The Princess and the Queen strikes me as the keynote story in Dangerous Women vol. 1. It's the last in the book, and highlighted on the cover.
Before I comment on that story though, a brief comment on Legends. Legends was a short story collection... really more of a novella collection, that showcased a number of stories, each by major fantasy or sci-fi authors, and each set in the world for which they were most famous. It was intended to be a sampling of authors so a reader could evaluate which multi-tome series to jump into. It had "New Spring" a Wheel of Time prequel by Robert Jordan, "Little Sisters of Eluria" a Dark Tower story by Stephen King, "The Hedge Knight", a story of Westeros by George R.R. Martin, and others. (I almost feel obliged to list them all, since I like most of the authors and their respective series).
In any event, I loved that collection, and have a bit of a tendency to judge new short story collections by those standards. That is, if there is a short story with a sampling of a world, is the sample enough to make me interested in starting that series? The Hedge Knight did that for me admirably. It created some history for the world of Westeros, while creating engaging characters, and having much the same tone and sense of feeling that I found in the series.
From that perspective I hesitate over "The Princess and the Queen". I really enjoy A Song of Ice and Fire series, but I'm not presently evaluating how well the story works for a reader (and re-reader) very familiar with that series. On its own merits, The Princess and the Queen shows a world with an intricate history, a lot of imagined historical detail, and clearly great depth of world building.
What it doesn't show (to my mind) is the depth of characterization that fills Mr. Martin's work. By creating the (unreliable) narrator character, and telling the story in his voice, Mr. Martin has shown some artistry, but also created distance from his own story. It does strike me as being like Robert Browning (the name I think of first when I think of unreliable narrators). He's created an interesting world, and incidental insights into the narrator, but also a level of detachment and an impersonal approach to the characters and the plot. It seems easy to start at one arbitrary place and end at another because the narrator is interested only in telling an engaging story rather than in the characters who populate the story.
If this was all I'd read of Mr. Martin, I'd be impressed at his writing skill, and probably would read more. But it wouldn't tell me why people love the characters and love to hate the characters so much. It wouldn't give me a sense of the scope of A Song of Ice and Fire, nor give me any sense of why people are so passionate and excited by that series.
I suspect the purpose of this short story was more to whet the appetite of readers for The World of Ice and Fire (which I haven't yet read, so can't comment on). I understand that book to be written almost as though it's non-fiction, and to be intentionally like an encyclopedia or a history rather than to have the immediacy of the novels. For the dedicated reader of the series, the history in this novella is fascinating, and gives lots of fodder for speculation about control and use of dragons in battle. On that basis, it may be that The Princess and the Queen succeeds, but for myself I'm looking for more from George R.R. Martin, even in his novellas.
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