Slay the Princess: The Princess

11 Following

The Princess' many variants that can occur from the Player's choices and perception.

• Achilles' Heel: Only stabbing her in the heart can actually kill her. Otherwise, she's completely immortal — in the Prisoner path, she cuts off her own head to no real effect.
• Ambiguously Human: She looks like a dainty woman, as befitting a princess. But she's strong enough to shatter bones and rupture organs with her bare hands, doesn't react to losing limbs, and is unable to be killed unless pierced through the heart. Depending on your choices, she can become an outright Eldritch Abomination. It is eventually revealed that each version of her is a small part of the Shifting Mound, a personification of death and change.
• And I Must Scream: Her time in the cabin hasn't been kind to her, as she's trapped in a perpetual cycle of being born, dying, and being born again, all while remembering every single loop and suffering from loneliness and decay.
• Animal Motifs: The Princess is strongly associated with cats, including large cats like lions, especially when she begins to take more animalistic traits. Even in her initial human form, her eyes are notably large, and she can potentially be quite snarky and mean. It also creates a contrast to the Player, who is associated with birds, creating a predator-prey dynamic, what with the Princess being easily capable of slaying the Player in many routes.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Of change and transformation, and by extension death. As such, killing her will trap everything in a single unchanging moment, while letting her out will eventually unmake everything in the world. Which of these is better is the core debate of the game.
• Anti-Villain: Though she is one of the greatest threats to the player, it is usually in response to cruelty inflicted onto her. Even her nature as an Apocalypse Maiden isn't voluntary on her part, but a side-effect of her true nature as the god of change - after all, death and destruction are a form of change, even if they're ones people don't usually hope for or want.
• Apocalypse Maiden: The Narrator insists she's one, but he never makes it clear how. It's because she's the avatar for the Shifting Mound that she has the potential to eventually bring everything to an end...and there's a lot of emphasis on the "potential" and "eventually" parts.
• Attack on the Heart: Despite her incredible physical abilities and strength, getting stabbed in the heart in (almost) any of her forms, regardless of their abilities, is a quick death for her. Exaggerated with the final form of the Razor, where the ONLY part of her body left is her heart, encaged in a vaguely humanoid-shaped structure of blades and shards of metal.
• Baritone of Strength: The physically strongest versions of the Princess have the deepest voices to match. This generally includes the version of the Princess you meet when you take the Pristine Blade with you to the basement and many of her off-shoots.
• Barrier Maiden: Any time she leaves the cabin, the world fades out and is replaced by the striated backdrop of the unshaped Construct. That's because, when outside of the cabin, the Princess is where the Shifting Mound can retrieve her.
• Beast Woman: In some of the routes where you attack the Princess, she suddenly sprouts claws and fangs to engage you. She becomes even more beastlike and feral in some other routes.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted on several Routes where the Princess can become just as bloodied and mutilated as you, often to nightmarish levels.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: The versions of the Princess who are the kindest and least harmful (the Damsel, the Prisoner) are only reached by actively refusing to kill her to the point that the Narrator has to try and actively force you to kill her, and still resisting him to the point that the Princess recognizes your efforts and puts you out of your misery. The result is either the sweetest, most cheerful and devoted Princess you can possibly get, or a version of her who recognizes you as someone who is equally trapped and has a cunning plan for you to game the system and get you and her to safety.
• Berserk Button: Abandoning her in the basement will always set her off and make her respond with violence. Even the Shifting Mound, who is accepting of everything you do, even permanently killing her, will become angry if you refuse to go to the cabin during Chapter II.
• Big Anime Eyes: Her eyes are particularly large and anime-inspired, which adds to her initially innocent image; this is especially the case as the Damsel, where she has a particularly Animesque design. That said, the sheer size of her eyes can sometimes make her come across as rather unsettling depending on the situation.
• Big Bad Ensemble: She is the entity that will end the world if she escapes the cabin, and you are tasked with slaying her, but she's only a threat because the Narrator/Creator made her in the first place out of the abstract concept of change and death to kill death for good.
• Big Sleep: When the Princess is slain, she typically closes her eyelids as she dies (including the Tower, though the Narrator describes her as open-eyed and full of anguish as she dies with you). One notable exception is in Chapter I if she is slain without hesitation, as she dies with an eye-rolling "arrogant look" (per the Narrator) on her face, which serves as Foreshadowing that she isn't dead if you doubt it yourself.
• Bizarre Human Biology: Her heart is apparently in the dead center of her chest instead of on the left. What's bizarre for this game is that this is never acknowledged by any character. Like the Player cutting the Princess' shackled arm by the wrist instead of the hand, though, this is likely an artistic choice to make her scar easily visible.
• Blood Knight:
  • The Adversary is an Amazonian Beauty demon who's quite a bit bigger than the player. She insists on getting into a good fight with the player, and will doggedly pursue him if he tries to run. The fact that both she and the player have Resurrective Immortality where they keep coming back from the dead over and over not only doesn't bother the Adversary, but it genuinely excites her, since it means the two of you can fight each other for eternity.
  • The Eye of The Needle, which comes after the Adversary in the full game, is even more of a Blood Knight than the Adversary. Essentially, the Eye is the Adversary but moreso: as she's even taller, even stronger, and even more draconic in appearance. However, her bloodlust is so blatant that it's possible to trick her into following you outside, where she'll be snagged by the Shifting Mound.
  • The Razor also wants to fight the hero, but she's more interested in killing him than fighting him. However, the fact that the hero can't seem to stay dead excites her to no end, since that means she can keep killing him over and over in new and interesting ways.
• Body Motifs: Hands. Regardless of which route you take, hands play a part in lots of the more striking images of the game involving her. The princess can cut off one of her hands to try and break free from her bonds.
  • The Shifting Mound typically shows up as hundreds and hundreds of arms, with hands grasping whichever princess the Mound has control of as an Empty Shell.
  • Whenever the Hero and the Princess show genuine affection for one another, the two of them are more than likely holding hands. Whenever the Princess attacks, it's almost always going to involve a heavy punch.
  • The Nightmare frightens you by just touching your face with one of her hands, and the Moment of Clarity has multiple hands.
  • The first part of the Razor's human guise to go are her hands, sloughing off to reveal her blades and symbolizing her ditching any attempts at reason, cunning or empathy in favor of raw, unyielding rage and sadism.
  • The Shifting Mound's true form has six arms and has several poses in which she reaches her hands out to you.
  • Finally, one of the endings has both the Shifting Mound and the Long Quiet embracing their hands together as they enter into eternity; another has the two of them holding hands on the cabin's door handle; and the "bad" ending, which involves refusing to deliver vessels to the Shifting Mound, ends with her hands holding each other as she and the Long Quiet die. In the "And? What happens next?" endings, the Princess and Player hold each other's hands while walking to the cabin door, and the final scene has the Player's hand on top of the Princess' as they open the door together
  • Also heart. You can kill her via an Attack on the Heart, and in her most vulnerable moments (i.e. the Wounded Wild, Unraveled Apotheosis, Fury), her heart is exposed.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Princess' appearance and personality are determined by how the Hero/Player sees her. Even the decision of whether to take the knife changes the way she'll call out to you before she can even see you. This is also implied to apply to her view of the Player via the Voices, which can cause a feedback loop where the Voices can convince you of their perception of her, which in turn further influences the Princess.
