I don’t know why everybody’s trying to make out that it was my fault.  That boy really ought to take responsibility for his own actions, especially if he still wants to be king.  You can’t just go off in a sulk when there are enemy forces on the horizon, I can tell you that.

Look, I told him that he was a direct descendant of Corin the Red right?  Which he is.  I’ve had the genealogy checked five or six times- there’s definitely no mistake.  And then I showed him that elven sorceress’ prophecy.  OK, a bit more of a grey area, but anyone involved in magic will tell you those elven sorceresses really know their stuff.  And this one said that only Corin the Red’s descendent can defeat the evil that has fallen over the land.  In other words, get rid of King Edwin so that the country can be run by somebody who doesn’t think it’s a good idea to raze entire villages just because one of his advisors looked at him funny.

It was all going so well.  We’d put together a group of followers, and we were going to march on King Edwin’s palace and demand that he meet us in battle.  And then what’s-her-name, the girl we rescued from the tavern fire a few days ago, lets slip that she’s also a descendant of Corin the Red.  I ask you, how did that even come up?

Anyway, the boy is astonished.  “Wow!” he says, “What are the chances of that?”

Quite good, actually, the girl tells him.  Because Corin the Red lived a thousand years ago and had fifteen children.  Most experts agree (and I don’t know how she knows what most experts agree, or why she felt the need to open her big mouth about it on the eve of battle) that he’s the ancestor of roughly a third of the country.

So now the boy’s off sulking.  He says I should have been honest with him instead of tricking him into thinking he was the chosen one.  I asked him, how is he not the chosen one?  I chose him.  And there were quite a few other people I could have chosen, so you’d think he’d be grateful.  And he took that the wrong way, let me tell you.

I don’t know.  Kids these days.