In the land of Angaria, where magic is only a distant rumour, a relatively ordinary girl goes about her uneventful life. Until the day she meets the princess of Angaria, and gets roped into a scheme to impersonate her. But while impersonating a princess should be fun for a flower girl who usually spends her days at the market, it leads to more complications than she can imagine. When two strangers invade the princess's room in the middle of the night, Polly must cope with being in the wrong place at the wrong time...
Further chapters throw Polly into a place where magic is not a distant rumour, and seriously dangerous enemies threaten her. Not to mention the annoyingly arrogant enchanter she must team up with to survive and hopefully get back home.
Why Polly? was originally a web serial novel, but now can be found here
.
Tropes in Why Polly? Part 1 — Meet the Princess:
- The Beautiful Elite: This is how Polly views Princess Paulina, and the rest of the Angarian royalty. Princess Paulina certainly turns out to be very beautiful, and wears fabulous gowns.
- Big Fancy House: Polly realizes the Magician’s Peak is this, as she starts to explore it. Stefan tells her Casper needs a fancy house to show off his magical skills.
- Contrived Coincidence: At the end of the chapter, Polly runs into someone she never expected to see this far away from home. It’s Princess Paulina, who she thought was still all the way back in Angaria.
- Dances and Balls: The princess wants to sneak off to a ball, so she convinces Polly to pretend to be her while she goes.
- Fairytale Motifs: The fantasy world the story is set in has a definite fairytale atmosphere about it.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: Two guys, two girls — probably for reasons of symmetry.
- The Leader: Casper appears to be a Type IV version of this, as the most forceful personality and the strongest enchanter.
- Number Two: Stefan is Number Two to Casper. He is also a foil to Casper, being more serious, as well as more anxious in tight situations.
- Pimped-Out Dress: The princess puts on a beautiful dress for the ball, but somehow it does not suit her very well.
- Princess Classic: Beautiful, royal and good — Princess Paulina fits this trope to a tee.
- Princess for a Day: Polly, a mere flower girl, gets to dress up as the princess and spend the night in the palace. It would be a lot more fun if she hadn’t been kidnapped...
- Rebellious Princess: The princess will sneak off to the ball, despite being forbidden to by her father.
- Royal Blood: Polly thinks this is the reason she has been kidnapped — her kidnappers must have mistaken her for the princess as she was impersonating the princess at the time. She discovers she is wrong about this.
- True Companions: The four inhabitants of the Magician’s Peak — Polly, Stefan, Casper and Paulina — become this as the story goes on.
- Web Serial Novel: Began being published weekly instalments in April 2011.
