The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman, 1986.

Jemmy is an orphan who lives in the royal castle as the prince’s new whipping boy.  Prince Horace, or Prince Brat, as the prince is commonly called, is known for constantly misbehaving, playing mean pranks, and refusing to do his lessons (he tells his tutor that he doesn’t need to learn how to read because he could always get someone else to do his reading for him).  However, in their land, it is illegal for anyone to use any kind of physical force or punishment on a prince.  Instead, the royal family employs a whipping boy to take the prince’s punishments for him.  As you can imagine, seeing someone else whipped in his place does little to correct the prince’s bad behavior.  In fact, the prince usually likes the spectacle of the whipping boy yelling.  He doesn’t like it that, unlike the others, Jemmy never yells when he’s whipped.

Jemmy was recruited for the role of whipping boy off the streets, where he survived by being a mudlark and rat catcher.  There are benefits to living in the palace, even if his purpose in being there is to take the prince’s punishments.  Jemmy gets food to eat and nice clothes to wear and attends the prince’s lessons with him, where he pays attention when the prince does not.  Jemmy actually loves the books and learning he receives.

After about a year, though, the prince suddenly comes to Jemmy in the middle of the night and tells him that he’s running away from home and wants Jemmy to come with him as a manservant.  When Jemmy asks him why he wants to leave, the prince says that he’s bored.  Jemmy wonders why Prince Brat wants him to come along instead of a friend, but then he realizes that, as nasty as he is, Prince Brat doesn’t have any real friends.

When the two of them are outside of the palace, Jemmy is tempted to run off and leave Prince Brat to fend for himself, but before he can make up his mind about it, the two boys are taken prisoner by bandits, Cutwater and Hold-Your-Nose Billy (named for all the garlic he eats).

Prince Horace tries to pull rank on the bandits, telling them who he is and ordering them to go away.  It’s a mistake.  When the bandits see the royal crest on the saddle of the horse that the boys are riding, they decide that they can probably get a good ransom for the prince.  Since neither of the bandits can write, they try to make the prince write his own ransom note, but of course, Prince Brat can’t write because he’s refused to learn. 

Jemmy, seeing an opportunity to turn the situation around, offers to write the note instead.  As Jemmy suspected, when the bandits realize that he can write and Horace can’t, they start assuming that he’s actually the prince and that the two boys have switched places.  After writing the note, Jemmy suggests that they let the “whipping boy” (Horace) take it to the castle, thinking that not only will Horace get safely away but that he’ll be rid of Horace after that.

To Jemmy’s surprise, Prince Horace ruins the whole scheme by refusing to return to the castle.  Jemmy tries to reason with him, but Horace says that he won’t go home until he’s ready.  The boys to manage to slip away on the bandits, and Horace insists on following Jemmy even though Jemmy wants to be rid of him.

Although Jemmy can’t understand why, Horace says that he’s having the time of his life.  For once in his life, he doesn’t have people fussing over him and telling him to keep his clothes clean.  Horace has found palace life stifling and boring, and he feels like his father hardly notices him or cares.  Part of the reason why Horace acts up is to get his father’s attention.  Jemmy is surprised by these insights into the prince’s life and character, and he is also surprised that, when he finally gets the chance to slip away and leave Horace behind, he can’t do it.  He knows that Horace isn’t used to life outside the palace, and Jemmy worries about what might happen to him if he’s left alone, although he tells himself that Horace could always return to the castle.

Before their adventures are over, Horace gets to experience what it’s like to do chores for himself and even to be whipped by the bandits, when they think he’s the whipping boy.  Being whipped himself shows Horace what he has subjected others to on his account.  Jemmy is surprised that Horace bears the punishment without crying or complaining, something which Horace says that he learned from watching Jemmy, who made it a point to take whippings with quiet dignity.  Horace also learns what other people really think of him when a woman at a fair comments on the prince’s disappearance, using the “Prince Brat” nickname and saying that the young prince is a “terror” and bound to be a terrible king when he’s older.  Usually, people are careful about what they say in front of the prince, and Horace is shocked to find out how disliked he is because of his bad behavior.  However, Horace’s new experiences and realizations bring a change in his outlook and personality that make him more sympathetic and likeable.  There is also the realization that what Horace really needs in his life isn’t a whipping boy to take his punishments for him but someone who can be a real, honest friend with him, like Jemmy.

In the end, Jemmy becomes the prince’s companion, not his whipping boy, so that the prince will be less lonely and stop acting out to get attention.  The king promises that Horace can keep Jemmy as his companion and his responsibility as long as Horace himself can behave responsibly and do his lessons as he should.

Although the country and characters in the story are fictional, the practice of keeping a whipping boy so that princes wouldn’t have direct physical punishment was a real practice.  Even today, the term “whipping boy” can stand for a person who takes blame or punishment in the place of someone with higher rank or authority, even when the person of higher rank is the one at fault.  For example, if a business manager or CEO makes a bad decision and orders one of his employees to do something they shouldn’t and the employee gets the blame for it as if what they did was their idea and not the boss’s, that employee can be considered the “whipping boy.” Another example would be if a stepchild in a family was given blame or punishment in place of a biological child because of favoritism on the part of the punishing parent (similar to the crude saying “beaten like a red-headed stepchild“). In fact, depending on the circumstances, a “whipping boy” might not even be a person, but a thing or a concept that is blamed instead of the person or thing that is the true cause of a problem, such as blaming “modern society” or “kids these days” for an individual’s bad habits or behavior, “the government” or “the system” for a business’s bad decisions or policies, or “millenials” for practically everything they’ve been blamed for by older people. It is similar to the concept of the “scapegoat” or “fall guy” but with the connotation that the person who is really at fault, the one who is trying to avoid blame or punishment, succeeds because of higher rank, authority, seniority, or some other form of favoritism among those who will assign blame or punishment.

This book is a Newbery Medal Winner and is available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

There is also a movie version of the book, sometimes called Prince Brat and the Whipping Boy.  The movie follows the concept of the original story pretty well, but it elaborates more on Jemmy’s life before he became the whipping boy and on how Horace feels neglected by his father.  In the movie, Jemmy is pressed into service as whipping boy by the king’s soldiers, who don’t bother to find out if he has any other family.  Although Jemmy is an orphan in both the book and movie, in the movie, he also has a younger sister he looks after, and part of what he wants to do when he leaves the palace is to find her.  The boys together learn that the younger sister was arrested for attempting to steal a handkerchief in Jemmy’s absence, and they have to rescue her from prison, a side adventure that didn’t occur in the book.  In the movie, Horace also explains to Jemmy that his mother died in a riding accident when he was young and that his father pays more attention to affairs of state than he does to him.  Horace is shown multiple times trying to get his father’s attention, only to be brushed off because his father is too busy.  In the movie, the king almost declares war on another country, thinking that Horace was kidnapped over a border dispute, something that didn’t happen in the book.  In both the book and the movie, Jemmy’s new friendship with Horace brings about a change in the prince.  At the end of the movie, both Jemmy and his sister are taken in to the palace as companions for Horace. Sometimes you can find this movie or clips of it on YouTube. Although it was originally released on VHS, it is currently available on DVD.