Prince Charming

The prince went to meet her, took her by the hand and danced with her. He would dance with no other maiden, and never left loose of her hand, and if any one else came to invite her, he said, "This is my partner."

— The Brothers Grimm, "Aschenputtel," or "Cinderella."

What comes to mind when we think of a prince?

He's an aristocrat with a magnetic personality, probably dashing, brave, gallant, and kind, a true prince. In Fairy Tales, he often rescues the Damsel in Distress and marries her to live Happily Ever After. If he's saving himself for his true princess he'll be her Celibate Hero but if he's more interested in impressing the ladies with his father's money, he's a Millionaire Playboy.

Except, actually, all the princes in those tales were very seldom named. It was simply a "prince" or "king" or royalty of some sort. And when they did have names, they were commonplace names: John, Ivan, Jean, Hans, etc.

The term Prince Charming actually originates from an 1889 translation of Le roi Charmant, the Charming King, and then a year later the phrase "Prince Charming" was used in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The term stuck.

Nowadays, the classic Prince Charming is almost never used, possibly because the Ruritanias which he often hailed from have largely abandoned monarchy, or joined the EU. The trope has been subverted, double subverted, inverted, averted, diverted, converted, and perverted (and ridiculed, but that's nothing to be scared of). Nowadays, he's more likely to be Prince Charmless — rude, smug, or evil — or at least naive, unmotivated, or self-centered.

It's only the rarest of instances where he can be played straight and done right. And under those circumstances he will be given his own name, and not called Prince Charming. (Anyone actually named "Prince Charming" is guaranteed to be a subversion). When he does have charm he can be found practicing Old-School Chivalry. In most instances, he will start out with some flaws and undergo Character Development until he earns the title.

The term can also be used metaphorically for a Princely Young Man: a youth with Old Money bearing and manners. Contrast the bad boy charm of All Girls Want Bad Boys.

The Spear Counterpart to Princess Classic and ground zero for any Princely Tropes.

Compare The Wise Prince, Knight In Shining Armour. Subject to the Ermine Cape Effect.

In terms of the ranks of Authority Tropes, the tropes that are equal are The Evil Prince, Prince Charmless, Warrior Prince, Sheltered Aristocrat, The Wise Prince, and all Princess Tropes. The next steps down are The Good Chancellor, Standard Royal Court and Decadent Court. The next steps up are The Caligula, The Good King, God Save Us from the Queen! and The High Queen.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Candy♡Candy, there is the mysterious "Prince from the Hill", a handsome young man dressed in a kilt, who makes Candy smile again when she was sad, and then vanishes in the into thin air, leaving only pendant with a small bell as the only evidence of his existence. In the last episode of the series is finally revealed that the prince was Albert, who was also Candy´s Mysterious Protector "Uncle" William. Anthony (From the same series) also may count. In fact, the first time Candy meets Anthony, she thought that he was her "Prince from the Hill" since both had a similar appearance and personality.
• In A Certain Scientific Railgun, Misaki Shokohou comments that whenever Touma Kamijou saves people, he looks like a gallant prince.
• Fruits Basket, Yuki is called this by schoolmates who are ignorant of his traumatic past and problematic family relationships.
• Fate's tendency to rescue Nanoha in the nick of time throughout the franchise of Lyrical Nanoha has prompted their voice actresses to joke that Fate is Nanoha's prince. Gender inverted in that Fate is female, but then again, so is Nanoha. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha INNOCENT, having kicked the Ship Tease between the two up, has another character flat out state this. Nanoha's response is to blush heavily.

• In Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, the Drama Club often makes drama featuring characters of this type, usually cross cast by Kashima. Her participation in this kind of role earns her epithet, "the Prince of the School."

• This is Tamaki's schtick in Ouran High School Host Club - a dashing, flirtatious half-French charmer who girls line up to swoon over.
• Pokémon: The Series: James of Team Rocket has shades of this, with a little Gentleman Thief for good measure. Given that he's from a rich, affluent family, it sort of fits. It's more obvious in the Japanese motto, where he uses the line "Lovely, charming villains" to describe himself and his teammates.
• Princess Tutu's overall aim in fixing Mytho's broken heart is to turn him back into this.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena:
  • Utena aspires to be this, though she combines it part-and-parcel with Knight in Shining Armor. She in turn draws inspiration to be this from the enigmatic Prince Dios, who she barely remembers rescuing her from her sorrow after losing her parents. The Student Council (sans Nanami) also exhibit various Prince Charming subtropes, though they all fall short.
  • While it's not immediately obvious, Utena pokes a lot of holes applying this trope to real life. By the end, the show makes it clear that the Prince archetype should neither be sought nor emulated, as it's almost impossible to achieve and completely unsustainable even then. Case-in-point: Prince Dios was a Physical God with the power to revolutionize the world, and even he crumbled beneath the strain of embodying male perfection.

