Peg Kerr's Journal

There’s a wonderful children’s book by the Newbery author Katherine Paterson: The King’s Equal, which turns on the same idea: an arrogant king announces he will only marry his equal. He falls in love with a beautiful poor peasant girl, who heals his character when he realizes she fulfills his requirement that he marry a rich woman. She is richer than he is, she tells him, because while he always wants more, she has everything she wants or needs. She has enough, in other words.

And then, to his consternation, she puts him in his place by pointing out that she will not marry him because he has just admitted that he is not equal to her. So he has to go off on a journey to figure out how to become worthy of her.