What’s Going On In Prince Valiant? Who’s put Queen Makeda under a spell? December 2018 – March 2019

Thanks for finding this summary of about three months’ worth of Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant. If these aren’t the three months of story you need summarized, such as because it’s after about June 2019, please check this link. There may be a more up-to-date recap there.

Also on my other blog I read comic strips looking for their mathematics content. This week has a special, easy-to-read theme, since we just had Pi Day. I’d appreciate your reading that sometime.

Prince Valiant.

23 December 2018 – 17 March 2019.

A new story had started the 25th of November. Queen Makeda, of the House of Ab’saba, visits the Misty Isles. Prince Valiant’s friend Bukota feels complicated things about this. His long-ago heroism-while-in-disgrace got him named ambassador to Camelot, which is why he’s in the comic strip.

Queen Makeda gets a private conversation with Bukota. She needs him. Personally, yes; she regrets the exile he’d been forced into. And professionally. There are nobles who doubt her ability to lead. She needs Bukota to help keep Ab’sala from them. Bukota is thrilled to return home and to be with Makeda again.

Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant for the 13th of January, 2019. I’ll admit I only started reading the strip for the stories, as opposed to the striking artwork, since I began doing these What’s Going On In storylines. So I am still catching up on the many relationships and backstories between characters. This was the first time for me that I learned Bukota and Makeda had a relationship more substantial than Bukota being chivalrously enamored of Makeda.

The nobles are less keen on this. They didn’t hear the conversation any. But they insist that there’s trouble when Queens go off unaccompanied to places like the Hall of Bachelor Warriors the way she did. They insist on a cleansing ritual performed by Fewesi the Healer. She can’t resist the logic or Fewesi’s eyes or his mind-controlling drugs. I mean, she tries. But the nobles are too fast and Fewesi has too many fumes for her.

This leads to a couple confusing days for Bukota. Queen Makeda is going about the business of being present and aware of trade negotiations and all. But she’s not following up on their conversation or even noticing him when he’s in sight. He tells Queen Aleta of the meeting before, and how Makeda’s been freezing him out. Aleta’s reluctant to point out that, y’know, just because Bukota is a nice guy doesn’t mean — oh, never mind, he’s going to try something stupid.

Bukota charges the Queen’s apartment, calling for her and reminding everyone how much they both kinda liked Breakfast at Tiffany’s. He fights with the guards, which is the kind of stunt that got him exiled in the first place. Makeda emerges, the action bringing her out of her trance some. She declares that yes, Bukota’s exile is lifted, and that he’s her … well, the guards clobber him on the head before she can finish. That’s all right. There was someone standing behind a pillar, listening. There’s always someone standing behind a pillar, listening. In ancient times 95% of the population was farmers, fishers, or pillar-listeners.

The Ab’salan nobles — Habte, Mahren, and Ambelu — agree this has gone all wrong. They figured with Queen Makeda away from home, with a small retinue, they’d be able to reinforce their control. They want to head home right away. Fewesi doesn’t like that plan. Having the queen in his power has been going really well, as he makes it out.

Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant for the 10th of March, 2019. And, mm. Between this and Senator Krios’s conspiracy to murder Norse traders the Misty Isles are having a nasty time of foreigners getting killed in gruesome, scandalous ways. I know it doesn’t have anything to do with Krios selling out his land but it really makes life harder for everybody else that he did that so recently.

Bukota reports the trance of Makeda to Queen Alita. She’s sympathetic but skeptical, even when Bukota says his exile was lifted. Nathan, the pillar-listener and Aleta’s son, attests that this is so, and that when she did the guards smacked Bukota and closed the gate. She sends guards to the Ab’saban quarters. No one answers the door. No one answers the battering ram either. The whole Ab’saban party is dead at one another’s hands. One person has barely survived. Ambelu says that Fewesi deployed powders that set them all in a murderous rage. And he’s abducted the Queen. So he has, and he’s taking her to the waterfront.

Next Week!

I have seven days to summarize Joe Staton, Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy for the past three months! How many of the paragraphs describing that will be written less than eight hours before publication? Take your best guesses in the comments.