The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom

The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom
Christopher Healy

A fast-paced and hilarious fantasy quest in the grand tradition of Shrek and The Princess Bride, starring four very unlikely, but likeable, heroes.Prince Liam. Prince Frederick. Prince Duncan. Prince Gustav. You’ve never heard of them, have you? But you’ve probably heard of Prince Charming, the guy who rides in at the last minute to save the girl. Well that’s them, all four of them. They are all Prince Charmings. Only in reality, they are a little less heroic than you might expect.One day, cast out of their castles for one reason or another, the four Prince Charmings stumble upon each other, then shortly afterwards, upon an evil plot to bring about the downfall of the kingdom. Can the princes stop their bickering, overcome their failings and become the heroes the stories always said they were?

Dedication (#ulink_fa1bbf21-2405-5f21-a12a-249f5f766e59)

For Dashiell and Bryn, my heroes

Title Page (#u79320d7b-962a-523f-8be3-1a73f47b21da)

Dedication (#ulink_2ad00291-5b83-5719-9004-fcc844591edf)

Map of the Kingdoms (#litres_trial_promo)

PROLOGUE: Things You Don’t Know About Prince Charming (#ulink_3abd3759-8b71-5eff-ac4b-e38f1d78c2ec)

1. Prince Charming Misplaces His Bride (#ulink_7df10aa0-9e9b-5a61-b402-f7d09ab7e149)

2. Prince Charming Defends Some Vegetables (#ulink_55678e77-c9fa-5e87-8e54-a8057eab307c)

3. Prince Charming Claims He Is Not Afraid of Old Ladies (#ulink_8e9c886d-cefe-5993-859a-64cba7aadb78)

4. Prince Charming Loses Some Fans (#ulink_6bdd3b07-c8f2-582e-849c-223b9afa01e8)

5. Prince Charming Is the Worst Person in the World (#ulink_ae77e989-69ff-5c84-8b21-2d1748dbae6b)

6. Prince Charming Has No Sense of Direction (#litres_trial_promo)

7. Prince Charming Has No Idea What’s Going On (#litres_trial_promo)

8. Prince Charming Is Afraid of the Dark (#litres_trial_promo)

9. Prince Charming Is a Wanted Man (#litres_trial_promo)

10. Prince Charming Annoys the King (#litres_trial_promo)

11. Prince Charming Takes a Dive (#litres_trial_promo)

12. Prince Charming Hugs Trees (#litres_trial_promo)

13. Prince Charming Is Completely Unnecessary (#litres_trial_promo)

14. Prince Charming Falls Flat (#litres_trial_promo)

15. Prince Charming Should Not Be Left Unsupervised (#litres_trial_promo)

16. Prince Charming Meets a Piece of Wood (#litres_trial_promo)

17. Prince Charming Still Has No Idea What’s Going On (#litres_trial_promo)

18. Prince Charming Gets Battered and Fried (#litres_trial_promo)

19. Prince Charming Needs a Bath (#litres_trial_promo)

20. Prince Charming Walks into a Bar (#litres_trial_promo)

21. Prince Charming Joins a Gang (#litres_trial_promo)

22. Prince Charming Is a Sneak (#litres_trial_promo)

23. Prince Charming Takes the Wrong Seat (#litres_trial_promo)

24. Prince Charming Hates Children (#litres_trial_promo)

25. Prince Charming Really Needs to Figure Out What’s Going On (#litres_trial_promo)

26. Prince Charming Gives Up (#litres_trial_promo)

27. Prince Charming Gets Good News and Bad News (#litres_trial_promo)

28. Prince Charming Is Doomed (#litres_trial_promo)

29. Prince Charming Does Exactly What He Said He’d Never Do (#litres_trial_promo)

30. Prince Charming Almost Saves the Day (#litres_trial_promo)

31. Prince Charming Gets Just What He Thinks He Wanted (#litres_trial_promo)

EPILOGUE: Prince Charming Goes Where Everybody Knows His Name (#litres_trial_promo)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher

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Prince Charming is afraid of old ladies. Didn’t know that, did you?

Don’t worry. There’s a lot you don’t know about Prince Charming: Prince Charming has no idea how to use a sword; Prince Charming has no patience for dwarfs; Prince Charming has an irrational hatred of capes.

Some of you may not even realize that there’s more than one Prince Charming. And that none of them are actually named Charming. No one is. Charming isn’t a name; it’s an adjective.

But don’t blame yourself for your lack of Prince Charming–based knowledge; blame the lazy bards. You see, back in the day, bards and minstrels were the world’s only real source of news. It was they who bestowed fame upon people. They were the ones who sculpted any hero’s (or villain’s) reputation. Whenever something big happened—a damsel was rescued, a dragon was slain, a curse was broken—the royal bards would write a song about it, and their wandering minstrels would perform that tune from land to land, spreading the story across multiple kingdoms. But the bards weren’t keen on details. They didn’t think it was important to include the names of the heroes who did all that damsel rescuing, dragon slaying, and curse breaking. They just called all those guys “Prince Charming.”

It didn’t even matter to the bards whether the person in question was a truly daring hero (like Prince Liam, who battled his way past a bone-crushing, fire-blasting magical monster in order to free a princess from an enchanted sleeping spell) or some guy who merely happened to be in the right place at the right time (like Prince Duncan, who also woke a princess from a sleeping spell, but only because some dwarfs told him to). No, those bards gave a man the same generic name whether he nearly died (like Prince Gustav, who was thrown from a ninety-foot tower when he tried to rescue Rapunzel) or simply impressed a girl with his dancing skill (like Prince Frederic, who wowed Cinderella at a royal ball).

If there was anything that Liam, Duncan, Gustav, and Frederic all had in common, it was that none of them were very happy about being a Prince Charming. Their mutual hatred of that name was a big part of what brought them together. Not that teaming up was necessarily the best idea for these guys.