I am thinking about a character who is a banished prince. He was supposed to marry a princess from a neighbouring kingdom, but he doesn't love her, and he hates being a prince because his position was stopping him from being with the person whom he truly loved.
He loves the chambermaid who comes and makes his bed and brings him breakfast and cleans his rooms up every day. He loves her so much that ran away with her. He left his wife and his home and everything that had - is entire life, to be with the one person he loved.
They were both captured, however, and brought back in chains. The King is quite a fair King, but he still couldn't have his son running off with a servant, especially when he was married to the daughter of a one time enemy, and so the chambermaid was publically charged with witchcraft and treason and giving a public show trial. The court promised to show her mercy if she lifted the spell she placed in the prince. She, of course, said that she couldn't as she was not a witch and had not cast any spell.
At the end of the trial, the court found her guilty, and as she had refused to lift the spell, they would show her no mercy as they had no choice but to sentence her to death in the hopes that her evil magic would die with her.
The prince could not allow the one he loved to be killed, however, and so he attempted to use his position and authority as a prince save her.
Again they were caught, and this time the girl was killed on the spot. The death of his lover only hardened the prince's heart further against his father. He hired an assassin to kill the King, but the plan failed, and through torture and other unspeakable means the King's agents learned the truth that it was the prince, who had hired the assassin. Had it have been anyone else, they would have been charged with treason and executed but the King could not bring himself to order the death of his son and so instead, under the guise of the prince going off on a quest to purify his soul after the witch had dug her claws into him (a way for both the King, the kingdom and the prince to save face) the prince was banished.
So now at 25, the one-time prince finds himself alone in the world. He has quite a lot of combat training under his belt at this point and is a reasonably accomplished hunter as well. He also gives off an air of authority, and being the former captain of the Royal Guard; he has some command experience under as well.
He also hates his father with a purple passion and has sworn to himself that he live long enough to see the end of the monarchy and the kingdom become a republic, where the people are free to choose how they live their lives, to choose their path and to be with the ones they love, no matter who they are.
I think that he would be a Paladin, though I'm not sure which kind or if there is a class that fits this kind of character better. I am also not sure how to play this character as I don't want him to be an edge lord, but I do wish his love for a chambermaid and his inability to be with her because of his position and titles and bloodline, and then her death by his father's orders, to have coloured his view of monarchies specially and the world in general.
Do you guys have any thoughts, tips, suggestions or criticisms about how to make and play this character? Anything at all from his class to the intricacies of playing this character will be most welcome.
Thanks, everyone
Foxes
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A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
They were both captured, however, and brought back in chains. The King is quite a fair King, but he still couldn't have his son running off with a servant, especially when he was married to the daughter of a one time enemy, and so the chambermaid was publically charged with witchcraft and treason and giving a public show trial
This bit makes no sense:
Why would a prince be brought back 'in chains'
Why would a 'fair king' conduct a 'show trial' and falsely convicted of a crime
At the end of the trial, the court found her guilty, and as she had refused to lift the spell, they would show her no mercy as they had no choice but to sentence her to death in the hopes that her evil magic would die with her.
Like, didn't someone in the entire kingdom know detect magic? Come on, this is the trial of the princes' mistress, you'd at least have one mage on hand in the audience who'd say something like "hey, she ain't magic"
The prince could not allow the one he loved to be killed, however, and so he attempted to use his position and authority as a prince save her.
Again they were caught, and this time the girl was killed on the spot.
Uh, what? How is this using "his position and authority as prince to save her"? This sounds like he just tried a jail break
under the guise of the prince going off on a quest to purify his soul after the witch had dug her claws into him (a way for both the King, the kingdom and the prince to save face) the prince was banished.
So let me get this straight; a 'fair' king hosts a mock trial to execute his sons mistress, who the son fails to break out of jail and she ends up dead anyway? So the son hires a failed assassin to kill the king (an actual crime) and the supposed 'fair' king, instead of actually punishing an actual criminal, lets his son go off gallivanting under the pretence of banishment? I mean, the prince wanted to abdicate and run off in the first place so how is this 'banishment' a punishment?
So now at 25, the one-time prince finds himself alone in the world. He has quite a lot of combat training under his belt at this point and is a reasonably accomplished hunter as well. He also gives off an air of authority, and being the former captain of the Royal Guard; he has some command experience under as well.
