The Worrier King sat upon his Throne of Doubts, as he so often did, and thought “What If?” as he often did as well. What if he’d not been such a miserable coward when he was young? What if he had the strength of character to do what was right? His duty and not what kept him safe or kept everyone in check, what if he’d been a real man instead of just some peace keeper prince?
With the supposed insight of what he thought was his perfect hindsight, he wondered what his life would have been like, how much better his kingdom, indeed his very world would be if he had simply killed that bastard when he had the chance. When he was young. But he chickened out, let him exhaust a grim sinner’s life, so that he didn’t rock that boat. There was a term he’d heard once from some Englishman, a phrase for those like the king, “people pleaser”. The man had meant it as a term of compliment, but for the King, it sat inside his mouth like bitter ashes.
“People pleaser”. He cursed himself with that title under his breath, he cursed himself with the phrase in the confidences of the few he could trust, his Queen Ophelia, his dear friend Horatio, those who knew how he had struggled so with the truth of his twisted family tree. So very few.
But he couldn’t shake the notion that he’d failed his father by not ending his foul uncle who’d murdered his father and taken the throne and his mother as his queen. It ate away at his guts a little more every single day. He damned himself for letting time and common disease take the monster a few years later instead! Wishy washy! Mister In Between! He couldn’t, in his eyes, find the courage to do or do not, to kill or die, to be or not to be, and so he took the cowardly middle path instead. His father’s ghost still haunted him in his dreams. Perhaps it was not his Father’s spirit, maybe just an atom of his youthful fading madness, not even a king could say.
He took comfort in his lovely wife, his two kids, the safe and stable kingdom built upon the benign paranoia with which he ruled, which gave Hamlet the nickname “The Worrier King”.
Still, he’d lie awake most nights and wonder how much better it all would have been had he strength enough to take up blade or poison and wipe that literal motherfucker off the face of God’s good earth, he didn’t know, he couldn’t know how badly it would have went if he had taken up the blade, his own death, Ophelia’s death, the death of nearly everyone he loved. A kingdom in flames, all sacrificed at the altar of idiot vengeance. So, instead of knowing how much good he had done by being indecisive, only demons of guilt would sing him to his rest.
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