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Slay the Princess
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  • Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
    • Kindness pays dividends. Treating the Princess nicely or with respect results in a version of the Princess that is nicer to you in turn, and attempting to undo the damage you caused by betrayal or malfeasance usually works. Alternatively, act like a jerk to the Princess or stab her in the back, and you can expect to have your life made a living hell by whatever Humanoid Abomination that she becomes. For example, the only way to reach the Burned Grey is to murder The Damsel (a friendly Extreme Doormat who desperately desires the player's approval, and who will never take aggressive action against the player no matter what), and what follows is one of the saddest chapters with the most gruesome mutual near-death in the game.
    • The ability to Take a Third Option doesn't mean it's the right one; sometimes, compromise is simply off the table. The Fatal Flaw of the Voice of the Hero is that he keeps trying to find a middle ground while assuming that this would be the best course of action. His most common suggestion — the Princess going free from her chains with the Hero living with her in the cabin — is seen as unacceptable by both the Narrator and the Princess, and would ultimately benefit no one even if they tried it. Should the Hero keep insisting, it always ends badly for everyone involved.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: The intended interpretation of Happily Ever After, during which the player and the Princess are trapped within a Gilded Cage run by the Voice of the Smitten is that everyone involved is forcing themselves to maintain an illusion of happiness, and that the Voice of the Smitten is acting in accordance with the player's wishes from the previous chapter. However, the intense emotional discomfort of the chapter, including the Princess panicking because she's worried about upsetting the Smitten, and the Smitten becoming a separate entity who won't communicate with the player even when he holds them in place, has led some players to interpret it as an abusive relationship where the Smitten alone is responsible for everyone's suffering. A later patch added optional dialogue where the Princess thinks everyone had some responsibility for what happened and that it's not something to apologize for.
  • Alternative Joke Interpretation: There's some optional dialogue in No Way Out between the Voice of the Paranoid and the Voice of the Contrarian. After the player suggests flirting with the Princess, the Paranoid voices his support for the idea, thinking it'd distract her. The Contrarian jokes that the Paranoid only wants to flirt with the Princess because he'd enjoy it, to which the Paranoid simply replies "No comment". The most logical explanation is that the Paranoid is trying to deflect the Contrarian's teasing without giving him the emotional response that he's looking for. It would be extremely out of character for the Paranoid of all people to genuinely be attracted to a Princess with blades for arms, especially given that she's currently trying to kill him. However, this hasn't stopped a few fans from running with the idea, purely due to the Rule of Funny.
  • Anti-Climax Boss: Both the Apotheosis and the Fury were this in the original game. Despite all their build up, they either are immediately taken by the shifting mound (Apotheosis) or render you unable to fight (Fury). This is averted come the Pristine Cut, where their routes are fleshed out with much more in-depth endings.
  • Awesome Art: All of the character and background art were hand-drawn in pencil by one artist, co-creator Abby Howard, just like the studio's previous game Scarlet Hollow.
  • Awesome Music:
    • The Princess is the first thing you hear as you start up the playthrough, and it's a simple piece that demonstrates the minimalist setting.
    • The Apotheosis starts as a One-Woman Wail but then escalates with added instruments and percussion to drive home the Apotheosis' divinity. Despite this, you can still attempt to slay her, and the track only makes this choice more badass. It's also a fantastic track to end on if you accept the Shifting Mound's offer to awaken as a god, as it now describes both of your ascensions into divinity.
    • Transformation is a haunting but powerful piece of music. Much like the Apotheosis above, the One-Woman Wail and percussion showcase the grandiosity, but the melody is just subdued enough to evoke a marvelous melancholy. A fitting piece of music for the confrontation with the Shifting Mound, as she brings back the versions of the Princess you met in your journey as she tries to convince you to join her.
    • The Unknown Together is a reprise of the Princess' theme which you hear if you decide to leave the Cabin world with the Princess, it's less somber and mysterious with an air of hope and romance for what might come next.
    • All of the Fury's themes—The Fury, The Bell, Thirty-Trillion Cells, and An Empty Void that Dared to Dream it Was Alivenote —diverge wildly from the game's mostly classical soundtrack toward pounding Industrial and Industrial Metal. The intense, gristly synthesizers add additional menace to the Adversary's electric guitars and the Tower's vocals, providing an excellent contrast to the Apotheosis' soaring symphony.
