The princess was no idiot. She understood a woman in her position was not going to be marrying for love. Royals married for power, for political alliance, for expedience. Her parents were bound together under that premise and their parents before them. It was the way of these lands. She was also no child, she had her share of secret dalliances, she understood that even if you want love, it wasn’t something you find at first-sight. Love wasn’t an event, it was a process, it was something people built with each other over your lives. It happened to her parents, against all odds, but God knows you can’t start it off with someone you can’t stand. And those were the options laid before her generally speaking, a parade of inbred dullards, power hungry psychotics and gentlemen who clearly preferred the company of other men. A suitable match was tough to find amongst Nobles.
The good news was that she was not their first born. The worst pressure was off once her oldest brother’s wife gave birth to a healthy son. She needed to eventually give herself over to strategy but that bought her a bit of time to try and at least find a husband she could tolerate, if not love?
There was a rumor. That when the crown prince of a tiny kingdom far to the southeast had gone missing two years ago, it wasn’t that he’d been assassinated or ransomed, it was that he too had been looking for a tolerable match and one scorned princess had hired a wizard to turn him into some common frog as punishment. This was a land where magic was real if rare, it was entirely possible if you were rich enough. Her parents consulted their court witch, who confirmed these rumors, and decided to give her a few months to find him. The witch drew a map of the general area this frog would be and an elixir to undo the curse. The King found it funny and The Queen thought a folly might make her more realistic. They sent her off with trusted huntsmen to look.
And goddamn if she didn’t find him, in a swamp at the edge of a forest, with the pattern on his back just like the birthmark on the prince’s hand. So, she poured that elixir on the creature and poof, yes, he was suddenly a modestly good-looking man again. But he was also angry? “Why did you do that?” She explained her situation in-full. “I sympathize, princess, but it turned out the curse was the best thing to ever happen to me. No court dramas, no lordly responsibilities, just frog. Just frog! Oh God! How I have to be a prince again!” And he ran off into the woods, hoping he could live in the forest as a man instead, still avoiding the hell that was royal living.
Prince Robin and Princess Marian met their first time in Sherringwood. It wouldn’t be the last.
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