History Characters / SlayThePrincess

* NeverMyFault: Despite sending the Player to kill a [[SuperStrength freakishly strong princess]] who [[NighInvulnerability can live through almost any injury]] with just a dagger and expecting complete compliance without any question as to ''why'' said princess needs to die, any failure on the Player's part to complete the task is almost always attributed to him simply not following his directions well enough. Not that he's entirely ''wrong''; a Player who follows his instructions and kills her immediately and without pause and doesn't so much as inspect her body afterwards has little difficulty.

* NeverMyFault: Despite sending the Player to kill a [[SuperStrength freakishly strong princess]] who [[NighInvulnerability can live through almost any injury]] with just a dagger and expecting complete compliance without any question as to ''why'' said princess needs to die, any failure on the Player's part to complete the task is almost always attributed to him simply not following his directions well enough. Not that he's really ''wrong''; a Player who follows his instructions and kills her immediately and without pause and doesn't so much as inspect her body afterwards has little difficulty.

* SickeninglySweethearts: Going along with his suggestions to free the Princess results in the Narrator gagging from the overly romantic they're being. Him egging on the Narrator to describe you kissing the Thorn Princess causes the Narrator to go full PurpleProse out of spite.

* ThinksLikeARomanceNovel: He sees the world as a love story, with the Princess being a DamselInDistress and himself as the KnightInShiningArmor, and believing the Princess to be his destined soulmate no matter how short of a time she and the Player have actually spent together. It does work for his advantage, however, as his beliefs are so powerful that he can even gain enough of the narrative influence to override the Narrator to will a happy ending for her and the Player.

* ImmortalityImmorality: He wasn't seeking it for ''himself'', but for the people who lived in his dying era, and for other people across the universes. For that, he tore the concept of life and death, of transformation and stability, in two, personified them, and set them up in the Construct with an echo of himself to pit them against each other. As you can see through the game, rarely are any of those characters happy.

-->'''Hero:''' ''Her voice sounds different. More... threatening.\\

-->'''Hero:''' ''Her voice sounds different. More... threatening.
-->'''Stubborn:''' ''[chuckles]'' Good. Sounds like my kind of princess.

'''Stubborn:''' ''[chuckles]'' Good. Sounds like my kind of princess.

-> '''Hero''': ''Her voice sounds different. More...threatening''
-> '''Stubborn''': ''[Chuckles] Good. Sounds like my kind of princess.''

** '''Bias''': The Narrator chooses what and how he narrates, which inevitably results in some bias. He will always insist that the Princess is lying or manipulating you and must be slain, even when she isn't and doesn't have to be. He can also be extremely petty with his word choice and descriptions. In the endgame, when speaking to him in the broken mirror, he gives several reasons why other Narrators deny the possibility of looping, including denial, different suppositions of how the Construct works, existential dread, and the general belief that they ''had'' to be the first version the Long Quiet encountered.
** Even his ability to narrate is unreliable. He has some direct influence over events through his narration: he can make the Player's body freeze or move awkwardly, cause the Pristine Blade to reappear in Chapter I, or eve n make a hallway stretch on indefinitely. But it's implied that he is only capable of this if the Player or the Princess aren't aware of what he's really doing (tying into the Player's [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve ability to alter reality based on your perception]]). If they are aware, he is completely helpless to stop or manipulate what they're doing. In a few cases, they can even step in to do the job for him.

** Should you search inward to find your freedom during the Wild Route, he drops absolutely all of his snark and even resorts to direct threats in a last desperate attempt to keep you and the Princess from catching a glimpse of the world outside his Construct.

** '''Ignorance''': The Narrator is not omniscient, and many details are simply missed by him. He is unable to remember the previous loop, [[RippleEffectProofMemory unlike you]], he seems genuinely unaware of the mirror that appears in Chapter II and Chapter III, and doesn't seem to consider the basement becoming an endless void or the woods becoming a mass of meat to be out of the ordinary. The Narrator can flat-out give you an incorrect impression of what is happening and become blindsided by the Player or the Princess' actions. Despite his attempts to function as a guide, he can end up far less informed about what's going on than you become just by exploring various options.
** '''Bias''': The Narrator chooses what and how he narrates, which inevitably results in some bias. He will always insist that the Princess is lying or manipulating you and must be slain, even when she isn't and doesn't have to be, and can be extremely petty with his word choice and descriptions. In the endgame, when speaking to him in the broken mirror, he gives several reasons why other Narrators deny the possibility of looping, including denial, different ideas of how the Construct works, existential dread, and the general belief that they ''had'' to be the first version the Long Quiet encountered.
** Even his ability to narrate is unreliable. He has some ability to influence events directly by narrating them, such as making the Player's body freeze or move awkwardly, causing the Pristine Blade to reappear in Chapter I, or making a hallway stretch on indefinitely, but it's implied that he is only capable of this if the Player or the Princess aren't aware of what he's really doing (tying into the Player's [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve ability to alter reality based on his perception]]). If they are aware, he is completely helpless to stop or manipulate what they're doing, and in a few cases, they can do his job for him.

** In the version of the Wild route where you and the Princess work together with your fused strength to try and escape. The Narrator absolutely panics and alternates between orders and outright threats to get the Princess and Player to stop.

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: The Broken normally doesn't really do ''anything'' -- most of his contributions are just bleak statements of hopelessness, and he never really gets out of depressed helplessness as a emotional state. In the Tower route, though? He becomes ''disturbingly'' passionate in his devotion to the tower, even actively turning against the Player and trying to force you to kill yourself. This is noted by the Hero, who nervously asks if they should be worried when the Broken starts enthusiastically emoting about the Cabin stairs.

** "Hero or Quiet" by the happy and the cynical variants of the heart of the Shifting Mound

* NoNameGiven: The Player is often referred to with SecondPersonNarration, Hero, or by the title of "The Long Quiet" or several nicknames the Princess gives. What your name is never comes up, but it's likely that based on [[DeityofMortalCreation the nature of what the Long Quiet is,]] you never had a name to begin with. In the new update to the game's "And? What happens next?" endings the soft Princess will call the Player "Quiet" and the cynical Princess will call the Player "Hero" which he'll end up accepting as his name.

* GagEcho: During the Witch route, if you turn your back to her in the stairs and let her claw you in the back, he laments that he was planning to do the same and stab her in the back for you to acclaim the idea as amazing and thanking him for looking out for your back. If you do let the Witch go before you, he proposes exactly that and you get the chance to respond exactly what he thought you would say.
-->'''Voice of the Opportunist:''' Wow! You said exactly the thing I imagined you would say as soon as you heard my brilliant plan. This whole day is a dream come true, really.