Prompt:
- When a prince, looking for someone to wed, becomes increasingly impatient with every single basic prince/princess brought his way, he comes up with a series of trials and “games” for everyone in line… making him the medieval equivalent of “The Bachelor.” (Stolen from @LittleRiver ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
There was more to being a Prince than fancy galas, gold-leaf plated rooms, and a truly uncalled for wardrobe.
There was also the hard work.
There were also the legions of admirers to contend with.
Prince Tao slumped backwards onto his chair with a loud sigh. When his sister, the Crown Princess Maurie, didn’t so much as glance up from her desk, he sighed even more loudly.
“Alright, what is it?” Maurie finally snapped, slamming her quill down to the desk.
“Mother and Father called for me earlier. They want for me to get engaged.” He complained, straightening in his seat.
“Yes, so I’ve heard. It’s about time. Aren’t you excited?”
“No.” His sister arched a dark eyebrow and folded her arms across the desk patiently. “It’s just- do you remember the last Summer Solstice Ball?”
“Ah, yes. You were rather popular.” It had been the first grand event since Maurie’s own engagement, making Tao the Next Hottest Bachelor of the year. He had been swarmed that night. It had been terrible.
“They were all so rude. All I wanted was to dance, but then they wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace, and this one lady- the one in green, you remember her- wouldn’t leave me be and they all wanted me to go fetch their drinks like I was some servant-”
“I hardly believe choosing from that particular crowd will be your only option,” his sister said drily. Tao huffed.
“Yes, but every time mum accepts a potential suitor, it’s always like that. They want me to give them compliments and get them things and they’re all so whiny-”
“I didn’t know ‘whiny’ was a deal breaker for you.” Maurie interjected. Tao frowned- that was definitely an insult, right?
“I come to you in my time of need and this is how I’m treated.” Maurie waved a hand and rolled her eyes.
“Fine, fine. So, what I’m hearing is that you aren’t satisfied with the nobles mother keeps procuring for you.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t know where to find the kind of person you want, and you probably aren’t even sure what kind of person you want.”
“Yes! Exactly.” Maurie sat back in her chair and studied him contemplatively.
“Do you remember what I did when Mother and Father told me to find a suitable engagement?” Tao did, and he shuddered. The list of tasks Maurie had used to vet her suitors had been truly terrifying. Three men and one woman had died.
“Yup.”
“Do something similar. There you go, problem solved.” Tao frowned.
“But I don’t want someone to climb Mt. Death Wish for me! I don’t particularly want to watch anyone wrestle a bear either. That was gross.” Maurie rolled her eyes (again, what had he done to deserve this treatment?) and flicked a ball of parchment at his head. Tao evaded it with a squawk.
“Make your own list then, dummy. Name stuff you want your suitors to do and have them do it. End of story.”
… That wasn’t a horrible idea.
“You are all here to compete for Prince Tao Lirthy’s affections and hand in marriage,” A man whose name Tao hadn’t bothered to learn read aloud from a parchment. The assorted crowd below the balcony erupted in excited whispering. He shifted uncomfortably and pulled at his cape. “His list of demands and conditions are as follows:
The contender must plan and take His Highness out on one outing. This outing must take place on castle grounds, and will be under the eye of castle guards.
The contender must best at least one other contender in a match of fencing
The contender must present His Highness with one thing his heart desires.
At His Majesty’s discretion, the winner will be selected and the engagement will be announced by the end of this month. Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favor.” The man finished solemnly. The crowd below- peasants and nobles alike- had broken into small groups and were all whispering together fervently. Scheming.
Tao shuddered again.
“Your Majesty!” A lady he had never met before curtsied deeply. Tao coughed awkwardly around a mouthful of biscuit and tried to brush the crumbs off of his silk shirt. His sister watched skeptically over a cup of coffee.
“My lady?”
“If you would be so kind, I have our first outing planned.”
“Eh? Oh...OH. Right now?”
“Of course My Lord! It’s only a short ways away.” The lady took his arm. Maurie cleared her throat and stood.
“I believe the rules were that my younger brother is to be accompanied by Castle Guards at all times?” She asked, eyeing the other woman severely. The lady frowned, but nodded. “Good. Dian, if you would be so kind.” The Captain of the Palace Guard, a close friend of Maurie’s, bowed shortly and motioned for another guard to join her.
The outing was terrible. She had taken him to the creek for a picnic, and tried to coax him into the water after their mediocre lunch. She had pushed him in with what she likely thought was a playful giggle. Dian and his other guard nearly took the lady’s head off for ‘attempted assasination’ after he had been pulled sputtering out of the water. He politely declined the lady’s next attempt at courtship.
