Basic Trope: Royal Brat who serves as an obvious Wrong Guy First for the unfortunate Love Interest.
- Straight: Prince Dikliss has an Arranged Marriage with Princess Velvet; however, he's a self-absorbed Upper-Class Twit who's nothing like the polite, gentlemanly Prince Kelvin.
- Exaggerated: Prince Dikliss is a completely worthless Jerkass whose sole redeeming feature is his rank — if you care about that sort of thing.
- Downplayed: He's not a total jerkass but he's much less genteel than his rank would suggest.
- Justified:
- Inverted: Prince Charming
- Gender Inverted: Princess Classless: the presumed Princess Classic is a Spoiled Brat with no class at all.
- Subverted:
- Prince Dikliss is actually a pretty decent guy.
- Alternatively: Prince Dikliss isn't so bad underneath it all. (And honestly, growing up with a name like "Dikliss" is bound to give anyone a chip on their shoulder.)
- Double Subverted: ...However, the decency turns out to be little more than a facade that he soon drops around Velvet or others to gloat.
- Parodied: Dikliss is such an Upper-Class Twit that he plunges deep into Cloudcuckoolander territory.
- Zig Zagged: Dikliss is a jerk due to his bad background; Velvet dislikes him at first, but comes to pity him and works on helping him become a better person. The two eventually bond, forming a true Love Triangle; however, Dikliss grows jealous of Kelvin and plots to get rid of him.
- Averted: Prince Dikliss has his good and his bad points.
- Enforced: The writers want to teach An Aesop that wealth does not automatically make people classy, gracious, or polite.
- Lampshaded: "My dear prince, how adorable I find your belching."
- Invoked: Serpentus, Dikliss' Evil Chancellor, deliberately groomed him into a jerk as part of a plot to discredit the royal family.
- Exploited: Prince Kelvin tricks Velvet's father into engaging her to Prince Dikliss so that when he appears to save her from the unwanted marriage, Velvet will be grateful.
- Defied:
- Serpentus deliberately avoided this, planning instead to make him into a puppet ruler — meaning he's more useful if he's well liked before taking the throne.
- Princess Velvet runs away from home to avoid her forced marriage with Prince Dikliss, fully expecting him to be a jackass.
- Prince Dikliss, instead of wanting to marry Princess Velvet, instead makes an active attempt to call off the marriage and avoid her. He's already got many women, so why would he add Princess Velvet?
- Discussed: "I wouldn't want to marry Dikliss, even though he is a prince. He's such a prick."
- Conversed: "Man, Dikliss is a douchebag in this story. He's just like Prince Humperdink."
- Deconstructed: Dikliss is unpleasant thanks to spending his whole life dealing with the Decadent Court, constantly manipulated by everyone around him and treated as little more than a convenient pawn; a means to an end. His Arranged Marriage to Velvet is just another instance of this, something he greatly resents and can't help thinking of whenever he sees her.
- Reconstructed: The two are still incompatible, though, so the two cooperated in breaking off the wedding without having to demonize each other in the process. They are no longer a couple, but they have developed a friendship and support each other.
Back to Prince Charmless.