    • I Meant It, the theme that plays during Happily Ever After if the Hero and the Princess dance underneath the stars. It's simple and elegant with little more than piano and strings, but it fully encapsulates the quiet serenity of a midnight romantic dance.
    • The Princess and The Dragon, the theme that plays at the start of The Princess and The Dragon route, its soft melody and flute combined with the fact that this theme is actually the reversed motif of The Princess theme makes for a soothing experience. Fitting seeing as you and The Princess are together in one body reminiscent of what you both used to be, to the point that you killing her as The Spectre is shrugged off by the latter.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
  • Broken Base: The question of whether or not you should slay the Princess regularly splits the fanbase. Official Discord discussions, Reddit pages, Tumblr threads, and even this very trope page have all involved furious (and highly philosophical) arguments about whether a world without the princess (or in other words, without the cosmic principle of change and death) would be an improvement or not. As a question that includes such topics as "what makes life valuable?" and "what is justified to save lives?", the debate is unlikely to be resolved any time soon.
  • Captain Obvious Reveal: One of the achievements you can get is for using the Voice of the Skeptic to figure out that the Shadow in Happy Ever After is actually a rogue Voice Of The Smitten. However, given Smitten's mysterious absence is immediately pointed out, the Princess keeps talking about the Shadow in the same way she talked about the Smitten as the Damsel, and the simple fact that there aren't any other characters in the chapter, this isn't exactly a shock. Ultimately, the hints that are dropped are so obvious that most players figured it out long before the Skeptic did.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Among the potential princesses, The Thorn is quite popular among the playerbase for her tragic love story. The results of the official survey over the fandom's favorite princess put the Thorn at the very top. Her Chapter II variant, the Witch, is also very popular due to her cute Cat Girl design and her hilariously spiteful and sassy personality, to the point of taking second place in that same poll.
    • As for the potential voices, the Voice of the Contrarian is the most popular (outside of the Hero who's more of a main character) thanks to his absolutely hilarious antics in getting under the Narrator's skin. Many players have followed through with his suggestions just to see the mayhem they can get away with — or even because they want to torment the Narrator themselves. It helps that he's the nicest voice aside from the Hero, once he realizes his actions actually have consequences. Fittingly, if the Stranger is the very first vessel you send to the Shifting Mound, then if in the very end you choose to confront the Heart of the Shifting Mound, he actually accompanies you alongside the Voice of the Hero! He is notably the only non-Hero Voice who has this privilege.
  • Fanfic Fuel: The game presents only so many variations of the Princess, but this hasn't stopped players from writing up their own versions of the Princess, any Voices that manifest from encountering them, any interactions between other Voices in these new situations, and plenty of various encounters between the Princess and the Player that the game doesn't depict. With interpretation and change being core pillars of the game's narrative, there's bound to be a lot of head canon. Nichole Goodnight herself has lent her voice to several online parodies that are much crazier, e.g., "So You Want a Razor Girlfriend?"
  • Fan Nickname:
    • "Shifty" for the Shifting Mound. The devs liked that nickname enough that they've adopted its use on their merchandise page.
    • In a similar vein, the many female bodies that make up her "dress" and are in her hair have been referred to as “Minis” on Black Tabby Games’ official discord server, though the terms "Shiftlets" and "Shiftlings" have also seen increased usage on the r/slaytheprincess subreddit thanks to this post.
    • Happily Ever After, unlike the other chapter names, doesn't really provide a name for the focus vessel. This means the fandom have had to come up with a name for her on the spot with no true consensus, including simply using "Happily Ever After", reusing "Damsel", shortening it to "Happy" or "Happily", and more esoteric names like "The Songbird" (after Shifty's description of her).
    • It's pretty common in the fandom to call the Player "Gary", after an official joke video where he tells the Princess this is his name, much to her bafflement and skepticism as she catches on that it's April Fools' Day (the day said video was released).
  • Fanon:
    • In fan animations, the Narrator is often depicted as a talking crow, and oftentimes has reading glasses on his beak.
    • The Voices in Your Head have no defined appearancenote , but fans nonetheless agree on common physical characteristics:
      • The Voice of the Stubborn almost always has a Rugged Scar, or several of them, and is the biggest and/or most muscular of them, to showcase his role as The Big Guy.
      • The Voice of the Contrarian tends to be dressed as a clown or jester, and almost always has a playful grin on his face.
      • The Voice of the Hunted is often depicted as quadrupedal, fitting with his more animalistic personality.