After several other horrible and traumatizing attempts at casual dating, Tao took to attempting to cover his face when walking through the halls. It was becoming irritating trying to balance the pseudo-dates with the rest of his plans, and he didn’t know if he could take any more stilted conversations and awkward attempts at flirtation. A girl, younger than him by the looks of it, stopped directly in front of him and curtsied with a chirped ‘Your Majesty!’ It was only his guard’s hand on his arm that prevented him from bowling them both over.
“I would like to ask for your time, if you would-” the girl began, looking up at him through a curtain of blonde hair.
“AVAST, YOU COWARD!” The hilt of a dueling sword, tossed at the girl from out of Tao’s line of sight, smacked her directly in the face. She fumbled for it, blinking in shock. Tao was shoved roughly behind his two guards as another girl appeared. She was holding- was that a Battle Axe?
“Treea?” The blonde asked shrilly, taking several steps away from the furious newcomer. Trees lifted her battle axe and swung clumsily as the other girl retreated.
“You knew I wanted to ask him out!” She shrieked, swinging again. Tao winced as the battle axe nearly threw its wielder to the ground with the weight of the swing, but she managed to heft it back up to her shoulder.
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have waited so long!” The blonde yelled back, brandishing her own (rather pathetic) weapon. Treea let out an incoherent cry of rage and charged.
“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?” A voice thundered. Tao peaked past his guard to see Dian and his sister making their way down the hall. His sister looked amused, but Dian looked livid. She marched over to the two girls, deftly twisting the battle axe out of Treea’s hands. The girls looked bewildered.
“We were fighting?” The blonde said uncertainty. Her eyes darted once to Tao and back to Dian.
“Defeating a contender in combat was on the list,” Trees reminded the guard. Dian grabbed Treea by the ear with her free hand, and the girl whimpered.
“IN A FENCING MATCH. With a set of rules and a judge and a set time and PLACE- you’ll get someone killed swinging weapons around like that! You could have hurt the prince, you could have lost your own empty head- MAURIE-” His sister stepped forward and took the battle axe from her guard. “Thank you, Princess Maurie. As I was saying, YOU COULD have CRIPPLED this girl, and you-” she grabbed the blonde by her ear as well, marching both down the hall.
Maurie lifted the battle axe to rest comfortably across her shoulders as she watched their figures retreat. “So, I take it the courting is going well?”
The fencing matches were fun to watch if nothing else. Tao sipped on some hot cocoa as he watched a large man flick his opponent’s sword away deftly. He had considered taking up fencing himself, but his sister and mother seemed to think allowing him to hold a sword could only result in him gouging out his own eyes and losing three toes and a finger. Maurie had held no detail back in describing how this would happen, and he had been suitably deterred.
The girl with the auburn hair had so far managed to make the night incredibly enjoyable. Tao found himself relaxing, laughing at the stories the girl supplied with exaggerated hand gestures. Her name was Lin, and she was the funniest person he had ever met.
“Another round your Highness?” Lin asked cheerfully, knocking back her own drink. Tao shook his head, still laughing at her last joke.
“No, thank you. I have a fairly weak immune system, and my sister thinks it will endanger my health.”
“Your sister sounds like a piece of work,” Lin commented, studying him. He shrugged and scratched the back of his neck.
“That’s one way to put it. But she means well, she just worries.” Lin hummed and leaned forward.
“You two do seem rather different. Want to hear another joke?” He leaned forward, already smiling. “What do you call an assassin who takes their target out on a date?”
“I don’t know, what?”
“Successful.” Tao frowned, trying to understand the punchline, when someone shouted from behind him. A hand landed on his shoulder and yanked him backwards, Dian coming into view just in time to deflect Lin’s knife off the side of her vambrace. Lin swore and jumped to her feet, pulling a short sword from under the cushions they had been seated on. Dian shoved Tao into the other guard and pulled her own sword free of it’s sheathe, circling around to face Tao’s date. Lin hesitated and then flung herself through the window into the market below, Dian hot on her heels.
Both the nameless guard and the prince watched in silence as the two girls wreaked havoc on the marketplace, trading blows and, at one point, throwing bystanders at the other.
“Where did you learn to fight like that?” Tao asked Dian as she escorted him back to the palace. He froze and threw himself out of the way of an incoming mosquito before turning back for her response.
Dian snorted.
“They don’t hand the rank of captain to just anyone, Your Highness.”
“Oh. Maurie always said when we were growing up that you were a better archer than fencer, though?” Dian laughed.
“She’s bitter because I outshot her one time, you know how she gets.” She winked at him, and Tao couldn’t explain why he felt his cheeks heating up.
