Matthew and Arwin
In the city of Gray Neighbor, the Wretched Hive that surrounds the last Mega Dungeon in the land, every day is a struggle to survive. Narcotics flow freely through the streets, and adventurers risk their lives for fortunes that they promptly squander on booze and the prostitutes eking out a living in the gutters.Matthew, a man impressive of stature and foul of mouth, used to be one of the adventurers, until he offended the god of the sun and was cursed. Thus robbed of his former strength, he was left to survive by his wits and his charm, not to mention his skills in the bedchamber. About a year ago, he secured a place as the "kept man" of Arwin Mactarode, the Warrior Princess of a kingdom destroyed by monsters. While she quests through the Millennium of Midnight Sun hoping to find a magic item that might restore her kingdom to its former glory, he stays on the surface, keeping house for her and protecting her from the problems of the city. And along the way, he finds out that the Jerkass God isn't finished with him yet.
The Kept Man of the Princess Knight (姫騎士様のヒモ Himekishi-sama no Himo) is a Dark Fantasy Light Novel series written by Toru Shirogane and illustrated by Saki Mashima, published by Dengeki Bunko beginning 10 February 2022. The series won the Grand Prize at the 28th Dengeki Novel Awards. A manga adaptation drawn by Keyyang began serialization on Comic Walker on 9 September 2022. Both the novels and the manga are in English publication from Yen Press as of 2024.
This novel series provides examples of the following tropes:
- Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: Matthew hardly has a problem hiring prostitutes of his own when Arwin is away in the dungeon, and lying to her that the money is to go out drinking with his friends. Of course, she knows he's lying to her about this and turns a blind eye, since they don't actually have a sexual relationship anyway.
- Boom Town: There used to be a lot of "dungeon cities" that would spring up around the world's Mega Dungeons to fulfill the needs of the adventurers delving them for supplies, gear, lodging, and entertainment. Gray Neighbor is the last: the other dungeons were all beaten and their cores captured, causing the supply of riches to dry up and making the city go bust.
- Broken Ace: Arwin is the leader of Aegis, the top adventuring party in the city, and continues to hold the heroic public image of the Warrior Princess Fighting for a Homeland for her scattered subjects, and is popular with the city's poor for her kindness and generosity. In truth, she had gone over the Despair Event Horizon from "dungeon sickness" long before Matthew met her and had resorted to the Fantastic Drug Release to ease her pain. Matthew's companionship is all that's keeping her sane and healthy anymore.
- Chastity Couple: It's ultimately revealed in volume 1 that, all innuendos to the contrary, Matthew and Arwin have never actually slept together: in fact, Arwin is a virgin.
- Chivalrous Pervert: Matthew is an unabashed lecher who makes his living by his skills in the bedchamber, but he cares much more deeply for Arwin than he usually lets on, and is unfailingly kind to children and will go to great lengths for his friends and loved ones. He even set his dwarf friend Dez up with his wife.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Matthew's first opponent in the series is Lutwidge Lewster, an incel-like paladin in Arwin's party who secretly lusts after the princess and is jealous of Matthew's more honest relationship with her. He hires assassins to kill Matthew as a consequence.
- Death by Irony: In volume 1, Vanessa gives Matthew a "temporary sun", a magic item that stores sunlight during the day and can then re-radiate it for five minutes at a time, which allows Matthew to temporarily bypass the restriction on his strength. Matthew uses the temporary sun to gain the strength to kill her.
- Fantastic Drug: Release has an effect much like opiates—euphoria followed by an unpleasant crash, and highly addictive—and regular users tend to develop dark spots on their necks. For followers of the Sun God, however, it's a Super Serum.
- Fantastic Rank System: The Adventure Guilds rank adventurers from one to seven stars in ascending order of power.
- Fool for Love: Matthew's female friend Vanessa, the Adventure Guild's appraiser, is an otherwise-intelligent woman who has had a string of worthless boyfriends that mooch off her income and frequently cheat on her: Watkin was a violent drunk who finally punched the wrong guy and was disappeared by a mobster, Tiny had a gambling habit that ended with him getting his arms cut off, Olaf cheated on her until he died of an STD, Oscar was a drug dealer who was trying to extort sex from Arwin when Matthew first met her and was then killed off by a rival gang, and her current squeeze Sterling is a Giftedly Bad Starving Artist who found Oscar's stash and has been selling it.
- Functional Addict: Arwin became addicted to the Fantastic Drug Release as self-medication for dungeon sickness. Matthew is trying to gradually wean her off of it with hard candies that have decreasing amounts of Release in them.
