Slay the Princess

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This game is a simulation used to train professional assassins/executioners on the dangers of psychological manipulations from the targets/condemned. The game also indoctrinates the assassin/executioner into following orders no matter what.

• Fairly solidly Jossed by the final release.

The events of the game are meant to show what negative relationships can be like, with mental and physical anguish on one or both sides, along with those who peer into the relationship. People may give advice, advice which may fall on deaf ears. The Princesses many forms also add to this, showing the many dimensions or 'faces' an abuser or victim can have.

• While doubtfully in-universe, most of the Princesses are indeed allegories for some form of failed relationship, usually an abusive or toxic one.

A bit meta. While the events of the game are obviously fiction, being a video game, this goes a step further and says that it being a fiction is apart of it's in-universe lore. The Creator is implied to have been a mortal man, having 'created' everything in the universe. Before he passed away, he created the Narrator to continue his work. Whether or not the Creator is a human or not, or actually died or not, the events of the game could simply be an abandoned story, with the Narrator being someone trying to finish it the way HE wants, or the way he believes the Creator would have wanted.

The only time we 'see' the narrator is when the Player is looking at a mirror, looking at his own bird-like appearance. The Narrator is puppeteering our own reflection to talk to us. He even explicitly says how he is a different entity from us, although it's unclear if he means it for anything besides the Echo thing.

The Narrator wasn't created to be a replacement to the Creator. While he does fill a similar niche, its clear that his purpose is to end the Princess and nothing else. Considering that in any world where the Player dies or Construct ends constitutes as a fail for him, it makes sense that he sees no more reason to live.

The princess is being truthful when she says she has no desire to end the world, however she is immortal, and a being that changes depending on how she is perceived. Inevitably, someday, someone will perceive her as having both the desire and the ability to end the world, and she will become that person.

• Jossed by the final product. While her nature is important, it's not her being what others perceive her to be that's the main issue.

The Princess's Chapter 2 forms seem to be a reflection of the Hero's perception of her. It's possible the reverse is also true, and every Chapter 2 Voice reflects what she thinks of him (smitten, paranoid, cold, etc.)

• Which new voice you get in The Cage is affected by whether you accept the narrator's "happy ending" in The Prisoner, thus leading the Voice of the Skeptic to stop your heart or if you reject his reward and take the Skeptic's advice. This is after the princess is "dead", so this seems to debunk the theory, or at the very least means it's a bit more complex than "How the princess sees the protagonist = new voice".

The Narrator explicitly says that he is tied to the Player, and also that if the Construct or Player ends, then he ceases to be aswell. However, we see a few cases where the Narrator appears to 'disappear' before either of those things happen, usually from being scared or angry at the Player. He also appears to be pretty nonchalant about the "dying infinitely forever" thing. Granted, this could be from his nature as a higher-entity, and just simply doesn't care about dying, knowing that there are infinite amounts of himself who will continue the job.

Some of the Voices grant the Player supernatural abilities such as being able to revive from the dead (without restarting a loop), gaining superhuman strength/speed/intelligence/willpower/fighting ability/senses, or being able to manually activate failing organs. However, even without the specific Voices needed for a specific ability, the Player is sometimes able to tap into them. While it's already confirmed that the Player is a god alongside the Princess, the Voices are aspects of his godly form that can help unlock his true powers.

The Player is a species that is much weaker than humans, being unable to contest with the Princess physically, but also being much harder to actually put down than a human, surviving wounds that would kill one numerous times over.

Granted, we do see the Princess break her way out of a metal chain a few times, but that could be explained by the next WMG:

The Narrator has shown the ability to warp and bend the Construct to his whims, along with manually being able to manually pilot the player, however there is a bigger thing of note — Almost nothing in the story happens without the Narrator's commentary. He is almost never taken off-guard, and even while scared continues to commentate. Things that didn't see feasible for the Player or Princess to do suddenly become possible once he starts talking about them. If he says she's about to break free of her chain, she will. If he says she appears to become more beastly, she does. If he says the Player slays the princess, he probably does. However, it's unclear whether he only says these things because he KNOWS they're about to happen, or because they're happening BECAUSE he says them.

The Player is a bird-like creature. He was created from the essence of the Narrator. The Narrator is a bird-like creature. He was created from the essence of the Creator. Who's to say that the Creator isn't also a bird-like creature, as is everyone else in the universe? We don't see a single human that isn't the Princess.

While when she possess the Hero in the Spectre form, she says that she doesn't have the Voices, it's also true that she was indeed the one to possess him and not the other way around, so maybe this was the actual reason for why we don't hear them while she's doing this but she's instead able to hear both the Voices and the Narrator, and when asked about them, she simply decided to lie and to hide the fact she also has various Voices. If true, it would beg the question of why she, or her Voices, or both, decided to hide this fact. And also it makes wonder who would be her Voices and when and what circumstances, like for the Hero, make them start to talk, and who is her first Voice.