• Color Motif: Despite the game being in black and white, she has a subtle red motif. Her subtitles always either light or dark red, usually the only colour in the game, and any other colour also tends to be red and on her. Naturally, this connects to blood (usually the source of the aforementioned colour), demonstrating the depths she'll go to to get free.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: She can and will do this on multiple occasions to the Player, sometimes following a total No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on him to horrific degrees.
• Cute Monster Girl: Several of the Princess' more monstrous forms are still drawn with her beautiful face intact, or at least try to make her a Little Bit Beastly.
• Damsel in Distress: A deconstruction of one, considering she's locked up for the safety of the world but exactly why isn't clear and she's only as threatening as you make her out to be. Plus, imprisonment hasn't been kind to her.
• David Versus Goliath: Many of the chapter III forms are significantly larger than the Hero by this point, and are either so physically strong that they can kill him in only one or two clean hits, or have supernatural powers that far surpass anything the Hero (and Voices) are capable of matching.
• Decomposite Character: Her "Fury" persona from the demo got split into "The Adversary" and "The Tower" in subsequent versions. Fittingly, both routes can lead to the new "Fury", an incarnation of the Princess whose self-image has been so undermined by your actions that it's reflected in how her body is partially flayed open.
• Eldritch Abomination: Some of her transformations as a result of your actions. Every version of her is also a component of a larger eldritch abomination.
• Empty Shell: What she becomes when the Shifting Mound claims her. No matter what form she took before, the Shifting Mound will grab the Princess and pull her into the Long Quiet, where the Princess will be grabbed and turned into one of the Shifting Mound's vessels.
• Establishing Character Moment: Every time you walk down the stairs to the basement, the Princess will call out to you. Her voice (and how the Narrator describes it) and what she says to you generally establishes what you're dealing with on a given route. What she says in Chapter I is the best example: not only is it your very first impression of her, but on subsequent replays, you will notice her entire personality depends on if you bring the Pristine Blade with you — despite the fact that she shouldn't be able to tell if you have it on you before she sees you — which indicates that the Princess above all else is strongly affected by even the most innocuous decision-making.
• Evil Is Bigger: The more antagonistic forms of the Princess tend to be larger than the hero. The Adversary and the Beast both dwarf the hero, and the Tower is so tall that the hero doesn't even come up to her knees. If the Tower becomes the Apotheosis, she becomes even bigger, to the point that she's bigger than the entire landscape with the entire surrounding area swirling around her. Notably, after this Princess is taken by the Shifting Mound, the hands that grasp her can only partly cover her face, head and neck, as opposed to covering every other princess completely.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • The Princess is the embodiment of death, life, change, and rebirth. Being trapped for all eternity without ANY of those things is a torture that she will do anything to escape from.
  • The more malevolent versions of the Princess seeks to inflict this on you, notably the Fury and the Moment of Clarity.
• Feel No Pain: The Princess is about as durable as a normal person, however is easily able to ignore being pummeled, stabbed, sliced, or getting limbs cut off, either by herself or the Player. Sometimes a slight hesitation or reaction is noticed but altogether pain doesn't seem to mean much to her. The Wraith does mention feeling pain, but casually dismisses it.
• Fighting a Shadow: All the Princesses you encounter are mere vessels of the true Princess, and even if you succeed at slaying them, it doesn't meaningfully hurt the Shifting Mound - unless you do so with full belief that doing so has destroyed the princess entirely, thanks to her subjective nature. You can do this accidentally with the Base Princess and the Prisoner, due to not understanding the rules, or deliberately with the Heart.
• Fisher Queen: From Chapter II onward, she and the world around her will start to warp to fit the impression she made on the Player character in the first chapter. The second encounter sees her form and the inside of the cabin change significantly from what was previously encountered. Subsequent chapters will show her influence spreading from the cabin to the woods beyond.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: According to the Narrator at the end, the Shifting Mound, and by extension her vessels, take the form of a Princess because it was a form you chose to understand her as. She at least needed to be something that could connect on some level to what she is, but the Narrator can only speculate as to why that form is a Princess.
• Friendly Enemy: Even versions of the princess who become hostile to and/or kill you, will still have some form of attachment to the point that they'll ask the Shifting Mound to let you remember her.
• Glass Cannon: One stab to the heart will kill variants of the Princess which aren't already dead. The problem is in getting close enough to do so.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Some of her forms have this, like the Wraith and the Beast.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: It's implied that she's been stuck in the cabin for a very long time. She only gets more and more hostile the longer you or the Narrator prevent her from leaving and attempting to deny her escape leads to the princess transforming into a greater threat.
• Gratuitous Princess: The person you're tasked with killing being a princess is mostly just for the narrative irony of a hero's quest being to slay a princess rather than save one. What exactly she's the princess of isn't elaborated on, nor is anything else about her past, and she seems to have been chained up alone in a remote cabin for as long as she or anybody else can remember. According to the Narrator in the final conversation with him, she is a being of perception, and her appearance was determined by how you (or rather, the Long Quiet) wished to perceive her, and given your mutual nature as two halves of a greater whole, she appears to have manifested as a princess because of the Long Quiet's lingering feelings for her as someone very dear and important to him.
  The Narrator: She wound up a princess because you wanted her to be a princess. As to why? Maybe she needed to be beautiful. Important. Above you, but on a level you could still approach. A herald of things to come.
• Hair Color Dissonance: Due to the game's Deliberately Monochrome art style, it's not entirely clear what color her hair is. Fans assume it is either blonde or actually white, though some give her colors that reflect the personality of the form. Interestingly enough, the "Good Ending" slide depicts her with brown hair^note  says that the image was one of the first made for the game during a time where they didn't think much about her design.
• Hates Being Alone: Seems to be a theme with her, as her first and a number of her later variations are not happy with you if you try to leave. In fact there are many Chapter II and Chapter III scenarios where it's impossible to do so and others that won't even allow you the opportunity to try.
• Her Name Really Is "Barkeep": The Voice of the Hero wonders if her name really is "Princess" (which would make her name and title "Princess Princess"). When you ask the fragmented Stranger what her name is, three out of four variants will say that her name is just Princess, and at the end of the game, the Timid Princess refers to herself as Princess.
• Hidden Depths: Every Act 2 or 3 princess that you can bring to the Shifting Mound has a unique summary, and even the most cruel or destructive ones usually have some kind of positive element the Mound can find: the Fury has "passion and empathy buried under her unfeeling skin", the Drowned Grey has "the courage to share [her sorrow] with another", the Wraith "found [strength] in herself" because she "could not find [it] in others" - even the Nightmare makes for "a tender heart".
• Humanoid Abomination: Even in her most "basic" and "innocent" forms, the Princess is a bizarre entity who merely takes the form of a princess (and even then, that is only the result of your own perception of her). She doesn't need to eat or sleep, doesn't feel pain or fatigue, and only stabbing her heart can kill her, and even then, only if you believe her to be dead.
• I Just Want to Be Free: Almost every variant is determined to get out of that cabin (the Adversary and the Eye of the Needle being the only exceptions, although the Damsel will reluctantly stay if you push the matter and the Witch will choose revenge over freedom), by any means necessary.
• I'm Cold... So Cold...: She becomes cold and lethargic any time she leaves the cabin, usually an indicator that the Shifting Mound is approaching.