      • The Voice of the Cheated is often injured in some way, ranging from broken arms and scars to outright Body Horror. This is less due to the Cheated himself and more due to the Princess he's paired with, The Razor.
  • Friendly Fandoms:
    • With Disco Elysium, as both games are New Weird narrative-driven stories, where the main form of player progression is the appearance of voices in the player character's head, which provide additional dialogue or force them to take certain actions. Tony Howard-Arias listed Disco Elysium as his main writing inspiration for both this game and Scarlet Hollow, and one of the memes crossing the games together hit an explosive popularity. An expansive crossover, THE FURY OF A SHATTERED MIRROR, is the most viewed and commented-upon AO3 fic for Slay the Princess by a good margin and quite popular for Disco Elysium.
    • A good handful of Slay The Princess fans are also fans of The Magnus Archives given Jonathan Sims plays a major role in both.
    • Slay the Princess reminds many players of The Stanley Parable due to its looping, branching structure and the presence of a sarcastic British Interactive Narrator who grows increasingly annoyed as you drive his planned story Off the Rails, so it's not too surprising that there's a significant overlap between fans of both games.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: In the original release, The Smitten's highly romantic nature is generally framed as a good thing- after all, he's right, this is a love story. At worst he's sometimes framed as too naive and a little annoying, but overall his mission to help the princess is seen as a genuine sign of goodheartedness. However, in the Pristine Cut, we see what happens if the Princess rejects him. What happens is he starts ranting about how the Princess cannot be in her right mind if she'd want to do anything but spend time with him, kills the Player and traps the Princess in a Gilded Cage with him forever despite her clear horror at the idea. It's one of the worst things that a voice does in the game, and once it happens all the previous mushy talk and noble posturing come off with much darker undertones.
  • He Really Can Act: Compared to Jonathan Sims, Nichole Goodnight was relatively unknown going into this game, with all of her prior roles being relegated entirely to podcasts. Yet, she showcases a very impressive range with the various Princesses, making each one similar enough to register as the same entity yet distinct enough that no two of them sound alike. Moreover, she manages heartfelt performances from the individual Princesses as well. For example:
    • Giving a cutesy, bubbly performance as the Damsel that turns creepy if she gets Deconstructed.
    • Showcasing the playful creepiness of the Witch or the Spectre.
    • Portraying the heartbreak and despair of the Thorn and managing to convey the exact moment when she begins to hope again if freed.
    • Switching back and forth between peaceful contentedness and unhinged anger of the Wild as well as the hopelessness of the Wounded Wild.
    • Capturing the Adversary and the Eye of the Needle's gleeful hunger for slaughter and relish in the heat of battle.
    • The complete and utter batshit insanity of the Nightmare or the Moment of Clarity.
    • The cynicism of the Prisoner and the Drowned Grey.
    • The godly arrogance of The Tower.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • In the Pristine Cut, we finally get a clear view of the Player, and he's a huge and terrifying bird-draconic monster made of shadows and wings. This works very well for the route it's in and other dramatic scenes, but it didn't take the fanbase very long to notice the hilarious mental image this gives the many scenes in the game where the Player is meant to come across as romantic, inept or comedic. Even the devs got in on the fun, with Abby releasing an updated drawing◊ of the Player's Big Damn Kiss with the Thorn, now featuring the Thorn blissfully putting her entire head into the Player's mouth.
    • During Markiplier's playthrough of the base game, he chose to stab himself to death while the Spectre was possessing his body, rescue the Damsel, and leave the cabin without taking the Prisoner's severed head. These ended up being the ways to unlock all three new routes added in the Pristine Cutnote , something Black Tabby themselves commented on following the expansion's release.
  • I Am Not Shazam: The Princess of "The Princess And The Dragon" is very often called the Dragon in fan communities. However, the part of her title card that's her name is explicitly "The Princess" — the Dragon is the Player (Well, the player's autonomously animated body). To be fair, this is less due to an actual misunderstanding of the route and more due to "The Princess" being confusing, "The Princess and the Dragon" being unwieldy and there not really being any other naming options to go with.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Some versions of the Princess, such as the Tower, the Nightmare, and the Fury, are very antagonistic and actually do want to destroy the world, but that is because the world (and potentially the player) left her to her loathsome fate. Additionally, even the worst versions of the Princess genuinely desire companionship with the player.