The Creator made the Construct in an attempt to stop entropy by spliting the concept of the universe into two opposing entities symbolizing order and chaos respectively and pitting them against each other. As the Long Quiet, you are the personification of order and stability and shouldn't be susceptible to change, so why does a new Voice spawns in your head after each death? Because the Princess and yourself where once a single concept and as there are parts of you within her that keep her from changing without your perception to affect her, there are also parts of her within you that influence your actions based on how she perceives you. The difference is that those Voices don't change you unless you let them, whereas the Princess is always shaped by your perception of her.

• This would also explain why the Voices are capable of existing outside the Long Quiet, as they were never “just” pieces of them, and why they’re described as “shards of broken glass” when there’s no indication that the player is “broken” in any way, as they were broken off from Shifty.

The Narrator can never see it because it's not part of the Construct, even the Voice of the Hunted acknowledges that it's not actually here since he can feel the wind going through it. It's only perceivable to the Long Quiet because it's a part of him trying to make him realize what he really is, hence, a mirror. It's the only object that appears after the construct unravels because it's the moment the Long Quiet starts to acknowledge that he is not a mortal being, and seeing himself through it is what allows him to reach godhood.

In the "Reset The World" ending, the Princess erases our memory and starts over. At this point in the story, the Narrator has faded away with the Long Quiet's understanding of its true identity, so how is he recovered when the world restarts? He isn't. The Narrator we hear is no longer the Narrator we may have started with, but another Voice of the Long Quiet assuming His role. Perhaps at one point, the Narrator was once a human, but the Echo of that human has long since faded away, only to be replaced by the Long Quiet that is used to his constant presence.

• In this ending, the Princess and Slayer mention the possibility that they've gone through this cycle countless times, having met, been unsure of what to do, and restarting to get another chance at a happy ending. In this light, it's entirely possible that every version of the Narrator and the Creator we meet is merely an extension of the Long Quiet playing the role of an omniscient storyteller. This could be part of why the Narrator struggles to answer in-depth questions, and why the Creator never goes into detail about his true identity as a human. The Long Quiet doesn't actually know much about the one who created him, and gives the same recycled lines he heard long ago.

Both the Princess and the Protagonist are creatures of contradiction, after all.

The Pristine Cut is confirmed to be adding three new versions of Chapter 3, including one for the Damsel. The trailer shows one version of the cabin that's even more like a palace. This Chapter 3 is "The Queen", where the Voice of the Smitten has reached new levels of worship for the Princess.

• Jossed. The continuation of the Damsel route isn't a new chapter but rather an epilogue named Happily Ever After where the Smitten obsession becomes so twisted that he separates from you to instead trap the Princess within the cabin in a fruitless attempt to realize a Happy Ending for the both of you.

Change, represented by the Princess, and stability, represented by the Hero, are both intrinsic aspects of creation and existence, hence both are gods of creation. When the Creator died, the world died with him, he was replaced by the Narrator, who represents the nothing that took its place. He wants the nothing to remain, and so wants the two beings that could come together to create something new to not do such. In the ending where the Hero and the Princess leave the cabin together, it marks the beginning of a new world to replace the lost one, with the two of them as the creators.

• Didn’t the Narrator outright say that the Creator was not a god?

The trailer for The Pristine Cut expansion includes two new scenarios: a palace like cabin, and a room full of chains many people have made the connection that these are the variations of chapter 3 for The Damsel and The Prisoner. Since The Damsel and The Prisoner have a lot of paralels, there is good reason to asign them a chapter 3 variant that resembles their counterpart.

• Jossed. The continuation of The Damsel (Happily Ever After) is the one with the palace, and the continuation of The Prisoner (The Cage) is the one with the room full of chains.

It's established by the endings that the Player is the Long Quiet. The environment of the game is the Long Quiet. Both. Literally. I'm picturing the Player moving up the path unaware as he moves that everything around him is a part of himself, literally attached to his back and unfurled around and enclosing him.The whole of it being one set of his infinite wings, literally emerging from his back and wrapping entirely around himself, the Princess, and the Pristine Blade to form the world the psychodrama takes place in.

Opinions differ on this, but the general consensus seems to be that the creator of the "world" (the person who found a way to make the concepts of the Shifting Mound and Long Quiet into sentient and accessible gods) was trying to eliminate death and prevent the end of their universe. What's odd is that this is presented and often interpreted as the Long Quiet being asked to destroy death (as represented by the Shifting Mound). What seems more obvious from the personalities and names is that the Long Quiet is death and the Narrator's goal is for death to destroy change, as represented by the Shifting Mound. She's not Death and Change. She's just Change. The Long Quiet is Death. Together they're entropy, and maybe whatever reverses entropy (rebirth).

