Something Brave This Way Comes The Percival Principle and Why We Love a Lovable Failure
Something Wonderful This Way Comes
12 Blogs to Help You Start Something Wonderful with Hollyhock Books
Blog 6: Something Brave This Way Comes The Percival Principle and Why We Love a Lovable Failure
By Sophia Salazar, Editor-in-Chief
Let me introduce you to someone.
His name is Percival Featherstonehaugh—pronounced, as he would be the first to tell you, "Fanshaw"—though he hardly expects the unlettered masses of these tropical climes to trouble themselves with the finer points of aristocratic diction.
He ran away from love when his beloved Emily Fairbourne's father took exception to the courtship—and expressed that exception with a firearm. Sensible man that he is, Percival fled. Having grown somewhat weary of the dreary golf clubs and tepid weather of England, he embarked upon a Grand Tour of the Caribbean—a region so often described as "paradise," and yet, as he has discovered, fraught with a most alarming number of goats, street vendors, and, on one notable occasion, a most spirited game of barefoot football into which he was rather unwillingly conscripted.
His journey began aboard the S.S. Unflappable, docking first in Tobago, where he was "immediately struck by two things: the heat, which clung to one's person like an overly affectionate aunt, and the alarming absence of butlers." From there, he boarded a vessel to Trinidad—"a fine little boat" that appeared "more akin to a repurposed fishing trawler with ambitious dreams." During the crossing, a goat of "singular malevolence" launched itself into his lap, sending his monogrammed hip flask "soaring into the briny deep" and himself into an "undignified sprawl."
Upon arrival, he was flattened by a cow.
"Boss man!" a street vendor exclaimed, helping him up. "Yuh ok man?!"
Before he could answer, a familiar voice sliced through the clamour: "Percy! Over here, dear boy! Yoo-hoo!" His Aunt Gertrude—"a formidable figure dressed entirely in lilac, flanked by no fewer than seven small, wild-eyed children and a dog of uncertain breed and even less certain temper"—bundled him into a cart and whisked him to a house "perched precariously on a distant hill" that appeared to be "losing its ongoing battle with both time and termites."
He was assigned the broom cupboard.
Now he finds himself on this sun-drenched island, charged with tutoring seven wild children and helping with the goats (there are three now, "very spirited"), trying to make sense of a world where the cows charge without warning and the pastries are called "patties" and everything is considerably more livestock-oriented than he had been led to believe.
He is, without question, the most hapless hero in all of children's literature.
And readers adore him for exactly that reason.
The Percival Principle
There is a principle at work in stories like Percival's, and it's worth naming. Let's call it the Percival Principle:
The more a character fails, the more we root for them to succeed.
This seems counterintuitive. Shouldn't we prefer heroes who are competent? Who know what they're doing? Who stride confidently through the world, solving problems and saving the day?
And yet, consider. Sherlock Holmes is brilliant, but do we love him more than Dr. Watson, who is always just a step behind, always trying to catch up? Watson fails more often, and somehow that makes him more relatable. We see ourselves in him.
Percival takes this to its logical extreme. He doesn't just fail occasionally. He fails constantly. He fails beautifully. He fails in ways that make us laugh and wince and want to give him a hug, all at once.
And the miracle is that Joules Young writes him with such tenderness, such affection, that you can't help but root for him even as you're laughing at his latest misunderstanding. He tries so hard. He means so well. He fails so consistently and so beautifully.
This is the secret: we don't love Percival despite his failures. We love him because of them.
Why Failure Makes Characters Lovable
Let's dig into why this works.
Failure creates vulnerability.
A character who never fails seems invulnerable. Untouchable. Not quite human. But a character who trips, who misunderstands, who gets things wrong—that character is us. We recognize ourselves in their struggles. We feel protective of them.
Failure creates hope.
If Percival can keep going after everything that's happened to him—after being chased by an armed footman, after losing his hip flask to the sea, after being sat upon by a goat, after being flattened by a cow, after being assigned to sleep in a broom cupboard—maybe we can too. His persistence in the face of constant setback becomes its own kind of inspiration. We watch him get knocked down, again and again, and we think: if he can get up one more time, maybe I can too.