• Informed Ability: The Narrator tells you she can end the world if you don't slay her, but you're never told how she would do it. The trope gets zigzagged as certain forms of the Princess are definitely dangerous enough to show a world-ending ability. Even as the Shifting Mound it's unclear if she's actively bringing worlds to an end or more indirectly returning mortality into existence, meaning even worlds end eventually.
• Insane Troll Logic: The Princess' various forms engage in this at times; most notably the Razor and the Adversary.
• Just Hit Him: Zigzagged. The Princess DOES just hit the Player multiple times in every fight to great effect using her immense strength, but it's not always very effective due to the Player sometimes having the ability to keep fighting with most of his body destroyed. It would be much more effective to simply grab the Player and kill him that way. She only does this a single time though, easily catching and snapping the Player's hand, causing him to drop the Pristine Blade. Maybe there's a reason why she doesn't do it more.
• Left-Handed Mirror: The Princess and each variation of her is noticeably left handed which is a contrast to the Player being right handed.
• Loophole Abuse: The Princess is desperate to leave the cabin, and after Chapter I, she learns she can't leave the cabin if you're dead. She attempts different ways to circumvent this, ranging from possessing your body, eating you alive and walking out, Faking the Dead and getting you to take her head with you, or simply convincing you to leave with her.
• Mad Love: Every version of the Princess, including the more hostile and terrifying variations, want the Player's company in some shape or form. But the more twisted the Princess is, the more twisted her view of company is.
• Major Injury Underreaction: She doesn't even blink from gnawing her own arm off. Other forms take this even further, with the Razor turning her arms into swords with a smile on her face, or the Prisoner cutting off her own head and having no reaction at all.
• Meaningful Name: Each version of her that you meet has a suitable moniker that distinguishes her both from the Princess you meet in Chapter I and any other Princess you may encounter, though the characters themselves don't use this name. The game's files refer to the Shifting Mound as "felina", an anagram of "finale", which fits her position as the Final Boss and her potential to end everything.
• Mirror Character: The Stranger route has a sequence that implicitly sets up the Chapter II Princesses in pairs of emotions. Interestingly, almost every pair is linked together by a third chapter.
  The Narrator: Consumption and betrayal. Skepticism and blind devotion. Rivalry and submission. Terror and longing. Pain and unfamiliarity. And at the heart of it all, an emotion that can only be described as-
  • The Beast (consumption) and the Witch (betrayal) are both vengeful and cat-like, the result of you coming to the basement empty-handed, only to turn on them later. The Beast is outwardly hostile and will pounce you on sight, while the Witch is passive-aggressive and tries to tease out an opening to betray you before you betray her. Their shared route is the Wild, where you and the Princess are made one but can be torn apart over your lingering feelings of resentment.
  • The Prisoner (skepticism) and the Damsel (blind devotion) are who appears when you rescue the Princess even as the Narrator tries to make you kill her. The Prisoner, whom you met while armed, is extremely skeptical and cautious of your intentions, while the Damsel, met unarmed, is a Princess Classic who goes with anything you say to the point of being without thought or character. If you slay them, you meet the Grey; the Grey changes based on the route, but they both end with you dying with the Princess.
  • The Adversary (rivalry) and the Tower (submission) come about when you try to slay the Princess, but your doubt allows her to hold her own and kill you. The Adversary is obsessed with fighting you as an equal, not even caring about leaving the cabin, while the Tower seeks to fulfill her alleged destiny to end the world, seeing you as beneath her. They become the Fury when you shatter their fundamental beliefs and self-image.
  • The Nightmare (terror) and the Spectre (longing) are both ghostly Princesses who have a strong desire to leave the cabin and need you to let them out. The Nightmare, who comes about when you try to leave the Princess in the basement, uses her terror to frighten you into letting her leave, while the Spectre, who you killed without a moment's hesitation, is a Cute Ghost Girl who is willing to let bygones be bygones if you let her leave. Rejecting them turns them into the Wraith, who uses both her terror and longing to force you to let her leave.
  • The Razor (pain) and the Stranger (unfamiliarity) are the most unique pairing. You get the Razor if you doubt the Princess being unarmed or dead, and she becomes an Ax-Crazy murderer who kills you so many times that all of your Voices appear. You get the Stranger if you refuse to go to the cabin, where you meet multiple Princesses at once, who meld together into one paradoxical being. They both represent a lack of agency on your part, and are similarly the only pair to not have a shared Chapter III: the Razor has a linear route to herself while the Stranger's route always ends in Chapter II.
  • The final pair is implied to be the Shifting Mound and the Princess (or more specifically, the Shifting Mound's heart). The former insists that you leave with her to create an eternal cycle of birth and rebirth, absolutely sure of herself and the outcome, while the latter is the more intimate, relatable form of the Princess you first met, who leaves the final decision up to you, and is willing to embrace the unknown. They both lead to the game's true ending, either by leaving with them or by slaying the Princess for good. The Narrator never gets to describe what emotion they represent, but it's strongly implied to be love.
• Morphic Resonance: No matter what the Princess turns into, she keeps her long light hair (though the Nightmare, the Beast, the Den, and the Drowned Grey have her hair dark, and the Greys short), her large eyes, something on her head that resembles a crown, and some kind of dress.
• Must Be Invited: Inverted. The Princess cannot leave the cabin without you and your permission. You being dead doesn't count, not even if she takes your corpse with her, though she does come up with a few creative solutions if you remain stubborn.
• Mutual Kill: Sometimes fighting the Princess results in both her and you dying. With her last breath, she acknowledges the futility of it.
• Mysterious Past: The Princess remembers nothing from before she was locked up in the basement, only that she knows she's been there for a very long time. When the Nightmare bears her heart to you, it's implied that there is at least one life where she lived a relatively normal life as a princess.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The more hostile Princesses have scary names like the Beast, the Razor and the Nightmare.
• Never Going Back to Prison: The Princess will do anything to leave the cabin. She can forgive you for trying to kill her, but any attempt to leave her behind will incur her wrath. Leaving her in the basement transforms her into the Nightmare, who will engulf you in visions of her torment to convince you to let her leave, with her repeatedly yelling "let me out!". Killing the Nightmare or leaving the Spectre behind transforms the Princess into the Wraith, who will forcibly Demonic Possession hijack your body to leave, showing absolutely no remorse for doing so.
• The Needless: She seemingly doesn't have any biological needs. You can bring this up in the first chapter, asking how she didn't starve while imprisoned alone in a dungeon, and while she dismisses the question, it's the first hint this is more then just a normal princess.
• Nightmare Face: Sometimes she'll sport a Slasher Smile. Other times she'll sport something much, much worse if you really piss her off. The Stranger Princess gets special mention due to the Body Horror, and the Nightmare Princess has, fittingly enough, a literal nightmare face.
• No Name Given: If you ask the Princess what her name is, she pauses uncomfortably and claims she's been in the cabin so long that she can't remember. Instead, she asks that you call her "Your Royal Highness" or just "Princess". However, the Voice of the Hero thus wonders if she's named "Princess Princess". While the different variations have different names seen in their respective chapter titles, none of the characters actually use them - the most you get are Title Drops, like the Voice of the Hunted saying that the only way out is through the eye of the needle.
