Curdie then remembers Irene's tale of her grandmother's pigeons, assumes the one he has shot down was one of them, and becomes aware of his folly.
There, Curdie meets the old Princess, who appears small and withered, contrary to Irene's descriptions.
Having sneaked in to spy on what is going on and eavesdrop on the palace servants, Curdie realises that the King's "doctor" is actually slowly poisoning him.
Curdie and Princess Irene are later married and rule the kingdom after the king dies.
Lynne Truss has described being given a copy of The Princess and Curdie for her 7th birthday as "a formative moment in [her] literary life – and not in a good way", calling it "dark, dense, [and] moralistic".
[1] At the SF Signal, Karen Burnham noted that the novel is about the divine right of kings, and lauded the "awesome ugly monsters" and the quality of McDonald's prose, but criticized Curdie's power to assess moral worth by touch as "horribly reductionistic"; ultimately, Burnham considered the novel to be a far inferior sequel, emphasizing that it has "heavy-handed political and religious allegories", a "deus ex machina ending", and a "very cynical epilogue".