Failure creates comedy.
Let's be honest: Percival is funny. His dignified narration of his own undignified circumstances is a constant source of delight. He is so earnest, so proper, so utterly English in the face of tropical chaos. The contrast is hilarious. The image of him flattened beneath a cow while Aunt Gertrude calls out "Oh, do get up, Percy! Buttercup gets frightfully excited when we have visitors!" is comedy gold.
Failure creates tenderness.
Because we're laughing with him, not at him. Joules never mocks Percival. She loves him. And that love communicates itself to readers. We love him too.
Failure creates room for growth.
A character who starts perfect has nowhere to go. But Percival? He has infinite room to grow. Every small success is a triumph. Every moment of competence is a victory. We celebrate with him because we know how hard it was to achieve.
Finding Percival in Our Other Stories
If we look closely, we can see traces of the Percival Principle in the characters we've come to know in other tales.
Oliver Hefflewhistle is brave, but he's also slightly befuddled. He plays his Gingham Glimmergit with mittens on, which is both endearing and absurd. He doesn't know if Sally will notice him. He doesn't know if his song will land. He goes anyway, in all his awkward, hopeful glory. This is Percival-adjacent.
Crumpet Noggin has been waiting twenty-five years for a wealthy merchant to fill his bucket. Twenty-five years! That's either heroic patience or spectacular foolishness, depending on how you look at it. And when the merchant finally arrives, he wants the bucket for his "rare collection of enchanted marbles"—a purpose that is somehow both perfect and perfectly ridiculous. Crumpet's triumph is also gently, beautifully absurd.
Noddy Fiddlewhisk and Poppy Fizzleglint cause chaos wherever they go. They mean well, but disaster follows. They're not exactly failures—they do rescue the condemned man, they do entertain the town—but their success is so entangled with mayhem that it's hard to separate the two. They are, in their own way, lovable disasters.
Fizzwick Tumblebutton and Toddy Brimblethatch lose everything. Their bakery. Their town. Their peaceful life. And then they start over. This is resilience, yes, but it's also a kind of failure—the failure to protect what they loved. And yet they keep going. They build something new. They name it "Brimblebutton's Rest" and make a home.
These characters aren't Percival, but they share something with him. They're not perfect. They're not invincible. They're tryers. And we love them for it.
Activity One: The Failure Resume
This activity is for everyone—families, classrooms, book clubs—and it might feel uncomfortable at first. That's okay. Discomfort often means we're touching something real.
You'll need:
Paper and pens
Willingness to be honest
The Setup:
Explain that today, we're going to celebrate failure. Not because failure is fun (though it can be, in retrospect), but because failure is how we learn, how we grow, how we become who we are.
For younger children:
Ask: What's something that was hard when you first tried it? Reading? Riding a bike? Tying your shoes? What happened when you failed? How did you feel? What did you do next?
Draw a picture of yourself failing at something—and then trying again.
For older children:
Create a "failure resume." List:
Three times you've failed at something
What you learned from each failure
How you tried again
What happened next
Share if you want to. Notice how many of your failures are also stories of persistence.
For adults:
This is harder. We're trained to hide our failures, to present only our successes. But try it anyway. List five failures that shaped you. What did they teach you? Who would you be without them?
If you're doing this in a group, share one. The vulnerability will bring you closer.
The key insight:
Percival's failures don't define him—his response to them does. The same is true for us.
Activity Two: The Lovable Failure Award
This one is pure fun.
You'll need:
Paper and art supplies
A willingness to celebrate imperfection
The Setup:
Nominate characters (from stories, from movies, from life) for the Lovable Failure Award. This award goes to someone who tries hard, fails often, and remains utterly endearing.
For families:
Nominate characters you love. Percival, obviously. Maybe Noddy and Poppy. Maybe someone from another story—Winnie the Pooh? Paddington? Create a certificate and present it dramatically.
