In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite the misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first,and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes.
The very first lines of the novel introduce the reader to the basic premise that Sophie lives by - that whatever she does is destined to fail, at best, and cause a disaster of epic proportions at worst. She explains the Witch putting a curse on her to the fact she is the eldest daughter, and also the fact that she seems to create difficult situations even when she intends to be doing good. There is also a belief that she is predestined to fail because of her birth order and therefore that whatever she tries is pointless because no amount of effort will change the basic fact that she will never succeed because she is the eldest.
"Your Witch is dead," Howl said to her.
"Isn't that too bad!" Miss Angorian said. "Now I can make myself a new human who will be much better."
Miss Angorian is the human form of the fire demon who used to work for the Witch but who has succeeded in changing their roles and of late has been the one who is directing everything and is using the Witch for her own ends. She is not attached to the Witch at all and only kept up the appearance of a Witch/Fire Demon relationship so that she could stealthily fulfill the curse. She is actually excited by the prospect of creating a new human because than it might be more compliant than the Witch. This statement also shows why both Howl and Calcifer were hoping that Sophie would find a way to break their contract because they do not want their relationship to change and become a mirror image of the Witch's relationship with Miss Angorian.
"So you were going to rescue the Prince?" Sophie shouted. "Why did you pretend to run away? To deceive the Witch?"
"Not likely!" Howl yelled. "I'm a coward. Only way I can do something this frightening is to tell myself I'm not doing it."
Howl has come up with many plans that will help him get out of searching for Prince Justin because it is frightening and likely hazardous, and he even tried reverse psychology on the King by using Sophie to tell the King some very detrimental things about Howl in an effort to make the King decide that Howl is unsuitable for the task. He manages to convince everyone that he is a coward but he is actually anything but as he is not so much trying to convince others that he is a coward as he is trying to convince himself that he is too much of a coward to do anything brave. By lying to himself and using many other tricks to forget the situation he is in, he manages to persuade himself that he is not looking for the Prince; this is the only way in which he can take his mind off the task before him. When he admits all of this to Sophie it starts to become clear that she has greatly misjudged him and that he has been working hard to appear nonchalant about vanquishing the Witch all along.
