The Most Beautiful Woman in a Hundred Years

January 16, 2019, by Todd Neva

A paragraph in The Princess Bride caught my eye.

Before I get to that paragraph, let me explain that the book is different from the movie. The central conflict in The Bride chapter is who is the most beautiful woman in the world. Buttercup was barely in the top twenty at the beginning of the chapter, which was quite remarkable considering she didn’t like to bathe or brush her hair.

Her love for Westley quickly propels her to the eighth most beautiful woman, and then she gets word that Westley died at the hands of the Dread Pirate Roberts.

Buttercup retreats to her room in despair, and when she emerges “she never looked as well. She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, an ocean sadder. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering. She was eighteen. She was the most beautiful woman in a hundred years.”

This is the type of beauty possessed by the female protagonists in Kristin’s books. There is an element of pain in each of their stories that matures them, gives them depth of character, makes than ever more appealing to their love interests.

Kristin writes authentically from her own pain, and she too has become more beautiful over the last several years.

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