Prince Charming was late. He knew it, but he had to do things right: kill the nasty dragons surrounding him, polish his armour, and feed his white horse, before he could ride again and rescue the Princess.

But as he was doing all that, the Princess kept screaming: “Please, please Prince Charming, I can not wait forever, I must be rescued!”

He knew it. But things had to be done in a certain way, in a certain order. Otherwise he would not be Prince Charming, and while the Princess kept telling him that it did not matter, he just knew that when you do things the right way, there is a happy ending, and that is the purpose of all tales, isn‘t it?

After fighting the toughest fight of his life with all sorts of dragons, goblins came to complicate matters even more. And then ogres, ghosts, and even giants. But he was Prince Charming. He knew he could defeat them all.

He also knew he was late, and that the Princess was suffering a great deal of pain and sorrow. But he was fighting the greatest fight ever, and it was all, after all, for the Princess. She would understand. She could wait.

Then one day the Princess sent him a message: “A knight came by the other day, and I asked him to rescue me”. “What? How did it happen? Who was that knight? How did he find the castle? How come you did not tell me about him before?” thought Prince Charming, his head spinning and completely puzzled. As he read the message another giant showed up from nowhere, making things even harder.

Prince Charming was at the end of his terrible fight. He knew it was very near the end, but he did not want to tell the Princess anymore, because she was too tired to even hear it.

All of a sudden, when Prince Charming had killed all but the last giant and was planning the final blow, a royal page came with a message: the Princess was being rescued by a knight.

Sweaty, bleeding, exhausted, Prince Charming held the sword up in the air, the giant on the floor shaking knowing he was about to be killed.

Prince Charming did not know what to do. He did not even know if doing anything even mattered any more. He was confused. He felt a mix of anger, fear, sadness… What had he been fighting for all this time? What would he do, once the last giant was killed, if he went to the castle and the Princess was gone? What good is a Prince Charming if he does not rescue the Princess? He did not enjoy killing dragons and riding day and night. All he wanted was to rescue the Princess and “Live Happily Ever After”. That was what was expected. That was what Prince Charming was supposed to do.

He could have died in the battle. He could have died from exhaustion. That would have been ok. That is part of being a Princess-Rescuing Prince Charming. But doing everything he was supposed to do, even if it took much longer than expected, should lead to rescuing the Princess. Anything else seemed so empty, so pointless, so unworthy.

He had to do something. Obviously, since this was a “bed-time story”, he could just finish off the poor giant (none of that was the giant‘s fault anyway, he just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time), hop on his white horse, and ride through the night to rescue the Princess at the last second, making it a somehow Hollywoodesque ending, but a good one anyway. But the royal page told him: “Oh, I almost forgot, the Princess asked me to tell you not to bother rescuing her. She already told the knight he could rescue her, so everything is already planned. Besides, she does not want to break poor knight‘s heart by going away with you, and she does not even think she prefers to ride into the sunset with you rather than with him”.

Prince Charming fell on his knees. Tears running down his face, he screamed at the storyteller, damning him. “Damn you!!!!!!!!! I hate you!!!!!!!!!!!!! You put me in the story, you asked me to rescue the Princess, you sent the dragons, goblins, ghosts and giants, I killed them all, I did my part, and now you take her away??? What the hell are you fucking doing??? What kind of sick joke is this???”

His voice stormed so strongly from his throat, that he would not have needed to fight any fight had he screamed like that before. Everyone would have run away from him upon hearing him utter that way. But it was too late. The fight took place and was almost done. Too late. Too late for everything and anything.

“Now what?” As soon as he asked himself that question he rejected it. He knew there was nothing else. He was a Prince Charming in a bed-time story. And rescuing his Princess is what he had to do. Rescuing another Princess or doing anything else did not make any sense. Books were full of Princesses, but none of them was “the” Princess. And any other option, killing the knight, living happily ever after with the giants, or any other crazy idea was just that: a crazy idea. Out of the question. Doing anything else would turn him into something else. And he was Prince Charming. He wanted to be Prince Charming. As a matter of fact, he did not even know if he wanted to be that or not. He just was.

Was that a bed-time story or not? Was he in the story or not? Then there was no “now what”. But at the same time, with one giant to kill, and the Princess being happily rescued by the knight, there was nothing he could do.

Prince Charming always wins! He always rescues the Princess! What was going on??

Then he realized.

That was no bed-time story. The Princess was real. And so were the dragons he had been negotiating contracts with, the goblins he had the oncologist remove from his body, and the ghosts hunting him at nighttime. Even the giants he was trying to divorce from were real. So real. He could now hear the giants cry, read how the dragons refuse his offers, have nightmares with the ghosts again, and see in the tests how the goblins were coming back.

But he was Prince Charming. He had to be. He had been and he was.

The page was being turned and he could not hear the storyteller say anything.

Why Princess, why?

PrincessBroken heart