For classrooms:
Have students nominate characters and write a short paragraph explaining why they deserve the award. What do they fail at? Why do we love them anyway? Display the nominations.
For book clubs:
Discuss: Who is the most lovable failure in literature? In film? In your own lives? What is it about these characters that captures our hearts?
The key insight:
We don't love people despite their imperfections. Often, we love them because of their imperfections. The cracks let the light in.
Activity Three: The Trying Jar
This activity builds persistence over time.
You'll need:
A jar (any container will do)
Small slips of paper
Something to write with
The Setup:
Decorate your jar together. Call it the "Trying Jar" or the "Percival Jar" or simply "Things We Tried."
How it works:
Whenever someone tries something hard—whether they succeed or fail—they write it on a slip of paper and put it in the jar.
"I tried to ride my bike without training wheels. I fell three times. I'll try again tomorrow."
"I tried to make a new friend at school. They were playing with someone else. But I'll try again."
"I tried to bake a pie like Fizzwick and Toddy. It came out lopsided. But it still tasted good."
"I tried something new today, like Percival stepping off the boat into a country with no butlers and too many goats."
At the end of each month, empty the jar and read the slips together. Celebrate every try. The successes and the failures alike.
The key insight:
Percival's story isn't about succeeding. It's about trying. The trying is what matters.
Activity Four: The Letter to Emily
One of the most touching details in Percival's story is that his adventures are framed as recollections written for Miss Emily Fairbourne, "whose memory steadies every unsteady step." His journals are addressed to her "in heart and spirit," prefaced with the motto "Amor vincit omnia"—Love conquers all.
This activity invites your own letter-writing.
You'll need:
Paper and pens
Someone to write to (real or imagined)
The Setup:
Explain that Percival writes to Emily even though he's far from her, even though he may never see her again. His letters are a way of staying connected, of making sense of his experiences, of holding onto someone who matters.
For all ages:
Write a letter to someone you miss. It could be:
A friend who moved away
A grandparent you don't see often
Someone who's no longer with you
Your future self
A character you love (why not write to Percival?)
Tell them about your adventures. Your failures. Your small triumphs. What you're learning. What you're hoping.
You don't have to send the letter. The writing is the point.
For younger children who can't write yet:
Draw a picture for someone you miss. Tell them about it. Describe what's in the picture and why you chose those things.
For classrooms:
Discuss why Percival writes to Emily. She may never read his letters, but he writes them anyway. What does that suggest about the purpose of writing? Is it always about being read, or can it be about something else?
Have students write a letter to someone—real or imagined, present or absent—and then reflect on how it felt to write it.
For book clubs:
Consider the role of Emily in Percival's story. She's not physically present, but she's everywhere. How does an absent character shape a narrative? What does it mean to write for someone who may never read what you've written?
Activity Five: The Goat Companion
Percival has a goat. Actually, he has several goats now—Aunt Gertrude has three, all "very spirited." But the first goat, the one on the boat, the one of "singular malevolence" that launched itself into his lap and sent his hip flask into the sea—that goat started something. The goat needed attention, and so did Percival.
This activity is about companionship—the unexpected kind, the kind that shows up when you need it most.
For families:
Talk about the companions in your lives. They don't have to be human. Pets. Stuffed animals. Favorite books. Special places. Who or what keeps you company?
Draw a picture of you and your companion. Give them a name. Tell a story about something you've been through together.
For classrooms:
Discuss the idea of "unexpected friends." In stories, characters often find companionship in surprising places. Why does that happen? What does it suggest about connection?
Have students write about an unexpected friendship—real or imagined.
For book clubs:
Consider the goat. The goat is a brilliant narrative choice. It's absurd, but also touching. Percival, who has failed at love, who has fled his home, who is alone on a tropical island, keeps encountering goats. They sit on him. They judge him. They accompany him. What do the goats represent? Why does this detail work so well?