This completely fails to line up with his ineptitude at breaking out a single person from jail at the start.
He also hates his father with a purple passion and has sworn to himself that he live long enough to see the end of the monarchy and the kingdom become a republic, where the people are free to choose how they live their lives, to choose their path and to be with the ones they love, no matter who they are.
Firstly, I've never heard the expression "purple passion", do you maybe mean "fiery passion"? Secondly, where does this hatred of monarchy come from? From hating his dad?
This character is a mess of cliches, illogical inconsistencies and tropes, none of which line up. Honestly, this guy sounds like a chaotic neutral fighter with stats in all the wrong places.
You want a banished noble? Keep it simple; he ran off with commoner who left him but he knows he can't return because the king disowned him. Done. No faff with executions and mock trials and assassins, seriously, less is more.
As for class, fighter or rogue, not paladin. This guy doesn't sound like an oath swearing sort (I mean, your original narrative starts with him breaking his oath to his wife for goodness sake).
I was trying to come up with a reason why a Prince would hate his life so much and just being in love with a servant didn't seem enough. Royal families are quite notorious for having mistresses in the real world, especially Kings and Princes
On top of that, he is a Royal who doesn't like monarchies.
I couldn't think of a reason why the character would hate his life and hate his family much. Let alone why he would want to bring the end of the monarchy instead of becoming king himself.
Maybe I got too caught up in the trope the rebel prince.
If he hates the monarchy, would he even use his rebel 'prince' status? Can't he just hate the idea of being obligated to rule rather than free to choose his own destiny? Not every destination needs a complex path to reach it.
Aside from that, to the Paladin idea, I could see these:
Oath of Devotion - he feels the monarchy is "unjust" and is determined to end it. Oath of Heroism - he has decided this is his Destiny. Oath of the Ancients - the monarchy is disrupting the people's natural rights. Oath of Vengeance - he's an edgelord dedicated to getting even with dear old dad.
I can see what you were attempting to do, but it does come off a bit tropey on first read. Maybe not as savage as Davedamon's reply indicates, but yeah, there's a few logic holes there.
-Royal marriages are generally assumed to be loveless in most medieval/High Fantasy settings. A royal who's married to another royal for purposes of dynastic alliance is honestly often expected to have lovers outside their marriage. So long as they keep it discrete, it's fine. Who's going to tell them off for it?
-If the prince refused to 'live a lie' and accept the servant as his mistress instead of his wife, it would cause a great deal of damage to his bloodline. Running off with the chambermaid undermines the authority of his bloodline and his king and causes heavy damage to his kingdom's diplomacy, as it'd be seen as a sign of weak and lazy rule if the king's son couldn't be assed to do the duty for which he'd been raised in privilege his whole life to do. This is especially true if he was already in a dynastic marriage to an enemy nation - his running off with the chambermaid could be cause for war.
-Given this, the character is absolutely chaotic and most likely Neutral at best - he put his own happiness and principles ahead of the populations of two entire nations. When he further defied his king/father and attempted to save the chambermaid through semilegal means, he was further sabotaging the king's attempt to salvage the situation by pinning it on the "witchcraft" of a spellcasting interloper. As Davedamon said, the king should've had access to magic to verify the truth of such claims; unlike Davedamon's assumption, it would not matter because as fair as the king may otherwise be, he's currently embroiled in an unprecedented diplomatic disaster and he needs this chambermaid to be guilty of witchcraft and sedition or his nation may end up in a war. One chambermaid dies and one prince suffers a broken heart, or two countries start tearing each other to bits.
-I would consider nixing the assassin element. First of all, the prince's blatant disregard for his duty and his outrageous disrespect for the authority of the throne he stood to inherit is more than enough to warrant his banishment, if not his execution. Second of all, hiring an assassin to kill your father for the crime of trying to salvage a diplomatic nightmare via pretty much the only means your own actions left available puts the character squarely into chaotic evil territory. If you want a rebel prince who fights oppression and has a giant hateboner for the king, you've already got that - the former prince wants to dismantle the dynastic system altogether so people can live with whoever they'd like.