“Fair enough.” They continued in silence for a while while he tried to put his thoughts back together. “Would you teach me to fight like that, if I asked you?” Dian actually stopped and studied him for a bit.
“It would be difficult,” she warned. He nodded. “It will hurt, sometimes. Most of the time.”
“That might be kind of good for me,” he admitted with a wince. Dian tipped her head back and laughed again, and he couldn’t help but smile. She clapped him on the shoulder.
“Well, if you think you can handle it!” After a few more paces, the smile fell from her face and she grabbed Tao’s arm. “One more thing. Your sister can NEVER know.”
A woman sat herself on top of the table in front of Tao, knocking his dinner plate aside.
“Your Majesty,” she purred, leaning in. “I can bring you something you desire, if you let me.”
Her hand deliberately slid up her side, and the sleeve of her red dress dropped over her shoulder.
Tao screamed and bolted for the door.
Dian was laughing on top of Maurice’s desk as they remembered the latest romantic misfortunes of the prince.
“Poor thing,” Maurice giggled. “I’m shocked he’s going through with this wedding plan at all.”
“He isn’t the suavest of men out there,” Dian agreed. She flicked her braid over her shoulder and smiled out the window. “I think I’ve met suaver stable boys.”
“I definitely have,” Maurie smirked into her drink. Her friend didn't react, still smiling out the window softly. “Something on your mind?” Dian jerked, and the smile fell from her face.
“No, there’s nothing.”
Tao’s dating life didn’t improve over the last few weeks of the month.
“All I’m asking for is someone who isn’t a psychopath at this point,” he complained as Dian fished him out of a river. His latest attempt at delivering a kind ‘please never speak to me again,’ hadn’t gone over well.
“And someone who can wait on you hand and foot. That too,” Dian snarked. He kicked her, and they both dipped underwater as she struggled to stay over.
“Are you TRYING to drown us? That’s treason you know,” he gasped when they came back up.
“Your mom is treason,” Was Dian’s witty comeback. Finally, with great effort, she threw him onto the muddy riverbank. With an even greater effort, she halued herself and all sixty pounds of wet armor up as well. Tao tried to help her and nearly sent them both back in.
“Any idea where we are?”
“A forest.”
“...Wow. I thought we were in a desert.” Dian swatted him before helping them both to their feet. (Was this flirting?? He couldn’t help but wonder giddily.)
“I’m going to have to report that. You may be unfit for duty if your eyes don’t work. AND after you’ve tried to kill me once today, too.”
“If you report me I’d like to see who's going to be dragging your sorry butt out of the next river you get pushed into.” (Yep, this was definitely flirting.)
“My butt isn’t sorry! I have a great butt,” he said, genuinely offended. Dian opened and then closed her mouth, not entirely sure of a way to combat that.
The end of the month came, and Tao wasn’t engaged.
...He was actually kind of upset about that.
“Tell your friend that she needs to propose to me.” He said imperiously. His sister choked on her coffee.
“Dian??”
“Yes. She needs to propose to me.”
“I- what?! When? How??” A door closed behind Tao, and he ignored the sounds of his sister dying via asphyxiation to spin around.
Dian’s cheeks were flushed, and he knew she had heard every word.
“You want me to-”
“Yes.” He said firmly. His own cheeks felt kind of warm, that was apparently happening a lot lately.
“I- But the contest?”
“You won.”
“How??”
“Well, I wanted my fiance to win a fencing match against another contender. You won- really impressively, by the way- against Lin that one time a few weeks ago. And saved my life, too. I wanted my fiance to be able to give me something I really wanted, and you gave me something I’ve wanted since I was little: learning how to fight with a sword-”
“She did WHAT.” Maurie screeched from behind him, apparently having recovered from her brush with death.
“-and even gave me something else I’ve always wanted: someone who believed in me.” He said, stepping closer. Maurie gagged audibly from behind him. They ignored her. “And you did take me out on a date.”
“I pulled you out of a river.” She said, wrinkling her nose.
“You’ve pulled me out of multiple rivers. But that one time when we got stuck downstream- I had fun with you. I really did.” Dian was smiling now, and Tao suddenly felt more confident.
“You know, this usually goes the other way ‘round. The proposal thing.” She commented lightly.
“That’s stupid. I’m clearly the desirable one here.”
“So, what I’m hearing is that you want our next date to ALSO be in a muddy cave beside the river.”
“NO.” Tao actually recoiled at the thought. “That was gross. I was trying to be sweet before. You can do better than that, come on.” Dian laughed again, and stepped in closer.
“I’m going to kiss you.”
“Okay!” He agreed enthusiastically, and Dian’s eyebrows twitched.
“If you scream and run away, I’m going to be extremely offended. Just so you know.”