  • Karmic Overkill: The Drowned Grey route served as understandable Video Game Cruelty Punishment if you killed the Prisoner, but the initial release of the game could come off as excessive if you ended up on it with certain choices. Specifically, not bringing the Prisoner's head with you when leaving the cabin. Your "crime" here is not going along with a plan that the Prisoner never explained to you. It's pretty reasonable to assume that the Prisoner died after witnessing her cut off her own head, yet outside of a few tweaked lines of dialogue, both the Grey and the Voices act as if you personally killed her and that you deserve to be dragged away to a watery grave in retribution. This was tweaked in the Pristine Cut, as the Drowned Grey is accessed only by explicitly slaying the Prisoner, with the other circumstance leading to an entirely new route called the Cage.
  • Love to Hate: Out of all of the voices, The Voice of the Opportunist is the most antagonistic and one of the least helpful voices, but their very nature and tendency to obviously lie about their intentions lead to people loving them anyway. It helps that his associated route is The Witch. The Pristine Cut only furthered this with his role as the Arc Villain of The Princess and the Dragon, where he wastes no time in smugly taunting you once he gains control over your body.
  • Memetic Badass: Despite being a Princess Classic whose existence lies on making you happy and without much agency, the Damsel has been subject of many memes and edits, showing her slaying some of the most combative princesses such as the Adversary or the Tower, or even showing her deconstructed form as holding the same power as the Apotheosis. Jokes have also been made about her becoming the next president of the United States.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • I can fix her/I can make her worseExplanation
    • Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves.Explanation
    • Lay the PrincessExplanation
    • While the Player has a heavy amount of crow aspects to his anthropomorphic appearance, plenty of fans naturally found it funny to joke about him going about the game as a full-on bird. When giving the Slayer and the Voices more humanoid designs, the narrator is often portrayed as a normal-looking bird instead.
    • "lol" said the Princess, "lmao".Explanation
    • The Voice of the Contrarian throwing things out the window.Explanation
    • The Look.Explanation
    • "Mr. Narrator is helping me find my Pristine Blade".Explanation
    • Gripping and Ripping Explanation
  • More Popular Replacement: In the 2022 demo, the Voice paired with the Razor was known as the Voice of the Flinching, which was almost universally seen as a completely uninteresting clone of the Paranoid. In the full game, they were replaced by the Cheated, a hilarious Deadpan Snarker to the nth degree and a stand out voice all on his own.
  • Narm:
    • In the original release, the Narrator's scream when the Tower hijacks his mind was... a quiet, basically monotone "aaaaa", making him sound more mildly upset than anything. The creators acknowledged that it didn't quite fit the mood of an otherwise terrifying route, and the End of Everything Update included a rerecording which is "more tonally appropriate".
    • The start of the game warns you that it may not be for everyone and informs you of a full Content Warnings available on the Black Tabby Games website. While not intended to be humorous as it gives a concise summary of the game's content, the full warning's amount and variety of listed horrors comes off as a gag in its own right, especially as there are multiple duplicates.
      General CWs: mild nudity; realistic depictions of mutilation; disembowelment; realistic depictions of knife wounds; loss of self; cosmic horror; existential horror; being eaten alive; disembowelment; suffocation; realistic depiction of acid burns; realistic gore; jumpscares; derealisation; forced suicide; loss of bodily autonomy; starvation; unreality; body horror; forced self-mutilation; forced suicide; realistic depictions of graphic violence; self-degloving; realistic flaying; self-immolation; realistic depiction of a bloated corpse; drowning; realistic depiction of burning to death; auditory gore; murder; death; loss of control; verbal abuse; gaslighting; dismemberment; graphic self-decapitation; realistic severed head.
  • Narm Charm: In the part where the Tower pulls off a Grand Theft Me of the Narrator in her chapter, both voices speak in unison the next time he talks again. With both Jonathan Sims and Nichole Goodnight attempting to pull off a Voice of the Legion in unison, the combination of both accents (his British, hers American) may come off as a little weird to some players, with Sims acting nonchalant and Nichole acting like a sexy Madonna-like vixen reading a sadistic bedtime story to little children; this is even more evident in the "Everything goes dark, and you die" line leading up to the Apotheosis, with Nichole's voice coming off a bit more sugary and upbeat than Sims' in unison. A little weird and crazy, but it all pays off.
  • Play-Along Meme: People like to pretend that there in fact wasn’t a mirror in the cabin and that the Voices are talking about something that isn’t there.