If you just want a character who hated his royal life so much he spiked it? There's a myriad of reasons. He hated the thought of ruling, of being personally responsible for hundreds of thousands of lives he would never know. He saw the horrors of war firsthand, or his father committed an atrocity during the last war with the kingdom whose princess he's marrying that he cannot forgive. A bard sang stories of freedom and adventure in his ears and he couldn't bear the thought of being stuck on a giant gaudy metal chair for the rest of his life. A dear friend died due to something the king did/didn't do, and the friend's final wish was a task the prince couldn't do while still in line for the throne.
There's ways to do it without being quite so tropey, and ways to fix the Lovely Chambermaid story as well. Just depends on what you actually want from the character, ne?
I'm finding this quite hard, and the more I think about it, the more I think having a character be so highborn isn't a good idea.
Perhaps I should lower his social rank and maybe have him be the son of a low ranking noble instead. Even as the son of a low ranking noble, running away with a serving girl would be scandalous and would probably hurt his family, but it seems more believable than if he was a prince.
Especially if she was somebody, he genuinely loved.
This way, his family could find out what he was planning and use their authority to have her falsely accused of a crime and put in prison. So she still ends up in locked up he still wants to rescue her, but it cuts out all the witchcraft stuff, the show trials banishment and everything.
It also gives him a reason why he would join a resistance and become a rebel. He wants to rescue the person he loves from being falsely imprisoned.
It isn't exactly a rebel prince, but I think that maybe it works better. His family could still have arranged his marriage to the daughter a higher noble and be trying to force him to go through with that, but then it's son undermining the political manoeuvring and greedy aspirations of one family, rather than a prince risking the lives of everyone for the sake of love.
Do you guys think the character would work better if I made these changes?
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A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
Why do you want to play a character like this? I mean, does your DM's campaign even have a rebellion going on? What do you want from this character?
There is no rebellion as such. At least she hasn't written one into the world yet, but she didn't have a problem with a backstory that involved one as her campaign is based on late 5th to early 9th century England and its various kingdoms. Just obviously with Faerun and its various kingdoms/states/places/factions in place of those that really existed.
So a rebellion is not so far fetched that she has a problem with there being one even if she has wrote one herself.
As to why I wanted to play a character like this, I was trying come up with an antihero of sorts. A purely selfish character who does things only for himself but along the way unintentionally does things that benifit the people and the world.
Someone who doesn't think of themselves as a hero at all but who does heroic things, even if those things are entirely for his own benefit.
An accidental antihero if you will.
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A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
I think you may be misunderstanding what an anti hero is. An anti hero isn't someone who does accidentally heroic things, they're someone does good through typically non heroic means. Think Punisher or Batman or Rorschach. Often violent, typically with a disrespect for the law but strong internal moral code.
What you're describing is, well, more of just a bit of a wangrod, an accidental hero at best. And to be honest, not a great pc archetype to play with in a party.
And expecting your DM to write in an entire rebellion to facilitate your characters background seems a bit much, especially if you want to dominate the narrative by having your character try to lead it
Hi guys,
I am thinking about a character who is a banished prince. He was supposed to marry a princess from a neighbouring kingdom, but he doesn't love her, and he hates being a prince because his position was stopping him from being with the person whom he truly loved.
He loves the chambermaid who comes and makes his bed and brings him breakfast and cleans his rooms up every day. He loves her so much that ran away with her. He left his wife and his home and everything that had - is entire life, to be with the one person he loved.
They were both captured, however, and brought back in chains. The King is quite a fair King, but he still couldn't have his son running off with a servant, especially when he was married to the daughter of a one time enemy, and so the chambermaid was publically charged with witchcraft and treason and giving a public show trial. The court promised to show her mercy if she lifted the spell she placed in the prince. She, of course, said that she couldn't as she was not a witch and had not cast any spell.
At the end of the trial, the court found her guilty, and as she had refused to lift the spell, they would show her no mercy as they had no choice but to sentence her to death in the hopes that her evil magic would die with her.
The prince could not allow the one he loved to be killed, however, and so he attempted to use his position and authority as a prince save her.
Again they were caught, and this time the girl was killed on the spot. The death of his lover only hardened the prince's heart further against his father. He hired an assassin to kill the King, but the plan failed, and through torture and other unspeakable means the King's agents learned the truth that it was the prince, who had hired the assassin. Had it have been anyone else, they would have been charged with treason and executed but the King could not bring himself to order the death of his son and so instead, under the guise of the prince going off on a quest to purify his soul after the witch had dug her claws into him (a way for both the King, the kingdom and the prince to save face) the prince was banished.