The Long Quiet (Player) is the Wyrm. The Shifting Mound (Princess) is the Wyld. The Narrator is the Weaver. "The Wyrm was caught in the Weaver's web and went mad." That's the goal here. The forces of stasis want things to never change. Want an unending rigid world. They want to survive. So they enslave and control death to kill change and growth. Or at least, try to do so. The Wyrm struggles against it bondage and fractures into multiple "heads" each pursuing a shard of its purpose.

Just like how the Princesses different forms represent different failed relationships, the voices represent specific feelings towards them and their arcs show just when said feelings are healthy and when they aren’t.Hero: A desire for a mutual understanding. He always wants to be reasonable and talk things out before coming to a major decision. He’s notably the first one to object to Smitten and the Damsel being lovers since they just met each other, as they haven’t had time to form a real connection. However, when a connection is formed, he shows just how a healthy relationship looks by being sweet and supportive.

Smitten: Adherence to a pre-conceived notion of love. The exact opposite of Hero, he’s blind to the world around him and makes bold declarations without a second thought. Fitting that, while Hero is always with the Long Quiet, Smitten is the only one to leave them. In a route where they’re forced to confront the flaws in his logic no less. He might look cute with the Damsel at first but when all is said and done he’s just talking to a cardboard cutout telling him what he wants to hear. And of what he wants to hear is too far from what’s actually for the best… well, relationships built upon lies are never going to last. Not even when they’re lying to themselves just as much as their partner.

Stubborn: Lovingly fighting. Despite his whole existence revolving around fighting the Princess, he loves her just as much as Smitten. Why else would he want the Adversary to revive herself and always ask where the Princess is after Shifty takes her? With the Adversary this can work out but generally speaking it’s completely unhealthy. While he may see what he’s doing as love, that doesn’t automatically mean that she does. In most of the routes there’s absolutely no love between the Player and the Princess, just conflict. And even when they do feel the same as Stubborn it doesn’t take much for things to go wrong, turning her into the Fury who just wants him dead.

Cheated: The desire to escape a toxic relationship. He has no love for the Princess, sees his situation as unfair and generally wants to get the whole painful experience over with in the only way he can think of. Him ultimately giving up against the Razor’s new form is reminiscent of an abused boyfriend going from “trying to escape” to “Stockholm Syndrome.”

Opportunist: Seeing your partner as someone to take advantage of. He has no love for the Princess and is always out for himself, eager to betray anyone to get what he wants. Isn’t that the very definition of a Gold Digger who kills their spouse to inherit their fortune? Especially since he wants other people to like him but is ultimately too slimy for anyone who understands him to actually do so.

Broken: Putting your beloved’s happiness above your own. He always loves the Princess and typically appears in routes where that a ‘'very'’ bad thing, to the point that manifests as Stockholm Syndrome, but in the Cage route this is necessary to reach a mutual agreement with her. When Broken tells the Hero that wielding a knife shouldn’t’’ feel natural he isn’t just talking about violence in general, he’s pointing out it’s not ok to hurt the people you love. Just like how putting your lover first in a non-abusive relationship is healthy''. Additionally, Stockholm Syndrome is a defense mechanism people use to cope with horrible situations, and the Broken’s reaction to the Adversary turned Fury is a great example of this. While it’s obviously better to not be in such a situation, being Too Broken to Break is certainly preferable to being a Determinator that’s too weak to handle things.

Cold: A lack of feelings towards your partner and situation. He doesn’t love the Princess but he doesn’t hate her like the Cheated or have his own goals for her like the Opportunist. He simply looks at her and sees what’s in front of him. Violently abusive partners like the Razor and Fury? Cold’s lack of caring replicates Broken’s defense mechanism by simply ceasing to focus on the feeling of “pain.” Killed the Princess? His reminders that she’s dead and that there’s no reason to expect otherwise ensure that it sticks, feeling no grief or joy at the thought. A ghost appeared in front of him? Cold felt joy that she’s alive, remorse for what she did or fear for what she could do. They just calmly analyzed the situation and came to an objective conclusion. The Player is trapped in the Princess’s body and a vote is being held on what to do? Their lack of love and hate leads to nothing more than a calm analysis of the situation and an abstained vote. Not loving someone who might actually love you back is certainly going to strain your relationship, which gives Cold plenty of issues, but not loving someone who doesn’t love you back is obviously for the best. And even when there is love involved their lack the hate compared to the other voices who don’t love the Princess allows them to coexist with her, just like how loveless marriages are inferior to loving ones but superior to abusive ones.