Saratoga News

Point of View

Carl Heintze

Tragedy taints tales of princes and princesses

Once upon a time in a country not so far away from here, there lived a fairy princess. The princess was beautiful, but she was also poor (well, relatively poor). The princess had golden hair, was slim and had a beautiful smile.

In the same country lived a handsome prince. Not only was the prince handsome, but one day he would inherit the kingdom in which he lived. But although the prince was handsome and immensely rich, he had a couple of faults.

One was that he was nearing middle age and he was not married. Not only that, but he had not heirs. This troubled his mother, the queen, greatly because if the prince did not marry and produce heirs, the throne would pass to her sister's children, who were rich but only half-noble.

So the queen said to the prince: "You must get married, and you must get married soon. You not only must get married, but you must have children soon."

The prince thought this over and said, "Mummy (he called the queen Mummy and not Your Majesty), I will marry C."

"Oh, no you won't," the queen said. "C. is already married, so you can't marry her."

The prince did not like this much, but he grudgingly wandered through the kingdom in search of a bride. He looked high and he also looked low. He soon found there were innumerable potential princesses. None of them, of course, looked like C., who looked like his mother.

None of them were all that beautiful, for that matter. The prince got very discouraged until one day, quite by accident, he saw the fairy princess. She was young, beautiful, noble and poor (well, relatively poor). The fairy princess was poor enough that she was working, not exactly like Cinderella, but not exactly like a princess either.

"Marry me," the prince said, "and you will live happily ever after."

So the princess married the prince at a great wedding witnessed by the kingdom. This made the queen very happy, for in a short time the princess, like all good fairy princesses, gave birth to a new prince.

A few years later, she gave birth to a second prince. The queen was very happy, for now she had heirs to the throne.

But the prince was not happy. He still pined for C., who also pined for him, even though she was married. The fairy princess also found the prince was more interested in horses than he was in good works. She also found out the prince was more interested in C. than he was in her.

So in time the prince and the fairy princess decided to go their own ways. This did not make the queen happy. It didn't make the princess happy, either. She loved her sons, but she no longer loved the prince.

The princess moved into a palace of her own. She also took up with other men while the prince spent a lot of time with C. People in the kingdom did not like this. They wanted their prince to stay with their fairy princess. They also thought C. looked a lot like the prince's mother.

The fairy princess took up good causes, and all the people loved her for it. They thought less well of the prince, who seemed more interested in C. than he did in good causes. They thought so ill of the prince, in fact, that many of them decided he was no longer king material.

They thought the fairy princess' older son would make a better king than his father.

The prince did not understand this. He thought C. would make a good queen when his mother was gone. He might even have thought C. would make as good a mother as his own mother had been.

But even though she did good works, the princess was still not happy. She was still looking for a true prince to come and sweep her off her feet and carry her away to a magic kingdom where she would be happy, not to say rich and famous.

Then one day the princess met a handsome prince from the East who not only was wealthy but was, at the moment, up for grabs. He and the princess fell in love, and it seemed the princess had at last found true happiness.

But it was not to be. For the princess and the prince from the East were pursued by the evil little men called paparazzi, who chased them from one place to another trying to take pictures of them, until one dark night when the prince and princess escaped into a tunnel never again to see the light of day.

That was the end of the fairy princess and the handsome and very rich prince from the East and pretty much the end of stories about fairy princesses.

For, as it turns out, few of them ever lived happily ever after, few of the princes they married were any more faithful than anyone else, and even though they all became immensely wealthy, in the end it didn't do them any good.

The moral of this story: Girls, don't try to be fairy princesses. Get your MBA and earn an honest living. If you must marry, marry for love, and stay away from queens.

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