• Not Good with Rejection: Refusing to let the Princess out of the cabin will almost always result in her getting violent. More traditionally, the Thorn, who is a version of the Princess you can unambiguously get romantic with, responds to you abandoning her by swallowing the pristine blade, ensuring you are both trapped in the thorny basement. In a more horrifying variation, the Moment of Clarity refuses to take any further rejection by the Player to the extremes. By tormenting him and the Voices for an eternity, until he finally gives in and stops rejecting her.
• Painting the Medium: Generally, if the form the princess takes is neutral or affable towards the Player her dialogue will be in light pink text, while her more dangerous or antagonistic forms will have red text instead.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Repeatedly, she's cruel in response to cruelty.
• Personality Powers: Much like the Player's Voices, the Princess and her variants all have supernatural abilities/powers, based on the form and personality of said form she's currently taking. These abilities and feats which they can achieve can range, from matching the corresponding chapter II Voice of the Player's abilities, to the chapter 3 variants which far surpass any of the Voices' Personality Powers.
• Pretty Princess Powerhouse: The Princess is very slim and delicate-looking. But as you go through different routes, it's clear that she is freakishly strong, and will use that strength to literally rip you to pieces if she gets the drop on you. It's entirely impossible to beat her without the Pristine Blade, and even with it, she most likely will kill the Player. Even in the route where she's bound by multiple chains too heavy for the Player to budge a little, she uses them to strangle the Player.
• Reality Warping Is Not a Toy: Both the Player and Princess' perception of each other can heavily influence the outcomes of their encounters, which often results in one or the other (or both) killing each other, and always results in the end of the world.
• Self-Restraint:
  • Even in her base form, one of her "weakest" forms, she can still break free from her shackle with a moderate amount of effort upon being antagonized by the Player.
  • The Adversary and the Eye of the Needle are both shackled to the walls of their respective chambers, but each form's Super-Strength means that they're willing to break free of the chains with ease if it means fulfilling the Blood Knight tendencies of each form.
  • The Tower notes that, since she considers herself a god, breaking her chain would be trivial. But it doesn't fit a "narrative" of the Tower being unleashed onto the world by the subservient hero who is awestruck by her, so she wants you to let her loose instead.
• Serial Escalation: While every Chapter II variation of the Princess warps the cabin into something appropriate to the new form she's taken, every Chapter III variation has gained enough influence over the world around her that you can see that the woods themselves have changed before you even reach the cabin.
• Silk Hiding Steel: The Princess is this in every route where she fights the Player, but most notably in Chapter I of the Adversary route. By choosing to talk to her and then deciding to slay her (something many players will probably do on their first attempt), she responds by punching the Player's jaw off with a single strike.
• Slipped the Ropes: Many variants of the Princess turn out not to be as restrained as they appear.
  • The Witch slips her hand out of the shackle just seconds into your encounter.
  • The Adversary and The Eye of the Needle break the chain off the wall once doing so means they can fight you.
  • The Fury simply yanks her hand out, losing skin in the process.
  • The Razor cuts herself free once she gets bored of playing innocent. Then in Chapter III where she's back to being shackled, the restraint falls off her arm when it splits open to reveal a second knife.
  • The Damsel's hand turns out to be small enough that it can be eased right out. Why? Because the Smitten said so.
• Strong as They Need to Be: Or rather, strong as you think she needs to be. She will develop strength and new powers depending on what you believe she is capable of. This can range from her being easily taken by surprise and killed with a single stab to the heart to her becoming a Physical God who can escape from the cabin all by herself.
• Super-Strength: Every version of the Princess (save for the ones that don't do many physical things) exhibits supernatural amounts of strength (especially for someone of her stature), being able to do things like break metal chains, break hands with a vice grip, perform unbreakable strangleholds, crush windpipes by simply exerting her knee on them, and reduce the player to a bloody pulp with just punches and kicks.
• Sympathetic Murderer: In most cases where the Princess kills you, it is out of either self-defense, to put you out of your misery, or her desire to leave the cabin driving her to desperate measures. Averted with the Razor, the Adversary, and the Tower, who kill you for fun, for the thrill, and because you disobeyed her respectively.
• Token Human: Well, Token Humanoid, but the Player and the Narrator are bird-like entities, while the Princess, in her most basic form, looks like a regular young woman.
• Uncanny Valley: The Princess is beautiful, but slightly uncanny even when acting completely innocent and benign. Her eyes are a little too big compared to the rest of her face, and her arms are slightly elongated. It's done intentionally so that the player will get the impression that something with the princess is slightly off. When you meet her in the heart of the Shifting Mound, you find the Princess is drawn with much more realistic proportions and speaks with a much more natural tone. This contrasts the ethereal but uncanny beauty the initial Princess has, with an equally beautiful but much more natural look the Shifting Mound's heart has.
• Upgraded Boss: A good chunk of the Chapter III Princesses are stronger, more eldritch versions of the Chapter II versions that preceded them; Apotheosis is a stronger Tower, The Den is a stronger Beast, Eye of the Needle is a stronger Adversary, etc.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: While not totally consistent, some of your more brutal cases of suffering a Cruel and Unusual Death tend to be Laser-Guided Karma because of how poorly you chose to try to slay the princess. Usually, immediate actions are met with fairly immediate responses, but doing things like waiting until she fully trusts you before sticking the Pristine Blade in her back tends to result in very bad circumstances.
• Villainous Crush: The Princess and all of her variants are attracted to the Player. That’s because they actually used to be one being that the Narrator split into two in his desperate attempt to get rid of death.
• Villain Has a Point: During the Princess and the Dragon chapter, where you get to see how a chapter would play out from the Princess' perspective, the harsh reality is that in her eyes, the Player is a large, imposing bird monster covered in shadow and armed with a blade, approaching a woman chained and abandoned in the Cabin's basement. Said bird monster is eerily silent, but in constant heated internal debate with himself, causing his body language to switch rapidly from hesitant in one moment to openly threatening in the next. All these factors make it easy to understand why the Princess would be so hostile towards the Player, especially when he treats her poorly.
• Voice of the Legion: Gains this in some of her forms and when you really piss her off. Notable examples include the Nightmare, Wraith, and Stranger.
• Women Prefer Strong Men: Played with in the endings where you and the Princess manage to mutually kill each other. If you give the Princess a good fight, she takes time in her dying moments to compliment your strength, even describing the fatal encounter as "fun". If she gives you a Curb-Stomp Battle instead, she mocks your weakness and makes her disappointment with you clear as she crushes your windpipe.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: After a few routes, it becomes obvious that the situation sucks just as much for her as it does for you. Can she destroy the world? Yeah. Does she? It's unclear. Does she want to? Even she's not sure. All she knows is she's locked in a basement, and her only company is some guy who may or may not kill her over and over and over and over again.

• Absurdly Sharp Claws: Backstab her after befriending her and the Princess' fingers become clawed and "somehow" able to pierce the Player's neck.
• Ambiguously Human: She looks like a thin, young woman, as befitting a princess. But she's strong enough to explode bones and organs with punches, doesn't react to losing limbs, and is unable to be killed unless pierced through the heart. Even then, the belief that she might not be dead leads to her still having some life left.
• And I Must Scream: It's not as pronounced as in the Nightmare route, but she's already been down there for a long time and doesn't really remember the outside or the last time she's seen anyone.
• Apologetic Attacker: If you side with her without carrying the pristine blade, the Narrator makes it appear and tries to force you to kill her. She takes the knife and stabs you repeatedly, apologizing and weeping all the while.
