His Highness Martin

An Extraordinary Gift

Alice Orlova is a gifted teenage mathematician who finds numbers easier to understand than people. Brilliant, independent and stubborn, she has earned recognition from her teachers but often feels isolated among her classmates. At home, her relationship with her stepmother, Irina, is tense. Alice retreats into mathematics, music and the loyalty of her friend Vera, yet she longs for uncomplicated affection.

In the classroom, Alice has long been known by a nickname that reduces her to her talent. Her classmates see a mathematical prodigy before they see a person: a girl who also reads fiction, enjoys music, can be funny and impulsive, and would like to be treated normally. She is proud of her ability, but that pride is also a defence against humiliation. Where other teenagers seem to move easily through friendship and flirtation, she is unsure of herself. Her closest friend, Vera Kuzmina, understands her more completely. Their banter gives Alice a space in which she can be clever, stubborn, affectionate and vulnerable without having to explain herself. Vera will later prove just as important to the romance as she is to Alice's school life: she can see feelings that Alice is determined to deny.

Alice's loneliness is rooted in more than adolescent awkwardness. Her mother died when she was young, and memories of her have never settled into the harmless past. The sight of a tender family or even a sad film about devotion can unexpectedly reopen her grief. Her father, Sergei Alexeyevich, loves his daughter but is not always capable of giving her the understanding she needs. He treats mathematics as an odd occupation for a girl, even while feeling proud of her international achievement. Irina, his new wife, approaches life through rules, tidiness and supervision. Alice hears criticism in every reminder, while Irina sees provocation in almost every careless gesture. Their home is comfortable materially, but warmth has become difficult to express.

Her triumph at an international mathematics competition in London brings an extraordinary gift. Queen Elizabeth II personally presents Alice with her prize and gives her a Pembroke Welsh corgi puppy from the royal household. The puppy, Martin, has an aristocratic pedigree, but behaves with very little interest in royal protocol. To Alice, who has always wanted a dog, he becomes a priceless friend.

The London victory changes the scale of Alice's world. She has come to Britain to compete with other gifted students, not to become part of a royal story. The formal ceremony, the astonishment of meeting the Queen, and the unlikely present create a memory that mathematics alone could never have given her. The puppy arrives with documents and everything necessary for the journey, but the real change cannot be packed into his travelling basket. Alice is no longer responsible only for her own studies and moods. There is now another life depending upon her patience, attention and willingness to think beyond herself.

She gives the corgi affection almost instinctively. Martin's short legs, large ears and fearless curiosity amuse her, and his pedigree makes the contrast still more delightful. In London he belongs to a world of protocol; in Moscow he behaves like an ordinary hungry, energetic puppy. Alice talks to him as if he understands not only words but everything she cannot say to the adults around her. Whether she is recalling her mother, worrying about the future or laughing at some fresh mischief, he listens without judgement. Through their everyday routines the novel establishes the central relationship: his loyalty is simple, while the emotional problems of the people around him are anything but.

Returning to Moscow with Martin, Alice discovers that her family's life is about to be transformed. Irina prizes strict order and cleanliness. Martin sees the apartment as a world to explore, filled with enticing objects to investigate, chew and scatter. Every new escapade fuels another confrontation between Alice and her stepmother. Alice regards Irina as harsh and incapable of tenderness; Irina mistakes the girl's independence for disrespect. The quarrels over the dog expose the older tensions that neither has been willing to confront.

The return home is therefore both joyful and dangerous. Alice must introduce Martin to a family that has not agreed upon how to live together. Her father is pleased for her, but Irina immediately anticipates damaged furniture, disordered rooms and additional responsibilities. Every object seems to acquire new significance: a shoe left by the door, a toy on the carpet, the placement of a leash, even the proper way to feed an animal. Alice wants the adults to recognise Martin as a member of the household. Irina is determined that his presence should not loosen her rules. The arguments are sometimes comic, but the tension beneath them is genuine. For Alice, criticism of the puppy sounds like a rejection of the affection she has finally found.

A holiday gives Alice an interval of unexpected freedom when her father and Irina leave her in charge of the apartment. She fills the days with walks, talks with Vera, and experiments in the practical business of raising a dog. Martin enthusiastically investigates everything within reach. His encounters with unfamiliar animals, household ornaments and the belongings of his absent family become small domestic disasters. The girls may have to work out how to repair or conceal the evidence of an adventure before the adults return. Alice sometimes pretends to be stricter with the puppy than she really is; the reader sees how easily love makes her an accomplice. Yet these episodes also teach her that affection does not cancel responsibility. Martin's charm cannot replace patient training and consistent care.