- Genre Deconstruction: Of City of Adventure- and Mega Dungeon-based Role-Playing Game 'Verse Light Novel series such as Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?. In particular, multiple storylines derive from the fact that adventurers make their living by violence, which inevitably takes a toll on the psyche: besides the risk of debilitating injuries, no one is immune to post-traumatic stress disorder, called "dungeon sickness" in the series, and the lack of effective therapies for it in this medievalesque world means that victims often seek out more dangerous remedies, becoming addicted to alcohol and drugs and ending up dying in the gutter.
- Hurricane of Euphemisms: So says Matthew in the first chapter, "My occupation, according to the rest of the world, is kept man. They call me other things, too: male prostitute, gigolo, boy-toy, philanderer, lady-killer, playboy, man-whore, scum."
- Light Is Not Good: The Sun God Ariostol is "a god of battle and a god of trials" whose cult is a Path of Inspiration that seeks to conquer, destroy, and then remake the world. He cursed every member of Matthew's former adventuring party as one of his "trials".
- The Mistress: Gender-Inverted: Matthew is Arwin's "kept man", which amounts in practice to being her physically affectionate live-in housekeeper, manservant, and PTSD therapist. Their relationship is emotional but not actually sexual.
- Neck Snap: After Vanessa reveals she knows Arwin is a Release addict, Matthew paralyzes her by breaking her neck with his bare hands, then burns her house down with her still in it.
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Dez, one of the few members of Matthew's former group he's still in contact with, is your standard fantasy dwarf: bearded, strong, short, and stout. He also used to be a fantastic craftsman who adventured purely to find rare raw materials, until the Sun God's curse robbed him of his dexterity.
- Platonic Prostitution: As a "kept man", Matthew sells companionship more than sex per se, although that has in the past been part of the package. With Arwin, he's mostly her manservant and moral support: he maintains her house when she's away dungeon-delving, and keeps her sane from her PTSD when she's home. They've never actually had sex.
- Power Limiter: The curse on Matthew keeps him from using his Super-Strength except in the light of the sun: forget going on any dungeon-crawls, even cloud cover is enough to make him weaker than some children.
- Red Baron: Arwin is known as the "Crimson Princess Knight" in the city, for her red hair and heroic Series Goal to restore her fallen kingdom.
- Romantic Wingman: Matthew played wingman for Dez and pushed him to try his luck with his now-wife.
- Sexual Extortion:
- The first time Matthew and Arwin met, she had become addicted to Release to stave off her dungeon sickness symptoms, and her dealer Oscar tried to extort sex from her as an additional payment. Matthew rescued her from Oscar and scared him off.
- At their second meeting, Arwin tried to get Matthew to help her find a young girl kidnapped by a slave ring, and Matthew told her that her maidenhead was the price of his help. He never actually had any intention of collecting, he just wanted to see how resolute she was. After they rescue the kidnap victims, she offers to fulfill her end of the bargain, and he says he'll take her up on it "in a hundred years, maybe two".
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Adventurers are prone to suffering from "dungeon sickness", what we would call post-traumatic stress disorder, from facing too many life-and-death dangers and losing too many friends. It's not uncommon for sufferers to become addicted to drugs, including Arwin herself.
- Super-Strength: Matthew and Dez are both freakishly strong, being former seven-star adventurers. Unfortunately, Matthew's strength has a Power Limiter on it courtesy of the Sun God's curse.
- Super-Toughness: Matthew's musculature is still there despite his curse, he just can't use his strength unless he's in sunlight. He can still absorb blows with little consequence that would fell a lesser man.
- Virgin-Shaming: Matthew mocks Lutwidge's virginity for lacking the courage to actually try his luck with the princess, instead lusting after her in secret like an incel.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Matthew and Dez get on each other's nerves like nobody's business, with Dez regularly socking him in the gut for irritating him. But when the chips are down, Dez is only too happy to throw down on Matthew's behalf, even breaking out his old armor and weapons, and Matthew played matchmaker between Dez and his wife.
- Wretched Hive: Grey Neighbor is no Orario: the adventurers either die in the dungeon or live long enough to succumb to dungeon sickness, and poverty is rampant, forcing many women and some men to make their livings as prostitutes and filling the streets with drugs and crime.
- Your Mom: In the first chapter, Matthew is being harassed by an adventurer named Bill, who tells him that he might let him live for a night with the princess, then wonders aloud how often Matthew has slept with her. Matthew retorts that it's about as often as Bill has fucked his mother, then after getting punched, follows up with a much cruder monologue about how Bill's mother is probably getting gangbanged by goblins right about now. This pisses Bill off enough he tries to draw on him before Dez steps in.