• An Arm and a Leg: She's shackled to the wall by one arm and unlike some of her later variations is unable to pull herself free or break the chain on her own, except when she's the proto-Nightmare. If you brought the knife, you can cut off her arm to allow her to shed the shackle. If you didn't bring the knife, she starts to chew through her own arm.
• Art Shift: The Chapter I Princess' design changes depending on your actions. Threaten her by taking the Pristine Blade and her features become harsher and dip into the Uncanny Valley at points. Don't take the knife and side with her continuously, and her features soften into a round-faced proto-Damsel. Try to leave her in the basement, and when she comes up the stairs after you, she has a frightening and particularly detailed Nightmare Face. Her Chapter II appearances lead on from there.
• Challenge Seeker: If you talk to her before attacking, she fights back effectively. Persist and it ends with a Mutual Kill, and she says "That... was fun". The next time you see her, she's the Adversary.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: The "harsh" Princess will warm up to you if you help her escape and do your best to prevent the Narrator from killing her. It starts with a clean Mercy Kill and can continue into the Prisoner route where she plans to get you both out alive.
  Princess: You're doing your best to help me, aren't you? I can see the conflict in your eyes.
• Do You Trust Me?: Her greatest argument for letting her out is that you have no reason to believe the Narrator, who refuses to tell you anything about who the Princess is and why you need to slay her, or the Princess, who is a stranger you just met, and therefore making either decision is based on blind trust. She does leverage the fact that, regardless of what she could do, she is clearly not in a position to do so while bound to the basement.
• First Girl Wins: In the endgame, the Voice of the Hero can take the Long Quiet back to where it all began. There he meets the heart of the Shifting Mound, whose personality is based on the very first Princess you met, including the Stranger if you chose not to go to the cabin, and you can convince her to leave together.
• Fish Eyes: The Nightmare Face she shows if you try to leave her in the basement prominently has her eyes bulging and pointing out strangely.
• Glass Cannon: Being just a princess, one stab to the heart will do the trick... but she's extremely strong. Any scenario where you try to kill her after talking to her at all ends with her almost effortlessly bringing you to heel and killing you, even if you manage to make it mutual.
• Handicapped Badass: She has to lose an arm to get out of her shackle and doesn't even bind the dripping stump, but this doesn't mean she's any less dangerous. More often or not, she'll violently put the Player down despite her lack of an arm.
  The Princess: I don't know what's come over you, but if I have to kill you, then I'll kill you. Do you think I need both of my arms to do that?
• Hates Being Alone: If you don't choose to either kill the Princess or set her free, she is not at all pleased and it ends poorly for you. Your resolve to keep her imprisoned alone leads to her shedding the shackle and pounding on the door, eventually coming through with a Nightmare Face and causing you to die of fright. She's next seen as the Nightmare.
• Ice Queen: The "harsh" version of the Princess you meet (if you take the Pristine Blade with you) is standoffish, aloof, and thinks little of you or your ability to slay her.
• I Just Want to Be Free: The one thing she wants most. She's entirely casual about either cutting or chewing off her arm if it means leaving.
• I'm a Humanitarian: In her most animalistic as the Beast, she describes what she did after killing you in Chapter I when she found that she couldn't get through the door on her own.
  The Beast: I consumed your dead heart, and I carried it in my throat, and I draped what was left of you on my back and threw myself against that door.
• Irony: If the Narrator is making you try to stab the Princess but you warn her, the "harsh" Princess will grab the pristine blade and give you a quick and relatively painless death, while the "soft" Princess, having no idea how to use a weapon, will give you an agonizingly painful death by stabbing you over and over, apologizing and sobbing all the while.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Her outfit is a floor-length gown with low heels and a floral tiara, stereotypical of a Princess Classic. Despite this, she's more than capable of kicking the Player's ass and killing him should you choose to attack her, and the dress and shoes don't even slow her down.
• Kubrick Stare: The "harsh" Princess will occasionally flash one when she is attempting to intimidate you or make some sinister insinuation.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: To escape her chain, either you cut the Chapter One Princess' shackled arm off or she chews it off. This is shown in graphic detail.
• Little Bit Beastly: If attacked after she's chewed into her own arm, she fights back with newly prominent teeth and claws.
• Major Injury Underreaction: A Player who wants to free her asks if she has any ideas about how to get her out of her chain "besides cutting you out of there". The Narrator mentions her total nonchalance as she says that would be fine, she can lose an arm. Whether it's cut off with a knife or chewed off with her teeth, she doesn't flinch.
  Voice of the Hero: How is she still smiling after everything? / How is she so composed after losing an arm? It's like she's not even bothered by it!
• Mercy Kill: If you try to warn her when the Narrator hijacks your body, she'll kill you in something between mercy and pragmatism. The kinder Princess is much less good at it, though, stabbing you in the chest several times but seeming to miss your heart with every stroke, while the colder Princess just slits your throat cleanly.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: Talk to her and then attack, and she's drawn with more defined arm muscles as she fights back.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: ...but her arms are still slim, not supporting bone-fracturing levels of muscle.
• Not Quite Dead: If you attack the Princess without talking to her much, you manage to stab her without being hurt yourself. With her last breath she asks if you really think this is enough to kill her. At that point you can walk away to the "Good Ending", or check her pulse to discover that her heart is still beating. She uses the opportunity to stab you in the neck, and smirks at you as you both bleed out.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Choose to slay her immediately and she'll give this reaction as you charge her and impale her in the heart.
  • The kind Princess is horrified if you tell her she's supposed to end the world, insisting she would never do that. The cold Princess is more wryly amused by this, even laughing at the suggestion.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: What the Princess does to you if you befriend her and then try to kill her, or befriend her and then try to leave the cabin.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: If you (literally) stab the Princess in the back.
  The Princess: You bastard! If I have to kill you to leave this place, I'll do it.
• Pretty Princess Powerhouse: Slim and pretty she might be but she's tremendously strong and fast in a fight.
• Primp of Contempt: The colder Princess tends to inspect her nails when annoyed.
• Smug Super: The "harsh" Princess will intimidate you by saying if she's locked up for a reason and you wouldn't want to see what that reason is. The more you show that you're intimidated, the more arrogant and confident she becomes, and more importantly the more she can back up that attitude.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Her basic personality depends on how you choose to interact with her.
  • If you take the blade, implying you see her as a threat, she will introduce herself with a cold "Who's there?", with the Voice of the Hero immediately pegging her as "dangerous." The more you hesitate to slay her and pick dialogue choices that show you are afraid of her, the more threatening and confident in her own abilities she becomes. Trying to slay her at that point results in a Mutual Kill at best and a Curb-Stomp Battle in her favor at worst. Notably, even if you decide to drop the blade and help her until the very end, she'll never stop being cold and aloof. However, this Princess can become more warm to you in succeeding routes.
  • If you don't take the blade, implying you don't see her as a threat, she gives a timid "H-hello? Is someone there?", with the Voice of the Hero being smitten immediately, and reacts to any assertions that she is dangerous with confusion and disbelief. She will only become violent towards you if you betray her, like stabbing her in the back or leaving her in the basement, and even then it's portrayed less as her being always dangerous and more her defending herself.
  • The actions the Princess takes herself in the first chapter also impact what she becomes in later chapters. For example, if you keep talking to the Princess, she'll try to free herself by chewing off her shackled arm. If you attack her after this, she develops claws and sharp canines and the Narrator will begin to describe her in animalistic terms, suggesting that watching her bite into her own flesh made you see her as more beastlike. Appropriately, depending on if you took the knife with you, this can lead to the Beast or the Witch routes.
