Something is afoul in the kingdom. The immediately venomous and vile Flagg, a magician who does not appear as centuries-old
as he is, has connived in his hunger for corruption to murder the king. With subtle trickery and dragon-sand, a most deadly poison, he murders the king, and places the blame squarely and surely on Peter, the crown prince.
This leads to Peter's being locked away in the tower for life. His younger, more weak-minded (more easily influenced by Flagg, that is), brother takes control of the throne, but Flagg controls nearly everything he does, to the severe distaste of the people. Flagg is attempting to cause a revolt among the people and a riotous overthrow seems to be his eventual goal.
During his stay in the Needle, as the tower is called, Peter derives a possible
means of
escape, implementing an old dollhouse of his mother (for whose death Flagg is also responsible) and napkins. Painstaking hours, and days, and care are interwoven in the plot to escape.
Through means of dreams, visions, the eyeholes of a dragon the former king had killed, hope, emotion versus logic, magic, fiendishness, steadfastness, friendship, honor, greed, guilt, redemption, and grief, Stephen King herein intertwines a majestically crafted interplay of plot and characterization.