• In She's My Knight, Ichinose thinks he's this trope, but Mogami outshines him at every turn (and he falls for her).

Comic Books

• Bill Willingham's comic book Fables (about characters from fairy tales living in secret in New York) has Prince Charming, who was married three times, to Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella. He's a bit of a Magnificent Bastard and eventually becomes Mayor of Fabletown. Deconstructed as well, in that the effortless charmer is an absolute master at getting what he wants, but actually putting in the hard work to keep it is another matter entirely. He ends up failing horribly as mayor and resigning, and instead leading the Fabletown war effort against the Adversary, where his personal daring, intense focus on goals, and excellent mind for Xanatos Speed Chess over longterm chessmastering make him extremely successful.
• Young Avengers: Loki suggests that Hulkling is really this, having been created by his boyfriend Wiccan's Reality Warper powers to subconsciously fulfill his fantasy of meeting and falling in love with this type of character. He points out the improbability of a gay teenage boy meeting, and perfectly matching, a gay alien prince. Of course, this is coming from Loki, and both Hulkling and Wiccan were listed as part of the Avengers Fail-Safe Program, being descendants of prior members of The Avengers. Prodigy dismisses it as "existential nonsense", and eventually Hulkling even acknowledges there's no way Wiccan at that point could've done it.
• The Mirror Universe counterpart of King Sombra from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW) is the trope played very much straight.
• The Queen of Fables thinks that Superman is Prince Charming and wants to either kill him or marry him. Maybe both.

Fairy Tales

• "Tattercoats": The prince runs into a poor, rag-wearing goose girl walking around barefoot and begs her to marry with him. When Tattercoats tells him to stop mocking her, the prince asks her to go to the court so he can prove his sincerity by presenting her as his bride to everybody.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm has Harry, who, though a little overwhelmed by his new status as a Prince of Asgard (Thor was James Potter. It Makes Sense in Context), ticks every box. However, he's initially a dorky variant of The Charmer, though he gets much smoother over the first and second book - something hinted to have a lot to do with growing self-confidence and observation of his father, Loki, Tony, and Natasha. He is still a complete dork around Carol, however.
  • Thor, of course, though a little less polished and urbane than the below-mentioned Loki.
  • Loki, sort of. Perfectly charming in an urbane fashion and perfectly pleasant after his Heel–Face Turn a couple of years prior... but he's also The Spymaster, a Magnificent Bastard with few equals and capable of letting his inner monster out on special occasions, somewhat subverting this.
• In Divided Rainbow, Rarity's favorite pet name for Lero Michealides is 'my sweet prince.'
• Ultra Fast Pony subverts this without invoking Prince Charmless. Prince Blueblood is handsome royalty and a perfect gentlestallion. Unfortunately, the heroine Rarity has a mile-wide masochistic streak, so she wants a prince who will boss her around and hurt her. Rarity loses interest in Prince Blueblood because he's too nice.

Films — Animation

• Charming: Played with, as the prince's "charm" is part of a curse — as long as it's in effect, no woman can love anyone other than him. The central plot revolves around him trying to get rid of his charm, only to get the real non-magical version in the process.
• Disney Animated Canon: Even though the movies have never used the name Prince Charming, this trope is still quite common.
  • The princes in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty are often referred to as such. Snow White's prince is simply "the Prince", although she does refer to him as being charming. Sleeping Beauty's prince is the only one given a real name, Prince Phillip. Later merchandise and such identifies "Prince Charming" specifically as Cinderella's prince, though in the film he's only ever referred to as "The Prince" or "The Noble Prince". It should be noted that in Snow White and Cinderella the prince does little more than show up and be royal, while Phillip due to his extended screen time comes the closest to actually portraying this trope (complete with his Big Damn Heroes moment at the climax).
  • The Little Mermaid (1989): Eric is one of the last examples of this trope being played straight in Western media. Notably, unlike the Princes from Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, he is a well-developed character.
  • Notably in light of the above, the Princes in subsequent Disney films play with the trope in various ways, and have even come to subvert it quite forcefully. They may refuse their royal duties (Simba), be jerks at first though they later improve (Beast, Kuzco), start off as commoners who rise to the status of prince through marriage (Aladdin, Flynn Rider), appear charming but turn out to be a womanizing Manchild (Naveen), or even the Big Bad (Hans).
• Shrek: Inverted in the sequels, as Prince Charming is vain, selfish, a sissy coward and in Shrek the Third, evil.