• Super-Strength: She hits like a sledgehammer.
• What the Hell, Hero?: If the Player talks with the Princess but avoids actually freeing her for too long, she'll call him out on using her freedom as a bargaining chip, only to be given to her if she says what he wants to hear.

The Shifting Mound

• Act of True Love: The Shifting Mound will abandon her godhood and role of ending the world if the Player chooses to say he wants to leave the cabin as mortals, or at least something near, as it's left unknown on how much of their powers remain. You can also choose to not say that you want to be mortals too. There's also another option to not say you reject godhood after the Hero takes you to her heart, though, and she'll still be more humble than her other form, take your hand, and leave the cabin too.
  The heart of the Shifting Mound: And if it's bad, then... it won't be bad. Not with you.
• Admiring the Abomination: By all accounts, the Shifting Mound genuinely loves the Long Quiet. Should you accept her offer to join her in godhood, she gives you exactly what was promised to you, and you seemingly spend eternity exploring the infinity beyond the construct, happy together. Even if you reject her notion of advancing into godhood, the Shifting Mound will just accept it and dissipate in the Long Quiet with you instead of arguing after a time.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Some of the individual Princesses can become very powerful depending on the Player's actions. But whether it's the divinity of the Tower or the Apotheosis, the Botanical Abomination of the Wild, the wrathful persona of the Fury, or the aggression of the Eye of the Needle, none of them can stop the Shifting Mound from claiming them as vessels.
• Apocalypse Maiden: An odd variation: as the personification of change, she contains death within her multitudes, so as long as she exists in creation, death will always exist. This is why the Narrator insists that her being free will end the world: while she has no active wish to cause anyone harm, her existence ensures that the world and all the people in it will eventually, inevitably, end.
• Benevolent Abomination: While she can indeed end the universe, she is genuinely in love with the Long Quiet and believes that the change she embodies is a good thing, or at least a necessary one; she is birth and growth as much as she is death and ruin, and believes that a finite existence is needed to give existence meaning. Even then, she can confess that she’s uncertain of her existence and if she truly desires to carry out her purpose. Despite embodying the opposite concept from you she's never anything but warm and loving towards you — after all, you were the same entity once. Notably, all she wants is for you to join her in exploring and shaping existence together, whereas you can, if you choose, decide that you'd rather kill her and shape existence alone, and even if you choose to do so she'll spend her last moments sincerely telling you that she loves you and wishes you nothing but the best. You can even take the diplomatic solution and convince her to leave with you as something other than a god. Ask her about other people outside of the Construct, and, depending on your prior choices, she can say the thought of them fills her with a gentle sadness, as she knows unlike you and herself they are finite.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: By default, her moral understanding of the world is only based on change — she doesn't hugely care if those changes are for the better or the worse, as she can change them again, and she dismisses any pain or suffering she inflicts as simply another step in the journey. However, you can convince her otherwise, and it's completely possible to get her to accept human morality to lesser or greater degrees, which is more than you can get if you argue with the Narrator just before meeting her.
• Bookends: The game starts with the Player meeting a Princess in a basement Cabin, with him either trying to slay or rescue her. The game can end with the Player, slaying the princess or rescuing her from the cabin.
• Body of Bodies:
  • When you first meet her, she's comprised of many, many arms. So many that it looks like there's a flame behind the Princess she's holding. Also, she'll be grabbing onto whichever princess that was most recently brought to her when you meet her in the Long Quiet.
  • Her true form is a beautiful yet grotesque amalgamation of female human forms, including hair that is made up of Princesses, and hundreds more grasping upwards towards the Shifting Mound's main body. From what you can see, the Shifting Mound also has five heads and six arms.
  • If you tell her true form that you still intend to slay her, you 'fight' - she pulls the vessels you've brought her up to the surface, where they're supported by lesser bodies, and speaks through them.
• Break Them by Talking: Your "fight" consists entirely of her showing you flashes of how you appeared to the vessels you've brought her, and speaking through them as she tries to convince you to join her.
• Brought Down to Normal: Should you talk to her in the cabin and choose a line that says you don't want to be a god, it's possible to convince the Shifting Mound to drop her godhood, and try to face what comes with both of you as entities who have rejected godhood. It's unknown whether that meant being converted to depowered normal mortals (as normal as these two can get, that is) or just in a state where they're not utilizing their full abilities and not lording over the realm.
• But Now I Must Go: In the " And? What happens next?" ending, the Player and the Princess residing in the Shifting Mound's heart leave the Construct and Voices to face the world outside. You can choose to say that you reject godhood, to which the Princess (depending on your first vessel) can either say she doesn't want it either or tell you to embrace it as it is a part of who you are. You can also choose to not say that and go for other dialogue options and leave.
• Can't Argue with Elves: Once she fully awakens and realizes herself, she will insist that you join her in infinity and refuse to listen to your perspective on things. If you argue with her through the previous vessels, everything you reply with she will either spin into being in support of her goal or deflect in one way or another, and if you prove yourself to be unable to deflect her arguments, you'll be eventually exhausted by the effort. And even if you successfully deflect her words and resist her, she'll only express annoyance at how you refuse to accept her and continue to "cling to delusions". The only way to convince her of a different way is for the Voice of the Hero to take you to her considerably more humble heart.
  "You offer me your hand as if you have proven me wrong! But I am not wrong! I cannot be wrong!"
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Shifting Mound wound up being a Princess due to the subconscious desires of the Player of wanting to rescue his separated half in manner reminiscent a fairy-tale hero. He can end up doing just that in " And? What happens next?" ending.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Zig-zagged. She views any conflict between the Long Quiet and her as this retroactively. To her, giving him the opportunity to have something to defy and grow trying to fight is a "gift", even if it wasn't her intention at the time.
  The Razor: [as part of the Shifting Mound] You died countless steely deaths, and you lived countless short lives, and yet it is all so far behind you. I pushed you to a greatness you never would have reached without me.
• Demonic Possession: Of a sort. Whichever princess you bring to her becomes an Empty Shell, their consciousness drained away completely until the Shifting Mound can claim them as a vessel. However, the situation is complicated by the fact that they're all technically fragments of her greater being to begin with, she mentions several of them continuing to exist inside of her, and when you engage in her debate, they reemerge from her, implying they weren't possessed so much as the shell left behind post fusion was used for a last remark.
• Deus ex Machina: It's either this or Villainous Rescue, but should you encounter a vessel that becomes too much for you (i.e. get torn apart by the Den or incinerated by the Apotheosis or Burned Grey, let the Eye of the Needle kill you, or let the Drowned Grey... well... drown you), she will intervene via a blowing wind and a telltale fade-out from the Narrator in order to save your skin or even revive you before taking the vessel, as she knows that the story is concluding.
• Dissonant Serenity: Speaks with a soft, almost soothing voice, despite the nightmare that is everything that's happening, happened, and will happen.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Though not exactly death itself, she does contain the concept of it as part of her being. Despite this the Shifting Mound is not hostile, even her "fight" with you is more her aggressively communicating abstract ideas to you in an attempt to convince you to leave with her. She believes sincerely that the change she embodies is a good thing, or at least necessary, and is a force of life and growth as much as she is death and ruin.
