The King's Son
supporting · human · the one who does not weigh it up
A young man out hunting who hears four different stories about a tower and picks the least sensible one.
How we meet them
Pointing at some towers over a wood and asking what they are, and getting four contradictory answers.
Personality
Impulsive in a way that turns out to be the correct approach.
What they want
To find out which of the four stories about the towers is the true one.
How they change
From a hunter asking an idle question, to the only person who walks at the wood without weighing it up, to a man kneeling by a bed doing nothing at all while a hundred years runs out on its own.
How they speak
Questions, mostly, and then nothing at all for a while.
How the story treats them
Everyone he asks tells him something different and most of it is frightening. He goes anyway, and the story approves of him for not thinking about it.
One surprising thing
He does not kiss her. In Perrault the hundred years is simply up, and she wakes because the time is over, not because he did anything.
If they were real today
He would be the one who says yes before hearing the whole plan.
Key moments
Four different answers
A ruined castle, a place where ghosts meet, an ogre's house. Then one very old man tells him what his own father told him, and that is the one he believes.
The trees opened
He walks at the wood without stopping to weigh it up, and it lets him through and closes behind him, so that he is alone on a wide clear path.
He knelt down
He reaches the gold and silver bed, finds a girl who has been asleep for a century, and kneels, and does nothing else at all.
Who they know
The Princessfriend
They meet at the exact moment the clock runs out, and she blames him for the wait.
Characters like The King's Son
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