Films — Live-Action

• There is a Princess Charming In Jerry Lewis’s Cinderfella. The movie's plot is partially Cinderella gender-swapped, and the stepmother throws the ball. It being the 1960s, Princess Charming (yes, that's her actual name), plays straight most of the Charming and Classic tropes.
• Kit, the prince in Cinderella (2015), is a rare example in a modern film played straight. Though there is a slight subversion in that he must learn how to be a competent ruler once his father dies and does end the story as a king.
• Prince Edward from Enchanted is Prince Charming Played for Laughs. He's good-natured, handsome, and heroic, but he's kind of thick. And it turns out he's not the right man for Giselle—but when he realizes this, he gallantly steps aside for her true prince.
• Into the Woods:
  • Cinderella's prince is an Exact Words version. Specifically he's The Charmer:
  "I was raised to be charming, not sincere."
  • His younger brother gets Adaptational Heroism from the stage show, staying faithful to Rapunzel and even searching for her while blind. He's a little more clumsy and dorky than Cinderella's prince though.
• Kate & Leopold has Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany who writes the best apology letter in the history of mankind.
• Maleficent features the aforementioned Prince Philip, but the main subversion is that his kiss doesn't wake Aurora up. Nonetheless all other parts of the trope are played straight and the two are implied to end up together.
• Mirror, Mirror is one of the very few modern movies based on fairy tales which play this trope almost completely straight with Andrew Alcott, a character with most of the usual Prince Charming traits.
• In the Czech movie Byl jednou jeden král (Once upon a time there was a king, an adaptation of the fairy tale Salt over gold) there are three princes who came to the kingdom as suitors for the three princesses: Prince Charming ^note who claims to be THE Prince Charming who rescued the Sleeping Beauty and the Snow White (but, contrary to what the fairy tales say, he didn't marry them), Prince Valiant, and Prince Cunning. They are all braggarts and cowards, and eventually they help themselves to the royal treasure - while the three princesses, as well as the king himself, get married to commoners in the end.
• Played straight in the movie The Prince & Me as Prince Edvard goes from having a girl on each arm to "Eddie" who quotes William Shakespeare like some duke-lord guy.
• Played straight in Prince Charming, a 2001 made-for-television film starring Sean Maguire. It is the story of a prince who gets turned into a frog due to dashingly rescuing a damsel in distress, who starts trying to reward him.
• The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement: Andrew Jacoby is an English duke^note the next step down from actual princehood but fits the part in all other aspects. He's an Oxbridge-educated young man who does volunteer work and photography, has experience as a military pilot, and is apparently a champion swimmer. He's nothing but kind and understanding to Mia and accepts that a Marriage of Convenience with her won't all be smooth sailing.
• Subverted in Snow White & the Huntsman as the prince has become an Action Survivor due to the queen's tyrannical rule. He also becomes an Unlucky Childhood Friend to Snow White - but is still presented as a good guy.
• While Snow White and the Three Stooges almost squandered the leads, the prince had a greatly expanded role compared to the actual fairy tale.