  • Realism-Induced Horror: While the Happily Ever After route is meant to have an Ironic Name, it's also got the Princess trapped in a Gilded Cage where Happiness Is Mandatory. The whole situation is eerily reminiscent of Domestic Abuse, where any sort of deviation is meant with the threat of something terrible happening. Even the Narrator thinks it's awful. The whole sequence — especially where the Princess starts hyperventilating in a panic over one of the torches going out — is genuinely disturbing. Despite the game being a Cosmic Horror Story, the very realistic display of abuse makes it hard to watch. The Developers have discussed this when talking about the strong moral outrage at Smitten's actions in the fanbase, pointing out that other Voices also act in ways that severely harm the Player and/or Princess, just in a fantastical enough way that people didn't apply real-world standards.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • After playing the demo, many people didn't particularly warm to the Voice of the Paranoid and saw him as nothing more than a spineless coward. In the full game however, the Paranoid is more of a cynical Deadpan Snarker with a lot of entertaining dialogue. On top of this, he grants an extremely helpful Personality Power which is essential to the player's survival. As a result, most people have done a complete 180 on their opinion of the Paranoid, to the point where he's now a fan-favorite character.
    • The Voice of the Broken, before the End of Everything Update and the Pristine Cut, was broadly hated as a nonentity at best and actively detrimental to the Player at worst, partially due to not having many appearances outside his role as The Dragon to the Tower. The former update has the Broken replace the Voice of the Cheated in the Beast!Wild route, where he is shown to have a sense of calm given by the Networked Wild, and even if you separate yourself from her, he has an empathetic feeling for the Wounded Wild. In the Pristine Cut, we also see him in a major role away from the Tower in the Cage, where his despair allows him to be empathetic and understanding in the way the other Voices can't, and he gets to act as the Only Sane Man to the Skeptic. The expanded Apotheosis chapter also gives him the chance to realize that the Princess is All Take and No Give and join the other voices in getting revenge on her for using his faith. In addition, he gets a very noteworthy role in one version of The Fury - he is able to endure all of The Fury's torture (outlasting even The Stubborn), as he is both Too Broken to Break and is able to empathize with her pain, which leads to a genuine peaceful resolution between the player and The Fury. The extra depth and the opportunity to see him being actively helpful to the player have helped a lot of people warm to the character at last.
    • While not exactly hated, The Den was often seen as an extremely forgettable version of the Princess, with her status as a voiceless Feral Villain leaving her with not much personality to speak of, causing her to be second to last in the official survey, sandwiched between the two Greys. The Pristine Cut helped fix this by giving her much more of a personality in spite of still not being able to speak, as well as giving her a much more memorable route, especially when you allow the Voice of the Hunted to "embrace instinct".
  • The Scrappy:
    • The Voice of the Broken is easily the most hated of all the Voices for being an annoying, pessimistic downer who doesn't tend to help the player, give a major Personality Power that would be useful for you, or at the very least have funny lines like the Contrarian or the Opportunist. It doesn’t help that in his associated route (The Tower), he willingly devotes himself to the Princess and does whatever she commands you to, even when it starts being harmful to you (such as killing yourself). Unsurprisingly, when Black Tabby Games held a poll for players to rank the Voices from favorite to least favorite, the Broken came in dead last by a significant margin. With both the End of Everything update and the Pristine Cut, the devs made it a point to make the Voice of the Broken less disliked, though he's still ranked as last in the post-Pristine Cut poll.
    • In general, "The Grey" is one of the least popular routes in the game. The Drowned Grey in particular is one of the few versions of the Princess that players are most likely to outright dislike. The Drowned Grey punishes you for failing to let her out of the cabin as the Prisoner. If you get the route by slaying the Prisoner, she has a point. However, before the Pristine Cut, you could also get to "The Grey" by simply not bringing the Prisoner's head with you after she decapitated herself, likely under the very reasonable assumption that someone who got decapitated is dead. Despite this, the Drowned Grey would always act like you personally killed her and will send you to a watery grave, even if it's because she failed to communicate with you. Players felt this was Karmic Overkill and a rare and disappointing instance of the game blaming you for what it forced you to do. Even outside of that, both versions of the Grey have flat personalities with very little in the way of interaction and interesting decision-making in their routes, making them and their chapter quite unmemorable. The first and second official popularity polls have both Greys at the bottom, with the Drowned Grey being dead last despite "The Pristine Cut" giving her an Author's Saving Throw by only being made accessible by slaying the Prisoner and making the alternative ending a different chapter in "The Cage".