Vera's home offers a different atmosphere, with teasing conversation and an unexpected cast of pets. Martin's attempts to understand a bird that can imitate noises are particularly unsettling for a young dog accustomed to trusting his ears. The comic scenes are not disconnected anecdotes: they reveal a creature learning a human world whose rules are inconsistent. Alice can forgive the dog for a mistake that would infuriate her if committed by an adult, while Irina can be more forgiving towards perfect order than towards wounded feelings. Such contrasts gradually prepare the book's larger transformation. Before anyone can make peace, each must learn to see the world from the other person's position.

An Unexpected Friendship

Martin, however, is not merely the source of domestic chaos. He becomes Alice's companion through the loneliness of adolescence and an unexpected agent of change in the lives around her. During a walk, he discovers a lost wallet. Alice tracks down its owner, Evgeny Romanov, a law student and talented boxer known as Zhenya. Their first meeting is awkward, lively and charged with an attraction neither immediately recognises. Soon Alice discovers that Zhenya is also her new downstairs neighbour, who has been disturbed by her loud music.

One evening in the park, Martin refuses to treat a routine walk as routine. He searches the ground, draws Alice's attention to something left behind and insists upon investigating it. The discovery of a wallet is an apparently minor accident. Alice could simply hand it in or forget the incident, but she is conscientious enough to seek its owner. That decision introduces Evgeny Romanov into her life. Zhenya is older, busy with his studies and sport, and confident in a way Alice finds both appealing and alarming. She does not meet him as a celebrated athlete, but as a stranger connected to a practical problem created by her little dog. Martin has opened a door that Alice herself might never have approached.

The encounter becomes more awkward when the two discover they are neighbours. Alice enjoys loud music and sometimes forgets how far it carries through an apartment building. Zhenya has already noticed the disturbance from below. Their beginnings are therefore threaded with annoyance as well as attraction. Neither fits comfortably into the other's first impressions. Alice is quick to defend herself; Zhenya is equally capable of a sharp answer. The tension gives way to amusement because their arguments expose an intelligence and humour each recognises in the other. Martin, unconcerned with human pride, treats the new neighbour as someone worth getting to know. What appears at first to be a simple story of returning property begins to acquire emotional consequences.

A friendship develops between the gifted mathematician and the ambitious athlete. Their personalities and ambitions appear very different: Alice's world is made of calculations, books and examinations; Zhenya's of strenuous training and competition. Yet their conversations, shared humour and Martin's continual antics draw them together. The corgi causes havoc during a football match, running onto the pitch and disrupting play, and Zhenya helps Alice deal with the consequences. They begin to rely on each other, but both are afraid to speak openly of love.

Zhenya lives by schedules that have little to do with Alice's academic competitions: training sessions, physical endurance, preparation for fights and the long discipline needed to become more than a promising boxer. He studies law as well, so his life is far from the one-dimensional athletic image Alice initially assumes. She is drawn to the contrast between his strength and his ability to be gentle, while he is intrigued by the girl who can defeat formidable mathematical problems but becomes flustered by a personal compliment. Their exchanges allow each to challenge the other's assumptions. He sees the emotional courage behind her difficult manner; she sees the work and uncertainty concealed by his outward assurance.

Their circle of friends contributes both encouragement and confusion. Vera follows Alice's evolving feelings with sharp amusement, while Zhenya's friends notice that he has begun to arrange his life around a girl he calls a friend. Shared outings provide opportunities for mishaps. When Martin turns a football match into a stage for his own exuberant performance, the incident is embarrassing and funny, but Zhenya's readiness to help Alice matters more than the uproar. There is a growing pattern: when an ordinary plan goes wrong, the two young people find themselves acting together. Their partnership becomes visible to everyone except, at moments, themselves.

Alice is particularly uncertain of herself. Her schoolmates have often mocked her intellectual gifts and awkwardness, and she doubts that someone as attractive and confident as Zhenya could truly return her feelings. But Martin repeatedly undermines her expectations of other people. When Alice brings him to school, the little dog charms classmates who once teased her; even a strict teacher is persuaded to let him stay. For the first time, Alice experiences unexpected solidarity among people she had considered hostile.