Literature

• Played with in A Brother's Price: Prince Alannon was a dignified, quiet-spoken man, who was very handsome and liked to take regular baths. Very charming. However, his marriage to the protagonist's grandmothers came about not by him rescuing one of them, but by his being kidnapped by them. He eventually seems to have consented to marry them, which is not such a big surprise considering that the best he could have hoped for would have been an Arranged Marriage, if not imprisonment or death, since his branch of the family was on the losing side of the war. And they did build him a bathhouse.
• Justified in the contemporary book Dream Boy written by Ann Reit, which stars a charming, but immature teenager who learned it from his father.
• Ella Enchanted exaggerates this. The prince's name is Charmont, which is sorta like Charming and borders on charmant, which is French for "charming" and comes from the Fairy Tale "The Blue Bird" where the hero was called Le Roi Charmant ("the charming king"). He prefers to be called Char, though.
• Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte is a variation of the "Reborn as Villainess" Story, where the prince fiances of the titular "villainess" often have some glaring personality flaws, ranging from Broken Ace at the most sympathetic to Royal Brat at the least. His initial misunderstanding of Lieselotte's Tsundere behaviour aside, Prince Siegwald is one of the few cases that don't. This is probably due to it having a different Point of View than the formula; whereas the mold place the point of view to the universe the prince is in, Endo and Kobayashi Live! puts the point of view on the other side of the Fourth Wall: two Ordinary High School Students MSTing a Romance Game where Siegwald is one of the romance targets.
• Deconstructed in The Folk of the Air. Prince Dain at first appears this way. He’s a kind, handsome, golden-haired, knight. He is one of the few fae to be kind and respectful towards the main character, and acts as a mentor towards her. In reality, he has worked to create this image in order to gain the favor of the court and his father. Additionally, he uses this image of honor and kindness in order to trick others. The favoritism from his father and the court has only furthered his entitlement to the throne, and he will do anything to ensure he inherits the throne after his father. This includes framing a child for murder and murdering his lover.
• In Guns of the Dawn, Luthrian IV of Lascanne, although a king rather than a prince, fits this archetype — young, handsome, unmarried, and a good dancer — as Emily personally discovers. He's widely hailed by his adoring subjects as The Good King, too — but isn't.
• The Hero's Guide To Saving Your Kingdom by Chris Healy takes this trope and runs all over the map with it. The princes of four different fairy tales (Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White) get the short end of the stick when their stories are popularized because everyone remembers the princesses' names, but their names (Fredrick, Gustav, Liam and Duncan respectively) are lost and are just called "Charming", even though all four are radically different people. They eventually team up and become a league of Princes Charming.

• Given how soon it was written after the term originated, The Picture of Dorian Gray is likely one of the first subversions. Dorian is called this by extremely naive actress Sybil who he seduces and abandons, driving her to suicide. Another lover also apparently called him this, and uses the nickname scornfully when he encounters her several years later as a prostitute.
• Played straight in The Royal Diaries
  • Elisabeth: The Princess Bride where Emperor Franz Joseph I was able to win over Elisabeth because she considered him to be playful, considerate and charming.
  • In Isabel: Jewel of Castilla where it takes less than two hours for Fernando, Prince of Aragon and King of Sicily, to steal the princess's heart with his humor, authority and imagination.
  • Interestingly zigzagged in Marie Antoinette: Princess of Versailles. At first Antonia is repulsed at fat and ugly Louis Auguste but as time goes on, he reveals that he's shy, sweet and even becomes devoted to her. While she doesn't fall in love with him, Antonia does call him her friend.
• John Moore's Slay and Rescue has a professional hero who really is a prince named Charming, sent by his father's chancellor to rescue fair maidens all over the place (the theory is that it keeps him too busy to try to take over the throne). He deliberately pulls Big Damn Heroes arrivals, is a Master Swordsman, and is very frustrated. Nonetheless, he's also basically decent.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Prince Joffrey Baratheon is Prince Charmless and The Caligula, but Sansa sees him as a Prince Charming… for a while.
  • His brother Prince Tommen, however, is genuinely kind and sweet-tempered (though he's only eight). Sansa even says she would have preferred to have married Tommen.
  • Prince Rhaegar Targaryen was a very charming prince until his love for a woman he was not betrothed to incited Robert's Rebellion
  • Wrong Genre Savvy Prince Quentyn Martell really wants to be a Prince Charming.
• The Sunne in Splendour: Richard of Gloucester is a deconstruction of this. He's an idealist and a moralist, and he certainly aspires to be a Prince Charming. He relishes saving his childhood sweetheart Anne from the schemes of his brother George, becoming her Knight in Shining Armor. However, Richard also has a furious temper, is stubborn and his other brother Edward IV observes that Richard thinks they are living in Camelot and not England. In the end, Richard's life takes a series of dark turns and doesn't prove as adept at managing his enemies as Edward was.
• Played straight with Prince Jonathan of Tortall in Song of the Lioness who is a lover and a fighter. And oh boy is he a lover - right up until he meets Thayet, anyway, and she steals his heart and his ability to speak in all of ten seconds.
• In The Stormlight Archive, Adolin Kholin displays many traits of Prince Charming: he is genuinely kind, caring, and a gallant warrior to boot, and is one of the only people to hold the full trust of his father until it's revealed that it was Adolin who murdered Highprince Sadeas, that is. In many ways, he is also a subversion of this trope, having great difficulty with forming meaningful relationships with women. Indeed, he is a serial womanizer with a colorful dating history.
• In Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals, Glenda objects to Trev as Juliet's love because Juliet is special and all she needed was a prince — and she remembers her own fantasies. Juliet and Trev do end up together, and Glenda ends up with a king to be.