• Dying Declaration of Love: Should you slay the princess in the core of the Shifting Mound's being, she will tell you before she dies that she loves you and that she wishes you the best. Agree to let her slay you instead and she'll confess right before stabbing you, and you can even give your own confession first if you wish. Finally, if you and the Shifting Mound are trapped in eternal oblivion, she'll repeatedly tell you she loves you until your consciousness finally ceases.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: Whenever any version of the Princess leaves the cabin, they can mention that they feel cold. This even includes godly entities like the Apotheosis. It's a sign that the Shifting Mound is close by. Ultimately subverted, as her intentions aren't malevolent, she's just gathering her vessels and she later reveals they still exist within her.
• Face Death with Dignity: If you ultimately choose to kill her as the Heart, she doesn't resist, simply telling you that she loves you, wishing you luck in your new world and asking that you remember her. Subverted if you kill her as the Shifting Mound, where her final words are begging for her life.
• Final Boss: Her true form is the final version of the princess you encounter, no matter which versions of the princess you've seen before.
• Final-Exam Boss: Her "fight" consists of a debate where the Princesses from each of your previous routes appear one at a time to philosophize about how their encounters with you went, presenting you with several possible responses. As such it will be different in every playthrough.
• First Girl Wins:
  • The heart of the Shifting Mound will have the personality of the very first Princess you meet in the basement — the aloof Princess if you took the Pristine Blade, the amicable Princess if you didn't take the Pristine Blade, or the Stranger if you chose not to go to the cabin.
  • After "The End of Everything" update, if you apologize to the heart of the Shifting Mound, she'll recall the first time you met (and how poorly it went), implicitly pulling this trope for whichever variation of the Princess you encountered in your first route.
• Five Stages of Grief: If you choose to stay in the woods without going to the cabin in Chapter II, the Shifting Mound will try to reset you on the right path. The second time you do this, she becomes angry. The third, she apologizes for getting angry and tries to convince you to go to the cabin. The fourth, she becomes dispirited, and the fifth, she gives up. The achievements you get for doing this are also named after the five stages.
• Giant Woman: Apart from the Apotheosis, the Shifting Mound is by far the largest version of the Princess you will encounter as she is actually dozens of women fused together in one large mass, with her "dress" actually being a pile of moving bodies.
• Godiva Hair: Her true form is completely naked, but her hair is wrapped around her torso and her arms so that you can't see anything suggestive.
• God of Chaos: She is the Anthropomorphic Personification of change itself in all its forms, a being of growth and rebirth as much as she is death and entropy.
  "I am not death, but I contain it in my multitudes."
• Graceful Loser: In the "And? What Happens Next?" and "A New and Unending Dawn" endings, she takes the Player rejecting her offer or slaying her pretty well and either willingly leaves with the player in the former or wishes him the best in the latter.
• Helping Hands: Before any vessels are brought to her, her form is many disembodied hands and arms. The Long Quiet can meet this form on its own by refusing to go to any Chapter Two cabins until the scenario falls apart, and the Long Quiet is grasped by "feelers" and "extremities" - they aren't called hands - which wrap around his consciousness and manage to communicate directly and soundlessly.
• Hidden Depths: Both the timid and cynical variants of the Shifting Mound's heart are surprisingly philosophical about their extensional existence of being a Goddess' heart, and how the Shifting Mound's Blue-and-Orange Morality means she's something you can't really argue with. Both variants of the heart also have their own individual quirks beyond their broad personality archetypes.
  • The timid variant, while sweet, also shows a sassy sense of humour, and will tease the Player depending on dialogue choices in the finale.
  • The cynical variant, while sounding snarky and a bit cold, will refer to the Player as "Hero" and express sincere happiness at him not bringing the blade. She'll also give an embarrassed, but seemingly genuine, response to a love confession.
• Humanoid Abomination: She's a Body of Bodies, but her core form is that of a beautiful human woman with six arms, five heads, and hair made of other princesses. It makes the Shifting Mound simultaneously beautiful and grotesque.
• Ice Queen: The variation of the Heart based on the more hostile Princess in chapter I appears to be this at first glance. In reality she is much kinder, only really inheriting the snarky attitude from her previous personality, and by the end does still profess her affection for the Long Quiet in no uncertain terms.
• Immortal Apathy: The primary thing she cares about is escaping the construct with the Long Quiet, even if doing so will in the long term end the world as it is, along with every person in it. Even if he convinces her to try something else, it is the fact that saving the world is important to him that matters to her, not the world itself. Although, depending on your choices, she can come to care and sympathize with people other than the The Long Quiet and her; because unlike the two of them, they are finite.
• Intertwined Fingers:
  • She covers the eyes of each new vessel and moves the vessel's jaw and arms with her hands while talking to you through them, sometimes lacing her fingers with the vessel's.
  • In the Just as you were once nothing ending, her disembodied hands flow over the screen and lace their fingers together. As they both fade away, the Shifting Mound and the Long Quiet experience alternating pain and pleasure and she says "I love you", over and over.
• Kill the God: It's possible to go into her heart, to find a princess there, and slay her. Doing this appears to permanently kill the Shifting Mound.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Refusing to reset the loop at the end of a route has the Shifting Mound simply wait until the Player agrees to, which closes the game. The next time the game is opened it immediately resumes the conversation with her, where she comments on the Player's "return."
• Literal Split Personality:
  • The Princess and the Hero were once a single being that encompassed the totality of existence through their combined concepts. This entity, through unknown means, was separated by the Creator into two independent beings. The Princess, who embodied change and was imprisoned within the Cabin; and the Hero, who embodied stability and was given the task of slaying her. This is one of the reasons the Shifting Mound is so desperate to be with the Hero; in a very real way, they were always meant to be together.
  • The many different variations of the Princess are themselves independent fragments of the Shifting Mound greater being, representing the many different aspects she may take. She awakens after five of them are brought to her by the player, whereupon the rest find their way to her automatically and perform a Split-Personality Merge into a Hive Mind that embodies all of their experiences and traits.
• Love Confession: She can give you one if you choose to do what she wants and destroy the construct. After that, she'll offer her hand, and once you take it, you'll break through the construct into the beyond.
• Magic Mirror: The Shifting Mound's presence in the Construct is initially signaled by a mirror inexplicably appearing in the cabin. The Narrator can't see the mirror and doesn't know what you're talking about if you ask him, and it disappears if you draw his attention to it. When you reach the end of a route and the Shifting Mound claims the current Princess, you see it again right before she speaks to you directly.
• Many-Faced Divinity: Befitting a divine being with a Body of Bodies, the Shifting Mound has at least five faces on their head.
• Mono no Aware: As the personification of change and transformation (including death), she believes that all things must be finite, fleeting, and come to an end one day because things will be more beautiful and meaningful that way, as well as that being a requirement for new things. This also includes endings themselves, as death and endings are themselves seeds for new possibilities.
  The Grey: [as part of the Shifting Mound] An ending is a passion that can only be expressed with a moment in time. It is a seed for a new beginning. To linger on an ending is to rob it of its life. And without me, all that's left to do is linger.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: She shows up as hundreds upon hundreds of arms and hands when she appears in most routes. Whichever princess she's grabbed as an Empty Shell will also be covered in hands, including covering her eyes.
