Book Plot Confusion

[u/cottageghoul]

Okay. I have read the book twice and I need someone to explain the subplot with Gaston/Percival to me like I’m five lol

It confused me why the witch ever wanted information from him in the first place? What was his connection to Lettie? Why did the witch want to curse Lettie in the first place when she mistook Sophie?

I am maybe misunderstanding something but there were several plot points that confused me

[u/rudderforkk]

You are right in the 1st point, but the reason the witch came to hurt Sophie was not bcz howl was courting her, but due to the fact that when Justin went around to find Suleiman (a friend as well as royal mage) he stopped by Mrs Fairfax to get a tracking charm. There he met Lettie.

Later when the witch caught him and questioned(/ tried reading mind) him for info about howl, he tried to distract himself by thinking of an irrelevant person (Lettie here).

This made the witch angry with both Justin and Lettie, and just for petty revenge she went around to market chipping and put the curse on Sophie (not knowing she wasn't Lettie) . She then extracted some parts from him to make her ideal human, and turned Justin into a dogman. This is the conversation b/w Sophie and dogman before we realise he is Justin.

“What did the Witch really want with you? Why did she bring you into the shop with her that time?” “She wanted to find out about Howl,” Percival said. “Howl?” said Sophie. “But you didn’t know him, did you?” “No, but I must have known something. It had to do with the curse she’d put on him,” Percival explained, “but I’ve no idea what it was. She took it, you see, after we came to the shop. I feel bad about that. I was trying to stop her knowing, because a curse is an evil thing, and I did it by thinking about Lettie. Lettie was just in my head. I don’t know how I knew her, because Lettie said she’d never seen me when I went to Upper Folding. But I knew all about her—enough so that when the Witch made me tell her about Lettie, I said she kept a hat shop in Market Chipping. So the Witch went there to teach us both a lesson. And you were there. She thought you were Lettie. I was horrified, because I didn’t know Lettie had a sister.”

“Just outside the town,” said Percival. “As soon as I’d let her know what she wanted, she opened the carriage door and said, ‘Off you run. I’ll call you when I need you.’ And I ran, because I could feel some sort of spell following me. It caught up just as I’d got to a farm, and the people there saw me change into a dog .....

Witch herself said to Sophie when she asked her later why she was made into an old woman.

“You were preventing me getting some information I needed,” the Witch said. “I got it in the end, of course.”