I
There was once a Prince of a Kingdom long forgotten who suffered not at all from a definite personality flaw. That he did not suffer from it does not mean that it did not exist, but only that he did not mind its existing. For he did not mind. He did not mind because he did not care. He did not care because his personality flaw bored him. His personality flaw bored him because everything bored him. Everything bored him because he was a congenital cynic. And that was the personality flaw of Kenn, the Prince of Yuppia.
You may be thinking that since Prince Kenn did not mind being cynical, his problem, if it was that, makes a poor excuse for a tale. And so it would if it were not for the effect his cynicism had on all whose lives touched his.
For instance, there was the Princess Barrbi of Waspia. Prince Kenn and Princess Barrbi were betrothed. They had been betrothed for a very long time: all their lives and for six months before either was born. And yet their relationship had never really gotten off the ground. Even when Waspia was destroyed in a flash flood and the Princess Barrbi came to live in Yuppia, the two grew no closer. This in spite of Barrbi's beauty and goodness and grace and complete command of all virtues necessary for being a first-rate Princess.
"At times, my Lord," she said to him one day some months after she had come to live in Yuppia, "I believe that you will never love me."
"So?" he asked her, yawning a little.
They were sitting in the Royal Garden. Flowers and trees and color and life and beauty and Spring kaleidoscoped around them.
Barrbi felt the season keenly. She was eighteen, and life did not yet seem to her only a series of diminishing alternatives. To Kenn, it had never seemed anything else.
"What do you wish for?" she asked suddenly, stretching her arms as if to embrace the sky. "In the whole sweet world, what do you wish for?"
"I never wish."
Her arms collapsed and the sky escaped her. "Never in all your life?" She seemed amazed. "Well, wish for something now."
Kenn wished she would go away. It was not that he disliked Princess Barrbi. It was her attitude toward life he could not easily abide, although he labored diligently enough not to show her his true feelings.
"Have you made your wish?" she asked, really caring.
"Uh-huh."
She smiled at having gotten him to wish for something. "Can you tell me what it is?"
"Uh-uh."
She stopped smiling.
"Well, anyway, I hope you get your wish."
"How come?"
She looked surprised.
"Because everyone should get what they wish for the most.'
"They don't though, do they?"
"Some people do." She sighed. "Most people don't."
Kenn felt his hopes rise for her.
"But perhaps that's because they don't wish hard enough," she added.
Kenn sighed, his lack of faith in her restored.
II
"What did the dragon say to the knight who was about to slay him?"
The Prince considered the question carefully.
"I don't know," he finally answered his Jester. "What did the dragon say to the knight who about to slay him?"
"Don't do it!""
The Prince winced. "Boring, dull, boring," he said. He always said 'boring, dull, boring' when things seemed an especially tiring shade of gray to him.
"Be of merrier heart, Majesty! For tomorrow you are to be wed to the most glorious lady in all the world!"
Kenn nodded. "Boring, dull, boring," he said.
III
For her part, Barrbi was somewhat more concerned about the coming marriage. She had literally been born to be the Prince of Yuppia's Princess. She wanted to be his Princess. But what she wanted most of all was for him to be her Prince.
"I need a potion," she therefore told the Royal Alchemist some sixteen hours before the ceremony.
The Alchemist frowned. "What sort of potion, Princess?"
"A love potion."
The Alchemist giggled.
Barrbi thereupon lost control and began sobbing wildly.
The Alchemist thereupon promised to come up with what he could and set to work.
Fourteen hours later he presented to the Princess a tiny vial filled with an orange liquid.
"What will this do?" she whispered.
"If it works, his cynicism will evaporate and he will love all that is good and beautiful."
Barrbi smiled and took the vial from the Alchemist.
"The Princess Barrbi asks that you drink this, Your Majesty," the page said, offering the Prince the goblet Barrbi had commanded he deliver.
"Wonderful," Kenn yawned, "she's trying to poison me."
He took the goblet, wondered if perhaps it might really be poisoned, decided it probably was, and drank it in one swallow.
"Fantastic!" he told the page.
"What, Your Majesty?"
"This goblet! See how it shines! How it feels as if it were of silk here, and of sand there!"
He spent twenty-five minutes admiring the goblet, only giving it up when his servants entered to dress him for the wedding.
"The wedding!" he exclaimed in joy. "Oh, my beautiful and good Barrbi! This is our wedding day!"
And so, in this way it came to happen that the Prince Kenn and the Princess Barrbi married and prepared to live happily ever after.
V
"Barrbi, come look! A snowflake!"
The Prince and Princess had been married for six months. It was December. They were sitting in the Royal Garden. In six feet of snow.
"Aren't you cold, Kenn?" the Princess shivered.
The Prince took a deep breath of frigid air. "Of course I'm cold! But feel the cold, Barrbi! Experience it!"
Barrbi felt the cold. Then she experienced it. Then she went to see the Royal Alchemist.
"What sort of potion?"
"The sort that can undo what the last one did."
The Alchemist frowned and Barrbi started to sob and he set to work and in fourteen hours he handed her a tiny vial filled with an orange liquid.
"Drop dead," she told him with all of her heart.
"Princess, it is merely the same color as the original potion. I assure Your Majesty that its effects are quite, different."
Barrbi smiled and accepted the vial.
VI
"Barrbi, come look at this goblet!"
Once again, the Royal Couple was in the Royal Garden.
"Why don't you drink what's in the goblet and then we'll study it together," Barrbi suggested.
Kenn looked hard at the Princess and then at the goblet she had given him. "You sent me another goblet once," he said slowly, "on our wedding day." He looked back up at her. "You said once that you thought I would never love you. And yet from that day I have done nothing else."
She shook her head. "That isn't true. You haven't loved me. You've loved everything. I've only been as precious to you as anything else. You care as much for that stupid goblet."
He nodded. "Because everything is one. You, the goblet, me, Heaven, Earth, Eternity. One."
"Boring, dull, boring," she said.
"What do you wish for?" he asked her then.
She shrugged. "I never wish anymore."
"Yes, you do. You wish I would love you and nothing else."
She wished he would drink the potion.
"I have spent most of my life with my eyes half-closed against the light," he went on.
"Right," she muttered.
He sighed once and lifted the goblet.
"If you wish it, I shall live the rest of my life as I have lived most of it. Grudgingly, heartlessly, hopelessly."
A snowflake fell on her nose.
"You'd do that for me?" she asked.
"I love you," he answered. "I want you to be happy."
Then he raised the goblet to his lips and waited for her to tell him what the dragon told the knight who was about to slay him.
"Why on earth do I have to make all the compromises?" she burst out instead. "I'm a Princess, for pity's sake!"
"Barrbi, for the love of you I'm about to drink myself into an existence of soulless misery. That's not a compromise?" He thought that through. "Actually it isn't. It's more like a suicide. But whatever."
He raised the goblet even closer to his lips, at which point she snapped.
"Don't do it!" she begged, lowering his arm just in the nick of time.
"Why, Barrbi?" he asked. "I mean, why not?"
"I love you," she realized. "I want you to be happy."
And so they were.