A Deeper Dive: Why We Need Lovable Failures
For book clubs and adult readers, let's go deeper.
The Cultural Context:
We live in a culture obsessed with success. With achievement. With winning. Social media shows us only the highlights, the triumphs, the perfectly curated moments. We compare our behind-the-scenes to everyone else's highlight reel, and we come up short.
Lovable failures like Percival are an antidote to this. They remind us that failure is normal. That trying matters more than succeeding. That we can be ridiculous and beloved at the same time.
The Literary Tradition:
Percival has ancestors. Don Quixote. Mr. Pickwick. Bertie Wooster. The tradition of the lovable fool runs deep in literature. Why? What does this character type allow writers to explore that more competent heroes cannot?
The Comic Timing:
Joules's writing in the Percival stories is masterful. The gap between Percival's self-perception (dignified, aristocratic, proper) and reality (befuddled, hapless, flattened by cows, covered in goat-related incidents) is a perpetual engine of comedy. How does she sustain this without ever becoming mean?
The Name Itself:
"Percival Featherstonehaugh—pronounced Fanshaw." This joke, repeated throughout, encapsulates everything wonderful about him. He carries this elaborate, aristocratic name that no one can pronounce, and he feels compelled to correct everyone even though no one cares and it changes nothing. It's so human. So endearing. So perfectly Percival.
What Percival Teaches Us About Bravery
Here's the thing about Percival that I think about most often.
He ran away. Let's be clear about that. When Emily's father expressed his opposition to the courtship "with a firearm"—and sent an armed footman chasing him down Pall Mall—Percival fled. He didn't stand his ground. He didn't fight for love. He ran.
And yet, his story is not a story of cowardice. It's a story of a different kind of bravery.
Because every day on that island, Percival faces things that terrify him. Goats. Cows. Street vendors. Barefoot football. The absence of butlers. A broom cupboard for a bedroom. A house losing its battle with termites. He doesn't flee from these. He stumbles toward them. He fails at them. He tries again.
He is brave not in the absence of fear, but in the presence of it. He is brave in the way that matters most: he keeps going.
The dedication at the beginning of his story reads:
"These are the recollections of a year spent far from home, written for Miss Emily Fairbourne, whose memory steadies every unsteady step. If you should choose to walk with him through dust, sun, laughter, and longing—then let us begin."
"Whose memory steadies every unsteady step." That's the key. Emily isn't there, but her memory is. It steadies him. It holds him. It helps him take the next unsteady step, and the next, and the next.
This is what love does. It steadies us even when we're falling.
A Final Thought on Failure
At the end of his first journal entry, Percival writes:
"I am grateful, dear reader, for your company across these sun-drenched trials and triumphs. This account has been faithfully preserved and presented through the good offices of Joules Young and Hollyhock Books. Until the next turn of the page, I remain, as ever, with great ardour, steadfast hope, and a faint aroma of goat, Percival Featherstonehaugh."
"With great ardour, steadfast hope, and a faint aroma of goat." That's the whole of it, isn't it? The hope and the ardour and the inevitable goat.
Percival may never win Emily. He may never return to England. He may spend the rest of his life in a broom cupboard, tutoring wild children and being flattened by livestock. But he will do it with ardour. With hope. With dignity. With a faint aroma of goat.
And if he can do that, maybe we can too.
This is the deepest truth about failure. It doesn't just teach us lessons. It leads us places we never expected to go. It gives us stories we never planned to live. It makes us who we are.
Percival is a lovable failure. But he's also, in his own way, a triumphant success. Because he's still here. Still trying. Still writing his letters to Emily. Still walking through dust and sun and laughter and longing, one unsteady step at a time.
Still, as he would say, bearing up.
And so are we.
Next in Blog 7: "Something Spooky This Way Comes Holloway and Graves for older kids"
Until then: fail beautifully. Try again. And if you get a goat along the way, consider yourself blessed.
Look, Listen, Linger, Laugh, and Love.
— Sophia Salazar, Editor-in-Chief
Comments
Post a Comment