Once Upon a Time, in a faraway land, a young King lived in a shining castle. Although he had everything his heart desired the young regent was spoiled, selfish, and unkind. But then, one winter's night, an old beggar woman came to the kingdom, requesting mercy for shelter from the bitter cold. Everyone in the city turned her away, until finally she knocked on the door of the Castle, offering a rose in return for the King's generosity.
Repulsed by her haggard appearance, the king sneered at the gift, and turned the old woman away. She warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within. When he dismissed her again, the woman's ugliness melted away to reveal a beautiful sorceress. The king tried to apologize but it was too late; she had seen there was no love in his heart.
As punishment, she transformed him into a nightmare legend, a thief of young children: the King of a Goblin Realm. She cast a powerful spell over his castle, and all who lived there, turning them into Goblins and other creatures. He was condemned to be the servant of every person in the world who ever called on him, and to be the ruler of the disdained land known as the Labyrinth.
Ashamed of his kingdom and its dullard inhabitants, he hid himself in the Underground, with his magic crystals and duties as the Goblin King as his only windows to the above world. The rose she had given him was an enchanted rose, which would bloom for five hundred Aboveground years. If he could learn to love another, and earn their love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain the keeper of the Labyrinth for all time.
As the years passed, his cruel bitterness grew more and more, until one day, in his crystal he had spied a young girl playing alongside a bright pond on a spring day. She was the trapped princess, villain, and knight in shining armor all in one. So much life echoed in her eyes that he felt his heart go out to her. She could re-order time, and turn worlds upside down like he did, but with the power of her mind. For her, fairy tales and maidens trapped in towers and goblins were real; if anyone could understand his plight, it was she.
And so he insinuated his story into her life so subtly that it was as if he were merely another fairy tale in the great archives of fantasy and myth, alongside Cinderella and Snow White. She had done as was expected; she called him and he came; only she had seen him as her enemy and not Prince Charming. He had tried to play by the rules she had imagined, and he tried breaking them, all to win her heart. But she was too young, and could not see outside the realms of Good and Evil. She had beaten him at his own game, and with the victory came the loss of all his hope. For who could ever learn to love the Goblin King?