So now at 25, the one-time prince finds himself alone in the world. He has quite a lot of combat training under his belt at this point and is a reasonably accomplished hunter as well. He also gives off an air of authority, and being the former captain of the Royal Guard; he has some command experience under as well.
He also hates his father with a purple passion and has sworn to himself that he live long enough to see the end of the monarchy and the kingdom become a republic, where the people are free to choose how they live their lives, to choose their path and to be with the ones they love, no matter who they are.
I think that he would be a Paladin, though I'm not sure which kind or if there is a class that fits this kind of character better. I am also not sure how to play this character as I don't want him to be an edge lord, but I do wish his love for a chambermaid and his inability to be with her because of his position and titles and bloodline, and then her death by his father's orders, to have coloured his view of monarchies specially and the world in general.
Do you guys have any thoughts, tips, suggestions or criticisms about how to make and play this character? Anything at all from his class to the intricacies of playing this character will be most welcome.
Thanks, everyone
Foxes
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
This bit makes no sense:
Like, didn't someone in the entire kingdom know detect magic? Come on, this is the trial of the princes' mistress, you'd at least have one mage on hand in the audience who'd say something like "hey, she ain't magic"
Uh, what? How is this using "his position and authority as prince to save her"? This sounds like he just tried a jail break
So let me get this straight; a 'fair' king hosts a mock trial to execute his sons mistress, who the son fails to break out of jail and she ends up dead anyway? So the son hires a failed assassin to kill the king (an actual crime) and the supposed 'fair' king, instead of actually punishing an actual criminal, lets his son go off gallivanting under the pretence of banishment? I mean, the prince wanted to abdicate and run off in the first place so how is this 'banishment' a punishment?
This completely fails to line up with his ineptitude at breaking out a single person from jail at the start.
Firstly, I've never heard the expression "purple passion", do you maybe mean "fiery passion"? Secondly, where does this hatred of monarchy come from? From hating his dad?
This character is a mess of cliches, illogical inconsistencies and tropes, none of which line up. Honestly, this guy sounds like a chaotic neutral fighter with stats in all the wrong places.
You want a banished noble? Keep it simple; he ran off with commoner who left him but he knows he can't return because the king disowned him. Done. No faff with executions and mock trials and assassins, seriously, less is more.
As for class, fighter or rogue, not paladin. This guy doesn't sound like an oath swearing sort (I mean, your original narrative starts with him breaking his oath to his wife for goodness sake).
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Thanks for your reply Davedamon.
I was trying to come up with a reason why a Prince would hate his life so much and just being in love with a servant didn't seem enough. Royal families are quite notorious for having mistresses in the real world, especially Kings and Princes
On top of that, he is a Royal who doesn't like monarchies.
I couldn't think of a reason why the character would hate his life and hate his family much. Let alone why he would want to bring the end of the monarchy instead of becoming king himself.
Maybe I got too caught up in the trope the rebel prince.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
If he hates the monarchy, would he even use his rebel 'prince' status? Can't he just hate the idea of being obligated to rule rather than free to choose his own destiny? Not every destination needs a complex path to reach it.
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Aside from that, to the Paladin idea, I could see these:
Oath of Devotion - he feels the monarchy is "unjust" and is determined to end it.
Oath of Heroism - he has decided this is his Destiny.
Oath of the Ancients - the monarchy is disrupting the people's natural rights.
Oath of Vengeance - he's an edgelord dedicated to getting even with dear old dad.
:)
I can see what you were attempting to do, but it does come off a bit tropey on first read. Maybe not as savage as Davedamon's reply indicates, but yeah, there's a few logic holes there.
-Royal marriages are generally assumed to be loveless in most medieval/High Fantasy settings. A royal who's married to another royal for purposes of dynastic alliance is honestly often expected to have lovers outside their marriage. So long as they keep it discrete, it's fine. Who's going to tell them off for it?
-If the prince refused to 'live a lie' and accept the servant as his mistress instead of his wife, it would cause a great deal of damage to his bloodline. Running off with the chambermaid undermines the authority of his bloodline and his king and causes heavy damage to his kingdom's diplomacy, as it'd be seen as a sign of weak and lazy rule if the king's son couldn't be assed to do the duty for which he'd been raised in privilege his whole life to do. This is especially true if he was already in a dynastic marriage to an enemy nation - his running off with the chambermaid could be cause for war.