School remains a separate battlefield. Years of teasing have taught Alice to expect hostility when her talents make her different. A dog cannot solve a mathematical problem or change the past, but he can disarm an atmosphere. When Martin accompanies Alice into the school environment, curiosity briefly outweighs the old labels. Students who usually keep their distance want to see the corgi; a stern adult discovers that maintaining discipline is harder when a cheerful puppy is involved. Alice experiences the strange relief of being approached with interest rather than ridicule. Later, when classmates need help and relationships begin to shift, she has to decide whether she will cling to old injuries or allow them to change as well.

The comic surface should not obscure a more serious question running through the story: does Alice's intelligence make her less able to love, or has repeated rejection merely made her cautious? Around Zhenya she wants to seem adult and untroubled, yet the smallest sign of affection can unsettle her. Martin's spontaneous attachments show her another possibility. He responds to kindness directly and never worries whether gratitude might make him look foolish. By gradually trusting him, Alice begins to take the first steps towards trusting people. The boy who entered her life through a wallet becomes increasingly important, and with that importance comes the fear of losing something she has only just found.

Courage and Understanding

The deeper change comes at home during a violent storm. As Irina walks towards her parked car, Martin rushes at her, seizes her handbag and desperately pulls her back. Thinking the puppy is merely misbehaving again, she becomes furious. A moment later a large tree crashes down onto the car. Had Irina reached it, she might have been killed.

The storm that changes the family does not announce itself as a moral lesson. It arrives amid the familiar routines of work, parking and hurrying through bad weather. Irina approaches the place where her car is standing. Martin suddenly acts in a way that, judged by his usual reputation, looks like another piece of outrageous disobedience. He grabs at her handbag and pulls with all the stubborn determination of a small herding dog. Irina is angry, certain that the puppy is creating trouble yet again. Then a tree falls onto the car. The distance Martin has forced her to keep becomes the distance between her and a catastrophe. The animal she regarded as a nuisance has seen a danger she failed to notice.

Alice is shaken by the narrow escape. The event has occurred too suddenly for a quarrel, an explanation or any human calculation to intervene. It strips away the family's habitual complaints and leaves a stark question: what would have happened if Martin had been obedient in the way Irina always demanded? The story does not turn the puppy into an impossibly wise creature; he remains capable of ridiculous mistakes. But in a decisive moment his instinct and attachment to the people around him have saved a life. That contradiction makes the event powerful. Goodness is revealed not by impeccable manners, pedigree or declarations, but by action taken before there is time to weigh a reward.

Martin's instinctive courage forces Irina to confront both her prejudice and a painful secret. As a child she was attacked by a dog and suffered injuries and a trauma that shaped her attitude towards animals for years. Alice had mistaken fear for cruelty, just as Irina had misunderstood the girl's resistance. Irina finally acknowledges what Martin has done, embraces him and begins to open her heart to her stepdaughter. An estranged household finds its way towards reconciliation not through an argument, but through the loyalty of a creature no one expected to change them.

Even after the accident, reconciliation is not instantaneous. Irina cannot erase years of fear simply because she knows she owes her safety to Martin. Her response is at first subdued and thoughtful. Alice notices that the usual reprimands are less sharp, that a forbidden game with a shoelace no longer necessarily produces an outburst, and that something has shifted behind her stepmother's controlled expression. The explanation comes with Irina's childhood experience of being attacked by a dog. Her dislike of animals has never been merely a whim about cleanliness. Behind her hostility lies a memory of helplessness and pain that she has allowed to govern her adult behaviour.

This admission changes Alice's understanding of her stepmother. The girl has viewed Irina as someone who rejects love for the sake of rules; now she sees a frightened person who has learned to protect herself through control. Irina, in turn, must admit that she has been unfair both to Martin and to Alice. The conversation does not make the household magically free of disagreement. Irina still loves order and can insist upon it with comic solemnity. But when she finally allows herself to touch the dog tenderly and accepts his affection, a relationship formerly defined by fear acquires the possibility of trust. Martin's loyalty has done what repeated human arguments could not achieve.

The Courage to Love

Meanwhile Alice and Zhenya grow closer. Walks, conversations and a visit to the ballet deepen a romance neither dares to name. But misunderstandings emerge during the final of Zhenya's boxing championship. Alice arrives to wish him luck and sees Anastasia, his former girlfriend, kissing him. Believing herself deceived, she leaves the sports complex with Martin. The apparent betrayal hurts so deeply because she has already fallen in love.