• Mythical Motifs: As a many-armed and -headed deity with multiple independent avatars who embodies change and death, she's clearly akin to Shiva.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: If you consider her a villain. In multiple versions of Chapter Two and Three, the Princess can escape the cabin, either directly with the Player's help or, as with the Apotheosis, on her own. However, the Shifting Mound captures any Princess variant who's done so, using them as vessels to rediscover who she is, and after a conversation resets things and makes the Player character forget and return to Chapter One. Only one of the Multiple Endings has the Shifting Mound escaping the Construct as her true self.
• Not So Stoic: There are a few moments where the Shifting Mound will be upset with you. If you turn away from the cabin in Chapter II and onwards, which will result in that route's vessel being lost, for the second time, she will be furious and straight up says that she hates you (multiple times in a row) before sending you back to Chapter I. She will apologize for her outburst later, though. If you continue to refuse her vessels, she'll have another moment where she morosely and bluntly says she doesn't want to even look at you, immediately sending you back. Unrelated to that, if during the final debate if you repeatedly insult her with examples of you slaying her vessels, breaking their spirits, or otherwise proving you don't want or need her, she'll eventually snap and attack you.
• Offering a Hand: Offers you her hand at the end of the game, should you choose to do as she asks and break free from the construct.
• Official Couple: You can become this with her if you choose to do so, at the end of the game. You either become a God Couple with the Shifting Mound and explore the universe together, or you're both (possibly) Brought Down to Normal and choose to face the world outside without being gods.
• One-Winged Angel: The true form of the Princess, awakening after you have gathered enough fragments for her to pull herself together to finally break free of the Construct's imprisonment.
• One-Woman Wail: The soundtrack for her appearances includes a single voice singing wordlessly.
• Opposites Attract: The Shifting Mound, goddess of change, is entirely capable of being a God Couple with the Long Quiet, deity of stasis.
• People Puppet: The Princesses she claims are used in this manner to communicate with you, her voice speaking through their limp bodies while her many hands puppet them. The Princesses in question have become empty for the Shifting Mound's reawakening. They aren't dead, and their personalities technically still exist within her, but their being has been subsumed into just another aspect of the Shifting Mound. In the final "fight", where she argues for her freedom, they surface from her Body of Bodies and are active and animated again.
• Posthuman Nudism: She doesn't wear any clothes now that she has achieved her true godlike form, and neither do any of the hundreds of princesses that are converging towards her. But she does have her hair wrapped around her body to cover up her naughty bits, and the princesses are seen from a Toplessness from the Back angle.
• The Power of Love: At the end of the game, should you choose to break free of the containment, the Shifting Mound will tell you that she loves you and offers you her hand. Once you take her hand in your own, that's when the construct breaks apart.
• Redemption Rejection: In the "Your New World" path, if you decide to offer your hand instead of finishing her off at the last moment, she becomes livid at the audacity. Ironically, this guarantees you will end up finding her redemption through her heart instead, because making the offer causes the Pristine Blade to not even appear in the cabin.
• Rescue Romance: The game does say it's a love story. And it is, even after the Cosmic Horror Reveal. It's just that the love story is between the Shifting Mound and the Long Quiet. Because the Shifting Mound is caught in the Long Quiet's Eldritch Location, she's become incredibly lonely. However, as the Long Quiet brings the Shifting Mound more and more princess vessels, the Shifting Mound gradually develops a greater and greater affection for him as she begins to reawaken to what she truly is. Should the player choose to declare his love for her in one of the game's endings, she will honestly reciprocate.
• Seeing Through Another's Eyes: Each time the Shifting Mound recalls one of her previous forms, the Player has a vision of their past encounter, shown from the Princess' perspective.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: The Shifting Mound in her nascent form is influenced by the feelings of her vessel; more specifically, the game checks if 1) the vessel was freed from the cabin and 2) if she was satisfied with that outcome or not (for example, killing Happily Ever After will make her satisfied). The most noticeable change is that a "satisfied" Shifting Mound is eager for you both to awaken and explore the universe while an "unsatisfied" Shifting Mound is concerned only with her own awakening and for you to do your job. This doesn't carry over to her awakening as she has a strongly defined and independent personality, though the vessels do offer their own unique perspectives.
• Summon Bigger Fish: Some versions of the Princess are world-ending threats, such as the Tower, the Nightmare, and the Moment of Clarity. But regardless of how powerful any Princess is, they still are helpless before the power of the Shifting Mound, joining her with their bodies becoming an Empty Shell. Most of them, she tells you, are happier within her.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Instead of freeing her, you can meet her in the cabin once again, smaller and quieter than she is outside and with the persona of the first Princess you encountered, influenced by whether you'd brought the knife that time and even including the Stranger. Bring the knife one last time and she can be killed there, or will restart the cycle again - she would rather be free, but starting from nothing without her memories is better than being killed. Or, you can just say you don't want to be a god. The Stranger doesn't think either of you have a choice about that, but the other versions will agree, and all three versions are happy to leave with you.
• Tautological Templar: Ultimately, as the Shifting Mound, she simply can't see any perspective but her own as valid — she's an elemental force, and she cannot be swayed by rhetoric any more than one can argue with the fundamental principle of gravity. She is good and right, and anything that goes against that is madness. As such, any attempts to debate or negotiate with her are doomed to failure. If you want to change her mind, you need to go to her heart, where she becomes something human enough to consider the possibility that other people can have a point.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: If you consistently bring her angry and bitter vessels, then her unfinished form becomes more arrogant, uncaring and selfish, such as changing her focus from "our ascension" to "my ascension" and dismissing people as too temporary to matter. That said, her finished form remains much the same whatever path you take to her.
• Took a Level in Kindness: If you bring her happy vessels, she in turn becomes more compassionate and forgiving, including her feeling sorrow for people. Downplayed in that her finished form remains static regardless of your chosen path. The heart of the Shifting Mound is also considerably more humble and reasonable in comparison to her goddess state.
• Warts and All: Part of what you can say to the heart of the Shifting Mound makes it clear that whatever idealized version of the Princess you might have gotten first, the heart is the real princess. And you might not know who she is, but you can find out together. The "And? What happens next?" ending can have you confess your love to her, and she will honestly reciprocate. But unlike Happily Ever After and the other "ideal" versions of the Princess, this one is messy and complicated, but it's far more realistic and genuine.
• We Can Rule Together: Upon her ascension, she asks you to join her in godhood to break free of the Construct and leave for the universe. Justified in that you were both parts of a single being before being separated by the Creator, as well as her own love for you.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: If you were chained besides the Prisoner until the basement eroded away, the Shifting Mound has something to say through her:
  The Prisoner: [as part of the Shifting Mound] Bound for eternity, you saw the need for impermanence, and it was through that need that you carved our freedom. Without impermanence, the suffering of living things is infinite. Would you strip my gifts away and leave everyone to suffer in the dark?
  The Long Quiet: They'll get over it. They'll see permanence as a gift in time.
  The Shifting Mound: Or, in time, would they see it as a curse?
• Wowing Cthulhu: Getting her the five vessels that she needs to ascend to godhood makes her genuinely care for you and your well-being. Her offer to ascend with her is completely on the level, and should you agree to go through with it, there are no strings attached to her offer.
• Yin-Yang Clash: Both the Long Quiet and Shifting Mound are unkillable in their true forms, making any attempt to "slay" each other futile. This leaves them at a stalemate until the Voice of the Hero intervenes.