-Given this, the character is absolutely chaotic and most likely Neutral at best - he put his own happiness and principles ahead of the populations of two entire nations. When he further defied his king/father and attempted to save the chambermaid through semilegal means, he was further sabotaging the king's attempt to salvage the situation by pinning it on the "witchcraft" of a spellcasting interloper. As Davedamon said, the king should've had access to magic to verify the truth of such claims; unlike Davedamon's assumption, it would not matter because as fair as the king may otherwise be, he's currently embroiled in an unprecedented diplomatic disaster and he needs this chambermaid to be guilty of witchcraft and sedition or his nation may end up in a war. One chambermaid dies and one prince suffers a broken heart, or two countries start tearing each other to bits.
-I would consider nixing the assassin element. First of all, the prince's blatant disregard for his duty and his outrageous disrespect for the authority of the throne he stood to inherit is more than enough to warrant his banishment, if not his execution. Second of all, hiring an assassin to kill your father for the crime of trying to salvage a diplomatic nightmare via pretty much the only means your own actions left available puts the character squarely into chaotic evil territory. If you want a rebel prince who fights oppression and has a giant hateboner for the king, you've already got that - the former prince wants to dismantle the dynastic system altogether so people can live with whoever they'd like.
If you just want a character who hated his royal life so much he spiked it? There's a myriad of reasons. He hated the thought of ruling, of being personally responsible for hundreds of thousands of lives he would never know. He saw the horrors of war firsthand, or his father committed an atrocity during the last war with the kingdom whose princess he's marrying that he cannot forgive. A bard sang stories of freedom and adventure in his ears and he couldn't bear the thought of being stuck on a giant gaudy metal chair for the rest of his life. A dear friend died due to something the king did/didn't do, and the friend's final wish was a task the prince couldn't do while still in line for the throne.
There's ways to do it without being quite so tropey, and ways to fix the Lovely Chambermaid story as well. Just depends on what you actually want from the character, ne?
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I'm finding this quite hard, and the more I think about it, the more I think having a character be so highborn isn't a good idea.
Perhaps I should lower his social rank and maybe have him be the son of a low ranking noble instead. Even as the son of a low ranking noble, running away with a serving girl would be scandalous and would probably hurt his family, but it seems more believable than if he was a prince.
Especially if she was somebody, he genuinely loved.
This way, his family could find out what he was planning and use their authority to have her falsely accused of a crime and put in prison. So she still ends up in locked up he still wants to rescue her, but it cuts out all the witchcraft stuff, the show trials banishment and everything.
It also gives him a reason why he would join a resistance and become a rebel. He wants to rescue the person he loves from being falsely imprisoned.
It isn't exactly a rebel prince, but I think that maybe it works better. His family could still have arranged his marriage to the daughter a higher noble and be trying to force him to go through with that, but then it's son undermining the political manoeuvring and greedy aspirations of one family, rather than a prince risking the lives of everyone for the sake of love.
Do you guys think the character would work better if I made these changes?
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
Why do you want to play a character like this? I mean, does your DM's campaign even have a rebellion going on? What do you want from this character?
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
There is no rebellion as such. At least she hasn't written one into the world yet, but she didn't have a problem with a backstory that involved one as her campaign is based on late 5th to early 9th century England and its various kingdoms. Just obviously with Faerun and its various kingdoms/states/places/factions in place of those that really existed.
So a rebellion is not so far fetched that she has a problem with there being one even if she has wrote one herself.
As to why I wanted to play a character like this, I was trying come up with an antihero of sorts. A purely selfish character who does things only for himself but along the way unintentionally does things that benifit the people and the world.
Someone who doesn't think of themselves as a hero at all but who does heroic things, even if those things are entirely for his own benefit.
An accidental antihero if you will.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
I think you may be misunderstanding what an anti hero is. An anti hero isn't someone who does accidentally heroic things, they're someone does good through typically non heroic means. Think Punisher or Batman or Rorschach. Often violent, typically with a disrespect for the law but strong internal moral code.
What you're describing is, well, more of just a bit of a wangrod, an accidental hero at best. And to be honest, not a great pc archetype to play with in a party.
And expecting your DM to write in an entire rebellion to facilitate your characters background seems a bit much, especially if you want to dominate the narrative by having your character try to lead it
Find my D&D Beyond articles here