Also they were staring rather pointedly at him, as if surprised to see him there. Which just made him worry, he had considered two possibilities when he learned the High King asked for his presence alongside King Johan: He was going to be turned over to their custody for whatever nefarious purposes in a cynical political pacification ploy, or he was there as a showpiece, ‘look at me, I got a pet bogeyman!’. In neither scenario did he imagine the princesses would not be told he was coming. Perhaps it was a deliberate insult? He was the cause of the earlier diplomatic kerfuffle between the two kingdoms afterall, and the king had managed to get the princesses to recant their position and probably just took Handy along to wave him in front of their faces.