<strong>Name </strong>: Prince Edward Charming<br/><br/><strong>Age </strong>: 32<br/><br/><strong>Gender </strong>: Male<br/><br/><strong>Race</strong>: Human<br/><br/><strong>Fairytale </strong>: Sleeping Beauty<br/><br/><strong>Occupation </strong>: Ex-champion, hermit<br/><br/><strong>Appearance </strong>: Fairly tall for a human, standing about 6'2", he has few clothes, virtually all of them faded and ragged from his solitary life in the wilderness.  Usually seen wearing a dirty, water-stained shirt and brown trousers with frayed legs, he wanders around the forest in sandals that look like they could fall apart at any moment.  His eyes are a dark green, appropriate for his wooded home, but there is a depth of feeling there that his actions and words deny.  Living alone and subsisting on fish and game and vegetation has given him a lean, fairly muscular frame.  He does carry a sword, using it mainly as a tool for clearing vegetation.<br/><br/><strong>Personality </strong>: Prince is an extremely irritable man, world-weary, and could even be described as crotchety.  He prefers to be alone, having been caught up in far too many adventures in his life due to his given name, which he considers to be a horrible curse.  He avoids mentioning his past whenever possible, even snapping at those who don't want to drop it.  Still, he always helps those who stumble onto his home in the forest, knowing full well the Tradition will make him pay otherwise.<br/><br/><strong>Special Talents/Magical Powers</strong>: Prince cannot cast magic, nor does he have any special abilities.  The one thing he has going for (or against) him is his name, which his Tradition-savvy parents gave to him at his birth in hopes of making him fabulously wealthy and successful.  His actual given first name is Prince, leaving him able to fulfill all sorts of Traditional paths with no actual royal lineage, whether he likes it or not.<br/><br/><strong>History </strong>: Prince's parents were in no way royalty, nor were they wealthy.  They were merchants in a fairly prosperous port city, with enough money and status to be educated, but nothing more.  Through either family tradition, or some other stroke of luck, or perhaps the Tradition itself, they were aware of it and what it could do.  So, with no regard for consequences, they named their first and only child Prince, in the hopes that he could marry some rich young princess and achieve a happily-ever-after.  Of course, they knew their son would never leave them in the cold, and be ever so grateful for helping to ensure his success in life!<br/><br/>Unfortunately, his childhood was very bumpy, full of ups and downs as he struggled to keep his life in his own hands.  Prince gradually became known fairly widely, his misadventures and disasters, comedies and tragedies, all earning him laughing recognition everywhere he went.  One day a messenger came to him, a royal messenger, and petitioned his parents for Prince's help.  There was a princess, in a nearby kingdom, who had been cursed and needed the kiss of a prince.  The messenger wouldn't say what the curse was, but Prince's parents had heard all they needed to hear.  A princess!  It was all happening as they had expected.  They shooed him off quickly, and celebrated, knowing that their son would return as a real, titled prince.<br/><br/>Now, the princess was indeed cursed.  She had been granted a dizzying number of blessings at her birth by several fairy godmothers, who had long ago promised such favor to the kingdom in exchange for saving them.  Every time, though, the Tradition mandated that the child in question be given one bad gift, a curse.  Normally this was sidestepped by cursing them with something absurd, or even harmlessly comical, such as never being able to see a bear without sneezing, or something similar.  This time, however, the young princess Aurora was not so lucky.  A young fairy godmother, still in training, bumbled and cursed her, that if she ever saw herself in the mirror she would never sleep again.  The other godmothers, horrified, stepped in and managed to give her an out, the only one possible: the kiss of a prince.  She would indeed never sleep, but one day, perhaps, she could be saved from her fate.<br/><br/>She did, of course, finally catch a glimpse of her reflection, and she did, of course, stop sleeping.  Sadly for her there were no princes around for many, many miles, and so her condition was irreversible.  Slowly she began to lose her mind, and the king and queen were forced to lock her in the tower to contain her raving madness.  They tried many times to get rid of her, but the Tradition had other ideas, and every single time she would end up back at the castle by some ridiculous series of events.  They grew desperate, until they finally heard of a young merchant boy named Prince.  They sent for him immediately.<br/><br/>Prince arrived with high hopes, thinking just as his parents had.  He would kiss the princess, break the curse, and live happily ever after.  Unfortunately, kisses do not cure mental instability.  No amount of sleep was going to solve this.  He quickly realized that Aurora's parents only wanted her gone, and making her his problem was their real plan.  Upon coming face to face with the unhinged young woman, as she babbled incoherently and seemed to stare straight through him, he broke and ran out of the castle and into the nearby woods.  He stayed there for some time before being found by a traveler, a Champion on a quest.<br/><br/>Still being hunted by the royal family, Prince begged the Champion to take him along, and finally the Champion agreed, thinking that a makeshift prince would be a handy thing to have around.  Prince went with him everywhere after that, until finally becoming a Champion himself, and a very good one at that.  He succeeded in quest after quest after quest, until finally he found himself back in Aurora's kingdom on assignment.  An evil dragon had attacked the castle, and Prince had been sent to dispatch it before it flamed all the farmers.  As soon as he rode out to face the giant serpent, though, he realized his misfortune.  He had long ago canceled out his Traditional role within these borders when he ran out on marrying the princess, and he would never be able to kill the dragon, or probably even survive.  Leaving his horse as a sort of offering and distraction, Prince dismounted and ran off into the forest, just as he had many years ago.  He lives there still, cursing his own name and hating the Tradition.