In Cairo, Sultana tries unsuccessfully to convince the relative of her housekeeper to stop the female circumcision of her teenage daughter. Fayza and Jafer are finally allowed to wed with a ceremony in Cairo. Sultana is proud of her son and does not alert the involved families of Abdullah's deed. The next family crisis occurs when Sultana's son, Abdullah, flees the country in order to reunite two lovers, Fayza and Jafer, who were forbidden to wed in Saudi Arabia's draconian marriage system. The crime is covered up after Majed's father, Ali, pays off a potential witness. In prayer meetings, Amani learns from a relative that Majed, Sultana's nephew, raped a woman in a hospital who was unconscious from head injuries. Amani soon becomes intolerable, railing against her own family's wealth and getting on everyone's case for perceived sins.

There, Amani undergoes a spiritual conversion, and soon after she becomes militant and fundamental in her beliefs of Islam, a turn of events which dispirits and worries Sultana. The family soon after decides to attend the largest Muslim pilgrimage of the year, during Haj. After medication and a several months-long stay at the institute, Maha is apparently 'cured' of her lesbian tendencies. Before Maha's budding lesbianism can be fully realized, the family flies Maha off to London and institutionalizes her. Maha becomes hysterical when told she and Aisha must be separated. It is revealed that Maha has fallen in love with Aisha. Maha falls in with a young rebellious girl named Aisha and spends much time with her during the upheaval caused by the first Iraq War. Maha has always been strong-willed and combative, while Amani grew up sweet and loving. Sultana next deals with her daughters, Maha and Amani. Kareem, Sultana's long-suffering husband, reads passages about his own fictionalized persona and is mad that he is described as being weak-willed and having other unflattering characteristics. The family decides they must spare any humiliation by keeping Sultana's authorship a secret.

Sultana begins by describing her family's furious reaction to discovering her authorship of the first book in the Princess trilogy. This is the second book in what's called the Princess trilogy. Sultana relates several events in her life to demonstrate the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia and to urge change. Princess Sultana's Daughters, by Jean Sasson, is a biography written in the voice of 'Princess Sultana,' a supposedly real-life royal princess of Saudi Arabia under an assumed name.

Jean sasson books in order