The Bolshy Princess

Once upon a time there was a bolshy princess. She had been locked up
in one of those towers for so many years and it was for the good of the
country that she was. You see she was a difficult princess, a hard to
handle, opinionated and somewhat unstable princess. Far too intense
everyone thought and didn't really reflect too well on the kingdom and
so into the tower she went.

She was ok in the tower. She had a broadband connection and via this
she made many new friends and so she was seldom bored. She crafted
poems and stories too and she ate a lot of chocolate and designed
herself a website.

But she still felt she lacked a certain element. A bloke. The trouble
was that even though she was a sassy and independent sort she had read
too many fairytales and seen too many DVD's of films like You've Got
Mail, and As Good As It Gets and other soppy movies where love conquers
all. She had ordered a lot of books off Amazon too and even the ones
for grown ups were ludicrously of the opinion that a person wasn't
complete without someone who loved them best of all. The classics would
have you believing it, as would the more modern things.

It wasn't that our princess had trashy taste at all, quite the
opposite. She never read anything that had an embossed cover. But your
Captain Corellis, and your Shipping Newses and loads of other well
written and absorbing books had romance and love at their core.

And so our princess nursed her own core and found it wanting. She
watched Four Weddings and a Funeral and even though she wanted to give
Hugh Grant a large Karate chop to the throat she did have a tear in her
eye when his deaf brother made the sign for "you complete me".

Anyway the good thing about being an online princess is that you can
pretend to be a normal person and although this presented quite a
challenge to our princess the internet she found was so full of
complete weirdos and freaks she was able to make a convincing stab at
it. After all she wasn't busy writing vampire poetry or posting blurry
webcam shots of her nether regions on dodgy sites.

Our princess liked to talk and she was good at it. Princesses are,
generally. They are genetically predisposed to charm, it's the royal
blood. And our princess was funny too. This wasn't inherited. In fact
there was no explanation for it at all. She just was. Perhaps it was
all the books she read.

Anyway soon the suitors were queuing round the block for her
attentions. Some of them were even quite entertaining and rude. She
found she liked them, she liked talking to them and they seemed to
accept she was a normal person. She made up such a convincing life that
she started to believe it herself.

So then sometimes our princess would sneak out of the tower and meet up
with these suitors. She borrowed ordinary clothes because the kind of
kit a princess wears would really have stuck out in the places she
arranged to meet the suitors.

Mostly the suitors were really crap but on the whole she slept with
them anyway. After all she had read a great deal of literature about
the transformative powers of a woman's love.

However in the end, with each of the suitors she was disappointed.
Until one day she met one and something clicked. They got on very well
and made each other laugh at exactly the same things, they saw the same
things, and they smaned together at exactly the same misfortunes
that befell other people.

The princess was sure she had met her Soul Mate, as happened in fairy
tales and films and on numerous websites where ugly couples detailed
the marvellous love affairs that had always ended in marriage.

And so there came the time when the princess had to reveal the truth.
Things weren't all perfect with her Soul Mate, and how could she expect
them to be. He was slightly too fond of savlon for her liking. But she
was still convinced of the transformative powers of a woman's love and
underneath her gown and crown she was a woman after all.

And so she told him what she was. She revealed her true princessly
colours. She wasn't quite sure how he would react and it seemed he took
it rather well. In fact she was a bit disappointed.

Men are selfish, it has to be said. And our princesses soul mate didn't
quite rise to the challenge once he knew what had to be done.
To our princess the mere chopping down of a few thorn bushes and a
little bit of a rescue from a tower seemed entirely simple. All he
needed was a small chopper and a bit of determination. But the Soul
Mate suddenly looked like he couldn't really do it. He had a bad back
he said.

Our princess couldn't believe her ears. A bad back. A bad back. She
thought about all the grazes and bruises and thorn scratches she had
sustained on the many times she sneaked out of the tower to see him.
But she hadn't heeded them. She would have walked over burning coals
barefoot, she realised. She would have done anything for him in the way
that the books and the films and the websites had shown her.

And so she had it out with him and they had an unholy row. She told him
what she thought and how his weedy behaviour made her feel. Not like a
princess at all but like a worthless piece of crap.

But the princesses Soul Mate didn't like it at all. He didn't like the
argument and he didn't like feeling so inadequate and so he started
whining. After all he did have a bad back and she was unreasonable
thinking he could chop things or scale walls with the kind of gyp his
lower vertebrae were giving him. And so he decided he couldn't make the
princess happy. It made him sad because really he had enjoyed the
benefits for some time of a woman's love. But he told her he couldn't
go on any more. And he wept buckets about it.

So the princess cleared off back to the tower and felt upset and grumpy
and worthless for a bit. Then she bought a new lipstick and was ok
again.