Creator's note 6---
A little bonus for you. I strung together all of the "princess" mini-narratives together in their proper sequence and structure. I decided to write and include them in the text in response to a review that told me I got Amelia's character completely wrong. Apparently, asking people if they behaved the same when they were 19 as they did when they were 14 didn't seem to cut it, even though the answer is fairly obvious, (I used to wear all black and listen to techno back then, before that I dressed up like the girls from "Clueless"—those versions of me seem like complete strangers). Well anyway, I got to play around with parallel narrative a little, which always makes me happy. I got to insert a little bit of her point of view and still tell the story I wanted to tell.
I wanted to write an obsessive love story (cue Phil Collins "Against All Odds"), and I did. I guess the whole post-modern meta-fictional bit it that it was really a story about my obsessive love for Amelia's character. I was Zelgadis, and I molded Amelia like Pygmalion so I could fall in love with her, but then it wasn't real, it was too easy and she had to leave the both of us so she could become real. I didn't want her to "fix" him. No good relationships are built on that premise because people can only fix themselves and have no business trying to do it for anyone else. Zelgadis had to abandon her---he had his own stuff to fix, andfalling in love with the idea of a person never works. He had to meet her somewherein acompletely differentenviornment, so they could look eachother in the eye on equal terms before they could decide what to do with themselves.
Ultimately, the more I thought about it, the more impossible their relationship seemed to be, though this is largely circumstantial. But I didn't make up the part about Amelia being in love with Zelgadis, and I didn't make up the end credits of "Try". And "impossible" is not the same thing as "implausible". So I said to myself, "make it work!", and four years later I finished my story. Thanks for reading.
"Once upon a time, there was a princess. She had a father, a mother, and a sister who she loved very much, and they were very happy in their beautiful kingdom. But all was not happy in the kingdom. One day, the mother was killed by dissidents, and the sister ran away. Her father, the prince, could not stop these things from happening, but he did keep the princess from going after her sister. When the princess asked him why they did not follow her, her father said it was because they needed to stay in the kingdom and bring justice to the people who caused the loss of her mother and sister. The princess agreed to stay, because she loved her father and wanted to help him bring justice to the kingdom, too. These things were very true, but I think the princess had begun to wish she were a prince so she could fight for justice just like her father. Her father had told her she could fight for justice as a princess, not as a prince, and she agreed because princes needed swords and she was afraid of them because that was how her mother died. Then her father told her, that because they loved each other they wouldn't keep any secrets between them, and because she loved her father, the princess agreed to keep this promise as well. . . ."
". . .Once upon a time, there was a princess, and with her father, together, they brought justice to their land and the kingdom was happy again. The princess was happy fighting for justice with her father and because they loved each other, the princess never kept any secrets between them. But perhaps the princess was not as happy as she seemed. She promised never to forget what had happened to her mother and her sister, and though she loved her father, she thought that maybe he couldn't save them because one prince was not enough to bring justice to the land. So she learned magic instead of how to use a sword. This way she might someday, and in her own way, become strong enough to be a prince before anyone would notice what she had been doing. Without knowing it, she had begun to keep secrets. The princess grew up, and because she and her father had brought so much justice to their own kingdom, the princess wanted to do the same for the lands that existed beyond its walls so that no one else would lose their mothers and sisters. By now she believed she was really a prince who only pretended to be a princess. She felt guilty for keeping this secret, but it would be okay, because she loved her father. When she asked her father about those lands, he laughed and said that, yes, it was true that other lands needed justice too, but she was a princess and needed to stay in her own kingdom because that was how a princess was supposed to fight for justice. . . ."
". . .Once upon a time, there was a princess. She had promised her father that she would stay in the kingdom and be a good princess, because she loved her him, and until he asked her to stay in the kingdom, he had never asked for anything from her except that she never keep secrets from him. But she was beginning to think that he had been keeping secrets from her too, so she didn't feel so guilty about being a secret prince anymore---and once you break a promise, it becomes easy to break others; you can't remember how many you've broken, especially if you can't forget your love, like the princess couldn't, so your love makes you forget, because from the beginning her promises were replaced by secrets. It had been a long time since her mother died, and the princess had almost forgotten her sister. But she still thought about other lands and the people with mothers and sisters who need justice too. So, when her father left their kingdom to go on adventures and bring justice to those other lands (because he was a prince), the princess secretly followed after him. You see, she had begun to think that because of what happened to her mother, her sister had left so that she could be a prince and fight for justice. Because they were sisters and shared the same heart, there could be no secrets between them, and she knew that she hadn't been left behind. If the princess left, she wouldn't have to be a princess anymore and could be a prince and she would find her sister, who had really been waiting for her the whole time, and they would do these things together. So it happened again. The princess had another secret to keep from her father. . . ."