As the family becomes warmer, Alice and Zhenya enter the quieter, more dangerous stage of their friendship. They no longer need dramatic incidents in order to meet; ordinary time together has become important. A walk, an exchange of messages, a moment of teasing or an evening shared with friends can feel charged with unspoken meaning. They are close enough to wound each other, but neither wishes to risk a declaration that might destroy their existing bond. Alice is proud and often retreats into irony. Zhenya senses her feelings but cannot be certain of them, partly because her independence is so important to her. The result is a series of small misunderstandings in which the reader can see the love more clearly than the lovers can.

A visit to the ballet deepens that intimacy. For Alice the experience is not simply a pleasant cultural outing; she becomes absorbed in the dancers and the emotional intensity of what happens onstage. Zhenya watches her response and shares in her happiness. For an evening the obstacles that usually crowd their relationship seem less important than the fact of being together. Yet the novel is careful not to let this closeness erase the competing loyalties of youth. Zhenya's boxing career is advancing. Alice's studies remain central to her idea of herself. Their affection grows in the intervals between ambitions that neither should have to surrender.

As the bout continues, however, Alice realises that she cannot abandon a friend at a decisive moment merely because she is wounded. She returns to the arena. Zhenya wins the championship and, afterwards, tells her that he can no longer remain her friend. She believes for an instant that he is ending their relationship. Instead, he explains that friendship is no longer enough: he loves her. Alice finally admits her own feelings. Their first kiss ends a long period of pride, confusion and unspoken longing.

The championship tests how much Alice can trust what she feels. Arriving at the sports complex to support Zhenya, she sees Anastasia, his former girlfriend, kiss him. Alice has no reason to know the whole context of the encounter. She sees a gesture that appears unmistakable and interprets it through her deepest insecurity: perhaps she has been foolish to imagine that a successful, admired young man could love her. She leaves rather than risk the humiliation of asking. Martin goes with her, caught in another human drama he did not cause and cannot understand. The decision is impulsive, but it comes from the history of rejection and self-doubt the book has been tracing from the beginning.

In the taxi, the sporting contest continues without her. Alice's anger slowly meets another feeling: shame at having walked away from someone at an important moment. Whatever the meaning of the kiss, Zhenya's effort in the ring is real, and she had come to stand beside him. She recognises that she is acting as though her hurt gives her the right to withdraw support before she has heard his explanation. Returning to the arena is therefore more than a plot reversal. It is one of her first deliberate choices to put loyalty ahead of wounded pride. Martin, whose own affection is unambiguous, accompanies her back.

The book closes by opening another difficult choice. As Alice prepares to finish school, she receives a personal invitation from Queen Elizabeth II to continue her education in Britain. It is an extraordinary opportunity for a young mathematician, but it means leaving Zhenya in Russia. He encourages her to pursue the future she has earned, promising that their love can endure the distance. Martin, the corgi who brought the couple together, may now be returning to the country where he was born.

After Zhenya's victory, the apparently terrible sentence that he can no longer be Alice's friend briefly makes her believe she has lost him. In reality he has come to the opposite conclusion: he can no longer pretend that friendship is the whole truth. He loves her, and he is finally willing to say so. The relief of this reversal completes the emotional movement begun when Martin discovered the wallet. Alice, who has spent much of the novel bracing herself for rejection, can answer honestly. Their first kiss is not a reward delivered from outside; it is the result of both young people choosing to speak rather than hide behind assumptions.

The epilogue then refuses to close the story as an uncomplicated romance. Time passes, Zhenya takes part in an international boxing competition, and Alice feels how painful even a relatively short separation can be. At the same time, the young mathematician receives a new opportunity connected with Britain and the Queen. The prospect matters because it recognises the work to which she has devoted years. Yet it also threatens the new happiness that has made her life richer. The choice is not between a worthy love and a frivolous ambition. Both are valuable. Zhenya encourages her to take the opportunity, although neither can honestly claim that distance will be easy. Their promise points directly towards the second book, where that confidence will be tested.

His Highness Martin blends humour, family conflict and first love into a story about the courage to understand others. Its hero is a dog born among royalty whose true distinction lies elsewhere: he sees the possibilities for friendship and forgiveness that human beings, blinded by pride or fear, so often miss.