince wins and Blossom fulfills her prophecy. But, when the Beast Prince is down, his devoted lover, Hoshi, brings her own people down. Now that they have won, they are grieving the loss of their leader, their prince, their future king who would return their land to its lost glory. But just when Hoshi is crying hard on her beloved's mauled chest, he wakes up, the hide of the beast tears itself apart from him like a jacket and he wakes up as a human. Though he retains the same eyes, the same smile and the same heart and is still deeply in love with her. Blossom is revived and brought back with honors. Then, the Beast Prince marries his fiance, Hoshi. Blossom stays back in Garima to serve as the new king and queen's commander-in-chief. 

Nature is a benevolent and fierce force that sympathizes with the Beast Prince and his forces because she too finds herself subdued like the enemies.  

Mantra is like an ever-present spirit after her physical death. Mantra was actually the personification of mother nature. When she degenerated, she did it because there were so many victims in her land now and she was just one woman. She disintegrated her mortal consciousness into the spirit of mother nature which was really her own spirit. 

When Mantra lived then mother Nature remained impartial to all but Mantra herself. When Mantra disintegrated her physical body into a million little shards, Mother nature of the glorious empire became partial to her children and the victims of the enemies alike. 

The book is full to comic interludes to the tragedy of the scapegoats that follows. The trilogy shows the glorious deaths of willing martyrs and the heart-breaking deaths of the victims. It also shows how every death opens the path to new life. Mantra's death is the first of such examples. 

When Mantra broke into a million pieces of dust then each grain of dust deposited itself at some or the other corner of the empire. From each of this grains, a white periwinkle blossomed. Periwinkles are flowers that bloom all the year round. These white periwinkle camouflaged with the perpetual white snow. This snow symbolized harsh hopelessness and the enemies saw it as the symbol of their triumph. Yet. some tortured soul out there in the snow shifted and touched a warm softness. Instantly, they healed and went back home. These periwinkles scattered like grains of dust all over the place are reminders of mother nature's healing touch. In this case, this mother nature was really a mother, the Beast Prince's mother. 

What Blossom says:

The name, 'Blossom' sounds a lot like 'Bosom', it is the growth of femininity, beauty and fertility. The trilogy is a bildungsroman for Blossom or Bosom. Blossom has long been suppressing her feminine emotions because of the superficiality of the romantic life. She hated the subjugation of women by men and decided to be not feminine at all. She deprived herself from makeup and finesse and reminded herself again and again not to be a plaything in the hands of a man. Men, she thought, used-misused-abused women's emotions to fulfill their dirty needs then threw them away like old dolls. Yes, Blossom loved to play with dolls and loved being a girl. Her feminine pride told her not to throw herself at any man's mercy. Though, the Beast Prince was something different. He would make a nice husband, thought Blossom. It was just that she thought of him more like a father. And, Blossom wondered who the lucky girl would be to get him. 

The nature of the evil

Evil has been shown in both Christianity and Hinduism as a type of lie and deception. The evil powers try to play on our fears and insecurities. They have no bravery but torture when they find us alone and helpless. Evil often tries to single us out then torture and kill or use us to their own advantage. Evil can be very sophisticated as well. But, the biggest weakness of evil is its inability to recognize the uniqueness of people. The colonialists used the weakness of the Indians to establish their empire and used both sophisticated and ghastly techniques to keep hold of her. But, they failed because they failed to recognized the power of love. Patriotism is also a form of love and only pure and strong love can weed out evil. Even in this world, the enemies have used the weakness and hollow nature of the people of Garima to capture the people. So, evil manifests itself not in dark and dingy corners till the end of the story. Evil rather manifests itself in what seems good and true. The people of Garima though good are doomed to live in rotting corners and misery. Even their Prince is forced to live in a cave in a dark forest. Yet, the symbolism in these cases will portray how the Prince's presence is ready to light up even the dark and dangerous forest and how the Beast has made it a happy place to be around. 

The Hill of Asises

The Hill of Asises is a territory unto itself. It has a heart and soul of its own. It is a nature spirit that is shown to act like a conscious person time and again in the story though keeping in accordance with the rhythms of nature. 

The Hill of Asises is the place where the young Prince Dylan would go with his mother, Queen Himawari, for a little picnic and keep in touch with nature in its wild form. The palace had gardens one of their kind but these gardens were kept by humans. Queen Himawari believed in the power of nature and her beauty in her wilderness. She gave the chance to her son, to bask in that unkempt but free and superior form of beauty in the Hill of Aises. It foreshadows that the Prince will someday have to move out of his sophisticated and stereotype castle and seek refuge in the lap of nature. It does happen when Prince Dylan becomes Beast Prince, Dyret, and under Mantra's patience and guidance, learns all about the forces of nature. Because Mantra is mother Nature herself. 

Queen Himawari had taught her son all about the birds and had taught him to love them. But, Mantra told him the story of the origin of the different kinds of birds. All birds are symbolism in the trilogy because freedom from evil is what the trilogy is all about and birds do fly free. 

When the evil mother of the enemies had cursed the Prince with the life of a beast then she had lured him to a place behind the Hill of Aises. When the Prince had gone hunting with his folks and attendants then the Hill had cast its shadow to keep the Prince cool. When the evil mother of the enemies had lured the Prince away from his protectors then the Prince had gone to save a colourful bird. This colourful bird was actually a decoy. This foreshadows how the Prince would go looking for the bird symbolizing the death of his colourful childhood and be hit by the curse. When Animosity has hit the Prince with the curse and he lay helpless then the Hill of Aises casts its shadow on the ailing Prince. This is where his new life with his new mother begins. Mantra has heard the news of a small boy's fall from a butterfly and she rushes to save him. 

The Hill of Asises is a place which marks the boundary of the end of the land of the castle and human civilization and the beginning of the wild and sometimes terrifying beauty of nature. Mantra lives beyond the Hill and Himawari lives on the other side. The Hill that connects the two worlds of the Prince shows up in every turning point of the story. 

The Prince regains consciousness in the Hill of Asises and raises himself from death and transforms from a beast to a human on this hill. 

The Prince also meets Himawari long after being hit by the curse and being raised by Mantra when he is sitting at the peak of this hill and repairing a magical birds' broken wings. 

The Prince repairing the wings of a broken bird shows that his spirit is yet to be broken and foreshadows that he is going to recover his complete human form at the end of the second part.