Don't
First of all, don't be born a prince. This story can only work if there is a reward for good behaviour at the end of it, and the fewer princes there are in the world the fewer times this story can be told.
If you can't help how you're born, don't live in a country where a golden apple grows on a tree infested with snakes and surrounded by a moat.
Please, don't want that apple, don't crave it, don't need it, don't promise to marry whoever can get it for you.
Do fall in love with the girl with hands of liquid silver you'll find across the moat sleeping beneath the tree of the golden apple, but don't expect her to love you back, not truly.
During your engagement you may wonder, but as you stand beside each other patiently enduring the fitting for your ceremonial finery don't ask her what happened to her hands. She'll tell you they were cut off, no more.
Don't ever, ever, compliment her on how beautiful her silver limbs are.
As her belly rounds with your first child, your mind may turn to the past, seek assurance that other fathers have felt this fear and you are not alone as you stumble blindly backwards into the future. But don't ask her about her family, because she won't answer and you might think she didn't love them – which is so untrue as to be laughable.
(Should you hear, years later, of a girl who was sold to the devil by her father, whose hands were cut off as her mother did nothing to stop it and were replaced with silver by angels impressed by her purity, don't ask. Still don't ask.)
When you see her for the first time with your child in her arms, do fall in love all over again; it will help her forget that there are such betrayals in the world.
Don't let your daughters grow up thinking that they are worth something only so long as their tears are pure enough to burn the devil. Or your sons that all boys deserve golden fruit, regardless of how good they are.
And if you one day meet the devil on a lonesome road beneath the pale of the moon, don't demand to know how he could do that to a girl, how he could rip a family's heart out simply to see if he could – don't get self-righteous as if you were as blameless as your wife. And should it occur to you (it won't but just in case) don't ask if the whole damned story was set in motion because of her father's desperation and fear, or because you are a prince who wanted a golden apple that only the purest silver hands could pick.
The devil will smile and say, what do you think, and you don't really want to know the answer.
If you go and look up The Girl With No Hands, you may find yourself a tad confused. The reason being I wrote this story while at work one day without internet access and added the details of the story as best I could remember them. When I got home, it turned out the story I remembered bore only passing resemblance to the actual tale. And I liked my version better, so there, Misters Grimm.