If life was a fairytale then the story wouldnt go like this.
Once upon a time there was a rich fertile country, the inhabitants were peaceful. While the people fattened their livestock and baked their bread King Leonardo brought up his two sons. Years past and the peace kept...Then one day, when the sun shone and the fruit grew heavy on the trees, a visiting lord named Richard had a rather loud disagreement with the King. It caused way more trouble than it was worth. Insults were thrown across the room, and at one point the King was referred to as "an old fool".
When the youngest son of King Leonardo heard of the arguement, he grew angry at the disrespect towards his father and broke the other man's nose.
Of course both of them apolagized, though the prince still glared as he nursed his bruised hand.
Lord Richard left the kingdom and headed home the very next evening. The days passed and life seemed to be back to its usual pace, and then the dark arrived, bringing all the fires of hell with it.
The third morning after he left, the serving maid found the young prince stone cold in his bed.
Poisoned.
The King raged and grieved, he swore to make the murderer pay with a thousand times more suffering than poison. He searched and searched for the culprit, and then one day his advisor admitted to overhearing the boy arguing again with the Lord Richard only hours after their first disagreement. Later evidence was found that Richard hadnt really left until the night before the boy was found dead. No-one ever knew what really happened. Did Richard really kill the prince out of spite, or were there darker forces involved? Maybe it had nothing to do with him or anyone else from those parts, maybe it was an accident.
None of that mattered to the king, his child was dead.
He had no choice but to go to war.
His country had been peaceful for so long, so his army was weak and uncoordinated. Nobody expected this if all things. The panic and confusion spread like wildfire. The crops died and the cattle got sick, and the people whispered behind each others backs of witchcraft.
The King paid them no heed, and by the next full moon they were marching to war. Among the weathered archers and swordsmen were boys just beginning to grow hair on their chins. Some of them would sit awake all night shaking with fear, knowing that the chances of ever seeing their homes again were slim. The rest would be obliviously pulled along with the taste of steel and glory in their minds. They didn't think, didn't know, that they could bleed like anyone else.
Lord Richard's own personal army was smaller in size, but they made up for that with properly trained men and good well oiled weapons. And when things appeared to get a little sticky, then Lord Richard called in his allies to fight.
Leonardo believed that war was exactly what Richard wanted, and perhaps it was, for it was said that he laughed aloud when he heard of the Prince's death.
While Leonardo was fighting to get close enough so his hands fit around Richards thick neck, his other son, Finn, was desperately trying keep the kingdom from falling into the slums.
The food was scarce, and the sun never seemed to fully shine like it used to. Injured soldiers poured in and out every day, a lot of them were missing limbs and couldn't go back to fight again.
Prince Finn realised over time that he was running out of options, he had tried everything, everything but the impossible. Now the time had come to change tactics.
A man named Professor Jack Quinn, a scientist and a madman, was the last thing Leonardo would have considered, but Finn was a different man from his father. He saw something real among through the haze of insanity.
This scientist had ideas that changed the course of history. And Finn was going to help make them happen.
Professor Quinn wanted to build war machines, his ideas were spectacular. Some of them were terrifying, unthinkable. He didn't want to build out of wood and brick, he didn't want to build ships that sailed. He wanted to build ships that flew. When Finn finally began to get an image in his mind, that they were going to be like kites, Quinn blew him away completely by announcing that they were to be made of metal.
Nobody had ever heard of such a thing. How would they float? How could they possibly when they weighed tons?
Maybe Quinn really was crazy, or maybe there was an even crazier possibility. It was going to work.
Two years later the war still raged on, and even more countries were getting involved. Quinn had workers building all night long to get his ships made. None of them had been tested, and the news of the machines was kept strictly secret. The enemy must not know. Everyone who knew of these ships was praying for a miracle, praying that all the smoke and grit wasn't for nothing.
Quinn had developed new idea, and he pondered it as he watched the first ship take flight. They had come to a new age. An age where there were no lines to cross, no rules he had to follow. He was going to make the world a vaster, more magnificent place.
If this was a fairy tale then everybody would live happily ever after, Professor Quinn's inventions would save the world from war and poverty. There would be no more death.
But this isn't a tale to be told to young children, simply because it doesn't end pleasantly, in fact it hasn't ended at all. It has only just begun.