Excerpt
from my profile on a dating website. Some of it is not accurate.
I was born the eldest son of the royal house of Moldavia. My birth, in ceremony befitting my future title, was attended by numerous foreign dignitaries, emissaries, missionaries, and apiaries who all brought secretaries laden with princely gifts: golden ostriches which laid chocolate eggs, fearsome Scottish knights mounted atop dire war badgers, and the maidenheads of entire flocks of virgins. These gifts, so extravagant they bankrupted entire continents, were offered in the hope that I might one day feel so indentured that I would share the vast information resources of Moldavia for Moldavia was a city-state rich with great, glistening fields of information-technology.
But my parents, myopic with joy and impotent with greed, had failed to invite the most high muckamuck of the fairies, the bad witch, Sycorax.
So it was that on that sunny morning, scant hours after my birth, while the nightingales sang songs of mournful foreshadowing, each attendant stepped up to my crib, gave an unrepentant smile of unmitigated delight at meeting me, handed their gifts to my nanny, received a receipt from my notary, and stepped aside to enjoy my brunch buffet. The smiles were plentiful and my cherubic face cherubic.
That is until the last number was called and the good witch, Xarocys, approached, leaned over my crib, removed her nomenclature to reveal herself actually the bad witch, Sycorax. Gasps aplenty sounded out from every corner of the pentakaidecagonal room. Soldiers, corsairs, police officers, fire fighters, and fops all rushed at her, but none was ebullient enough.
So it was that she issued the curse, which would haunt Moldavia and myself for decades to come: The prince will bring ruination to his kingdom, drought to his land, and crotchrot to his kinsmen unless he kisses an honest woman before his twenty seventh birthday. With that edict and its accompanying paperwork appropriately filed, Sycorax cackled, vanished and the attendees were surprised to discover Xarocys had been standing with them for some time.
Naturally, the guests chattered, the wisemen postulated, the fools pontificated, the apiaries buzzed, and my parents, the king and queen, died straightaway from the scandal of it all.
I was thus crowned instantly, the fourth youngest prince to become High King of the People’s Glorious Democratic Republic of Moldavia and Protector of Mexico. The coroner then announced the king and queen dead, the guests shuffled out still talking about how nice the buffet table was, and the janitors started sweeping. And thus I was left all alone in this world with naught to my name but a burgeoning kingdom, a legion of servants, and a healthy, youthful glow.
