Despereaux Tilling Timeline and Summary

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• Despereaux Tilling is born as the youngest in his mouse family and is also super tiny and has too-big ears.
• His siblings try to teach him how to scurry and chew book pages, but Despereaux is more interested in the castle where they live, and all the pretty things he sees—like stained glass windows and the stories within the books that other mice eat.
• One day, Despereaux hears the sound of music and enters the human Princess Pea's room to find that her father, the king, is playing the guitar and singing to her. sees this.
• Furlough tells their father Despereaux has approached the humans, and he's called to appear in front of the Mouse Council and subsequently sentenced to death; he'll be led to the dungeons, where he will be thrown in and eaten by rats.
• When Despereaux enters the dungeons, he's terrified, but tells himself a story in order to comfort himself. The jailer, Gregory, takes pity on the little mouse and says that he'll save him in exchange for stories.
• When Miggery Sow, the servant girl, comes down to the dungeons with Gregory's meal, Gregory eats and then places Despereaux back on the tray so that he'll be taken up to the castle.
• As Mig is carrying the tray up, Despereaux hears Roscuro approaching the girl and trying to sell her his horrible plan for revenge against the princess.
• Despereaux makes it up to the kitchen, but is spotted by Cook, who demands that Mig kill the mouse. Mig goes after Despereaux with a big old knife, but misses and simply cuts off his tail instead.
• Despereaux learns that Princess Pea has already been kidnapped in the middle of the night. He heads down to the dungeons on his own and save the day.
• He descends the stairs to the dungeons and runs into another rat, Botticelli, who leads him to where Roscuro and Mig are keeping Princess Pea.
• When he gets there, Mig has already decided that Roscuro is bad and that she won't go along with his plans. So with her help, Despereaux is able to overpower the rat and get Princess Pea back up to the castle, safe and sound.
• Despereaux lives happily ever after with his good friend the princess.