". . .Once upon a time there was a princess. She did not find her sister, but she found other people who fought for justice and she began to travel and have adventures with them. Her father let her go, because he loved his daughter, and love, too busy loving to remember, forgets promises made to replace his own secrets. With tears in his eyes, he said 'I am so proud of my daughter who has grown up, now she is bringing justice to other lands, like a good princess!' He didn't know about her secrets, but it was okay because she loved her father and she promised to make everything he said true. And the princess was happy because she thought she would find love and justice and that finally her secret wish to be a prince would be fulfilled. This was true. She was having adventures and fighting for justice, and eventually she fell in love with a man. She wanted them to stay together forever because she thought that she didn't have to keep secrets from them and they would understand this. But they had all been so busy with adventures and fighting for justice that she couldn't tell them her secrets. She realized this was the price of being a prince. And she couldn't tell the man she was in love with that she loved him because she couldn't love him as a prince. The princess and her new friends brought justice to the world many times. But people were still unhappy and many mother still died and sisters still ran away. The princess learned that she hadn't grown up like her father had said, and she was very sad because she had broken her promises to him and even her secrets were a lie, because she didn't bring justice to the world, couldn't find a sister she never knew, and she was really only a princess pretending to be a prince. . . ."
". . .Once upon a time, there was a princess. Her adventures were over and her friends went their separate ways. She told the man she was in love with that she loved him, because she was tired of keeping secrets. He promised they would meet again and she was happy for just those words because she no longer expected anything to amount to much. All her beliefs had proved unfounded, and she herself had broken every promise she had ever made. She returned to her kingdom because she was tired of pretending to be a prince and tired of keeping secrets. She would be a princess again, the only thing she was meant to be, and fight for justice the way a princess would. Her father, who in his dotage had forgotten which promises had been made and broken for what secrets he couldn't remember had been kept by whom, cried when he saw her. He said, 'I am so proud of my grown-up daughter who has come back from bringing justice to the world. My daughter is a good princess and everyone will be happy and we will keep no secrets between us!' The princess embraced her father because she loved him, but she knew that all good princesses had to keep secrets and that she had to forget her love to fight for justice. And the princess was good and her kingdom loved her because she brought justice to them and they were happy. She tried to forget the man she loved who traveled to all the other lands she could no longer see and have adventures in. But she could share his adventures and see those lands as he described them in his letters, and she couldn't be jealous because that was the only way she could love him as a princess and still secretly be a prince. She knew that was the price of being one. . . ."
". . .Once upon a time there was a princess. And the letters had stopped coming because the man she loved no longer sent them. The princess didn't have time to be sad and no time to keep secrets about love or adventures. She was too busy being a princess and making her kingdom happy. She didn't even have to fight for justice anymore---instead of using a sword, she went to meetings and signed documents and instead of using magic she helped the poor, gave hugs to the children and visited the sick (though the kingdom was so happy she soon could only see the children from far in front of their benches at the schools she built for them and send gifts to the hospitals she built and wave to the employees hired off the streets to build and run these public works). She was happy being a good princess---you see, it would've been of no use to think about her sadness. It was no secret that her father had forgotten she had ever wanted to be a prince, and even so could not remember if and why he'd wanted to keep her from being one. He sobbed when he told her, 'I am so proud of my daughter but I will have to give her away because she has grown up and must marry a prince so they can bring happiness and justice to the kingdom in my place!" And because she loved her father, the princess saw many suitors, even though she knew that most of them hadn't grown up and were only pretending to be princes. They didn't understand the price of being one and she was only pretending to see them because she was too busy being a princess and fighting for justice in her kingdom, which, if it was happy or not, the princes ultimately didn't really care. Then one day the man she loved fulfilled his promise to her, and returned from the lands she was too busy to see and couldn't have adventures in. When she saw him, she couldn't decide whether she was happy or sad because it was too late to love him as a princess anymore, and she was never a real prince in the first place. . . ."
". . .Always upon any time, there are little girls. It is the secret wish of them all to want to be princesses. As princesses, everyone will love them because they would bring everyone justice and happiness by being beautiful and good and pretending secretly (even unbeknownst from themselves) to be princes. Because a good princess keeps promises, not secrets. And a princess would never need to think of swords because soon she will meet a prince, and because she is beautiful and good and makes nice promises without secrets, the prince will fall in love with her always, and for always, and then together they will have adventures where justice is done always, and for always, and no one ever dies and everyone is happy always, and for always. But little girls forget the price of this. They all go home sleepy-eyed from playing pretend all day instead of learning their home crafts, history, geography, civics, fencing, and magic lessons. Once home, their fathers, mothers, and sisters, only pretending to scold, will proudly tuck them into bed with good-night yarns, because they love them (and understand that it's far easier to make up the stories than it is to read into the truth), where little girls can continue to play pretend princesses in their dreams. Little girls forget the price of this because they are never taught, the love of their fathers, mothers, and sisters forgets to tell them, and sadly often little girls' love for the empty promise of a princess, love too busy to even remember pretend. Instead they think, 'Wouldn't it be lucky if I really was a princess!' then, surely, they would get a happily ever after---or would they? Or do they? Don't they? With their own justice, love and happiness for no one but themselves. . .princesses. Aren't they? So lucky? Isn't it? Being a princess for no one but themselves. Always? The way it should be, shouldn't it? Isn't it?"