  • Signature Scene:
    • Meeting the Princess in the basement in Chapter I, a scene that demonstrates the sheer variety of choices the game has to offer and their surprisingly impactful consequences, including choices players wouldn't think would have consequences.
    • The Thorn is the most fondly appreciated route of the original release (the highest-rated Princess by a sizable margin in the first official popularity poll, and a comfortable third behind two of the new chapters in the second) and is thought to be a definitive example of the game's themes, namely that it is fundamentally a love story; fittingly, it's the one chapter where you can kiss the Princess.
  • So Okay, It's Average: Among the chapters introduced in The Pristine Cut, "The Cage" is considered this; though it is as well-made as the rest of the game, it's also very straightforward and conventional compared to the emotional and heart-wrenching "Happily Ever After" and the Formula-Breaking Episode "The Princess and the Dragon".
  • Ugly Cute:
    • Despite her utterly grotesque Body Horror, the Fury can be surprisingly adorable when she stops lashing out, to the point where the Voice of the Broken can still find kinship with her.
    • The Stranger is a mashup of five princesses with three faces fused together. She is also one of the most harmless of the vessels and you can meet her again in the Heart of the Shifting Mound finally leave the cabin with her.
    • The Hero himself. A large, six-winged draconic crow creature with blank white eyes and a skull-like, eerily toothy beak. He just also happens to be incredibly fluffy and all the dorky and comedic moments he gets subjected to shift him from creepy to outright cuddly.
  • Unpopular Popular Character: The Voice of the Smitten is a Large Ham who's devoted to the Knight in Shining Armor role. He tends to irritate the other Voices (his love for the Princess simultaneously grosses out and exasperates the Narrator, and the Hero sometimes thinks the Smitten is too loony for love) and in one route, if you kill the Princess he'll turn the knife on you. Despite this, players have found his hamminess entertaining, especially when in contrast to more dire situations, or when the situation warrants such sentimentality. Even in the route where he's downright the main villain, he's still considered an engaging look into a warped mind in spite of the Realism-Induced Horror, and the route he's part of is a fan favorite route partially due to his attempts to do something right going horribly wrong.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Your New World is an intense ending that shows just how far the Long Quiet can go in terms of power and ambition, but should you decide to spare the Shifting Mound at the last minute, the Voice of the Hero takes you to the cabin just like any other ending. The only difference is that the Pristine Blade is unavailable. None of the dialogue during your conversation with the final Princess changes to reflect the fierce confrontation you had mere minutes before, let alone your overall hostility throughout the story, and you and she just happily walk off into the "And? What Happens Next?" ending like nothing ever happened.
  • The Woobie:
    • The Princess. She's been trapped all her life in the basement, everything she does to you is for the goal of being free or to ease the loneliness and pain.
      • Out of all of her possible incarnations, The Thorn is probably the most downtrodden version of the Princess. Utterly broken by the string of mutual betrayals/poor communication between you and her (and horrified at the realization that she’s about as bad as the one who hurt her), she is a nihilistic depressive with little hope of anything changing for the better. Luckily, you have the option of making this one of the more heartwarming endings, rebuilding her trust enough to have you both escape the cabin.
      • The Wounded Wild is close behind the Thorn in how hopeless she is, having been formed from when you remember your past conflict with the Princess and split from her. She has been fused to a tree and left in such a horrible state that she is now helpless, completely at your mercy. She’s so pitiable that all of your voices are against killing her when The Narrator orders you to, even voices such as the Broken, Cheated, Paranoid and Stubborn, who have no qualms with it in other routes.
      • In The Pristine Cut, Happily Ever After is a horrifying look into what would cause the Princess to accept death. To get there, you have to already betray the Damsel in one of the worst ways possible and suggest to keep her trapped, causing the Smitten to lose his mind and force you to kill yourself by ripping your own heart out of your chest while the Damsel watches on in horror, before escaping your body and becoming the Shadow, a specter that exists to keep her and you together at any cost. From the moment you meet her, it's clear she's terrified of both the Shadow and you for helping put her in such a horrific situation, and she comes off as a badly battered woman who's about to break down crying throughout the whole chapter.
    • The Hero as well, forced into a continuous loop of hard moral choices, violent deaths and sheer terror at the behest of forces beyond his control. Even in the routes where he does the 'right' thing, he's usually rewarded with some form of suffering.

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