Prince Charmless/Playing With

Basic Trope: Royal pain who serves as an obvious Wrong Guy First for the unfortunate Love Interest.

• Straight: Prince Dikliss has an Arranged Marriage with Princess Velvet; sadly, though, he's a self-absorbed Upper Class Twit, nothing like the dashing Kelvin...
• Exaggerated: Prince Dikliss is a completely worthless Jerkass whose sole redeeming feature is his rank -- if you care about that sort of thing.
  • As soon as Dikliss and Velvet are wed, he intends to rape and kill her.
• Justified: Prince Dikliss has never needed to act like a decent person.
• Inverted: See Prince Charming
• Subverted: Prince Dikliss is actually pretty decent guy.
  • Alternatively: Prince Dikliss is not so bad, underneath it all. (And honestly, growing up with a name like "Dikliss" is bound give anyone a chip on their shoulder.)
• Double Subverted: ...However, the decency turns out to be little more than a facade that he soon drops around Velvet or others to gloat.
• Parodied:Dikliss is such an Upper Class Twit that he plunges deep into Cloudcuckoolander territory.
• Deconstructed: Dikliss is unpleasant thanks to spending his whole life dealing with the Deadly Decadent Court, constantly manipulated by everyone around him and treated as little more than a convienent pawn; a means to an end. His Arranged Marriage to Velvet is just another instance of this, something he greatly resents and can't help thinking of whenever he sees her.
• Reconstructed: ...He's still a Jerkass, though, and Velvet doesn't want anything to do with him. Not when she has sweet, shining Kelvin around.
• Zig Zagged: Dikliss is a Jerkass due to his bad background; Velvet dislikes him at first, but comes to pity him and works on helping him become a better person. The two eventually bond, forming a true Love Triangle; however, Dikliss grows jealous of Kelvin and plots to get rid of him...
• Averted: Prince Dikliss has his good and his bad points.
• Enforced: The writers want to teach An Aesop that wealth does not automatically make people classy, gracious, or polite.
• Lampshaded: "My dear prince, how adorable I find your belching."
• Invoked: Dikliss' Evil Chancellor deliberately groomed him into a Jerkass as part of a plot to discredit the royal family.
• Defied: The Evil Chancellor deliberately avoided this, planning instead to make him into a puppet ruler -- meaning he's more useful if he's well liked before taking the throne.
• Discussed: "I wouldn't want to marry Dikliss, even though he is a prince. He's such a tool."
• Conversed: "Man, Dikliss is a tool in this story. He's just like Prince Humperdink."
• Played For Laughs: ???
• Played For Drama: Being a Jerkass with power, Dikliss is perfectly willing to force Velvet to honor their Arranged Marriage by any means necessary, while Kelvin gets sent off on a suicide mission...

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