Live-Action TV

• The "Dream Prince" in Akumuchan is a deliberate example of this trope. He is handsome, charming, rides a horse, and seems to exist for the sole purpose of rescuing Ayami from her troubled dreams and wooing her.
• Imitated/played for laughs so to speak on Bones "The Prince in the Plastic", which had a victim who created a doll called 'Prince Charmington' and a suspect who dressed as the doll for store openings and such.
• In the first season of Bridgerton this trope is Invoked very explicitly by Queen Charlotte herself when she pressures Prince Friedrich to pursue Daphne, even though he has already concluded from Lady Whistledown's paper, and from observing her, that she is in love with Simon.
  Queen Charlotte: You are a Prince. Charm her.
• In the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Once More With Feeling", Buffy rescues a handsome prince, in an inversion of the traditional rescue scenario. He sings "How can I repay—" but Buffy cuts him off with "Whatever" given that she's in her depressed period.
• Charmed:
  • "A Knight To Remember" summons a prince from medieval times to San Francisco. Aside from the obvious issues of a medieval knight in 21st century California would face, he's quite charming. Of course some of this is due to him being under a love spell.
  • Mentioned in the Fairy Tale Motifs episode "Happily Ever After". Paige eats Snow White's poisoned apple and it's said that a prince's kiss will free her. But thankfully once the Wicked Witch that cursed her is defeated, the spell wears off. Nonetheless one of the dwarves suggests she get a prince just in case it happens again. The episode also features a love interest for Phoebe whose last name is Prince - and he serves as the prince in the Cinderella portion of the episode. But with one small difference: he's under the control of the Wicked Witch.
  • Again alluded to by Phoebe's child self, who loved Cinderella and asked if Cole was her Prince.
• Simon Tam from Firefly is not a literal prince, but he is a kind, brave, attractive young man from a wealthy, aristocratic family who insists on acting "properly" (in the Old-School Chivalry sense) even in the worst of circumstances, making him a rare modern straight example.
• Game of Thrones: Joffrey intentionally puts on this act for Sansa. It lasts for about half an episode before his true colors are revealed.
• Justified for Logan from Gilmore Girls who is his father's heir, charismatic, and quite a ladies man.
• He appears in GoGo Sentai Boukenger to any lady who wore the Glass Slipper. He then traps her in his world with the help of one of Cinderella's Stepsisters. His true form is that of a monster, and he is killed off by the Boukengers.
• Gossip Girl: Nate Archibald is all but explicitly based on this trope. He is described as charming with extreme regularity, and has the tendency to fall passionately in love (with various girls) and deliver romantic speeches (occasionally hilariously out of context) while rescuing them from some emotional or social dragon. He is in the books given the epithet "prince of the upper east side" and it is said that he can "snap his fingers and have any girl he wants." If you gave him fencing lessons, he would basically be the Prince Charming from Fables.
• Prince Arthur in Merlin (BBC) probably fits this. While he's a bit mean to his servant Merlin sometimes, when it comes to his love interest Gwen - he's this trope incarnate.
• Once Upon a Time
  • The main Prince James, is sarcastically (at first) nicknamed Prince Charming by his future wife, Snow White, when he captures her in a net. She says that he's so charming if that's the only way he can get someone. Of course she did steal from him.
  • All the princes in the series fit the trope, including Cinderella's and Sleeping Beauty's Princes. Probably a rare instance in modern television where the trope is played straight for the most part, although James turns out secretly not to be of legit royal blood.
  • Averted with the actual Prince James. The guy was a dick.
  • Robin Hood surprisingly ticks all the boxes, despite being an outlaw. But if one remembers that he is technically the Prince of *Thieves*, then it fits. He's charming enough to act as the Evil Queen's Second Love.
• In the season 1 finale of Sabrina the Teenage Witch Sabrina is trapped in a troll's tower (and is legally bound to be there). The only loophole in the law is that a prince can rescue her. Further Loophole Abuse occurs when her aunts realise that Sabrina's boyfriend Harvey's father owns an extermination business and calls himself the Termite King - technically making Harvey the 'Termite Prince'. Hilda and Zelda also conjure up some princely clothes for him to wear.
  Harvey: I couldn't vanquish the troll wearing pants?
  • Alluded to in a season 7 episode where Sabrina turns into a literal Bridezilla (due to her obsession with having the perfect fairy tale wedding). Salem says that the only way to cure her is for a prince to slay her. In this case it's her fiancée Aaron telling her off for some of her crazy wedding ideas.
• Prince Charming is a character in Sesame Street, using the same puppet as Guy Smiley and Don Music, who can be relied upon to totally mess up any fairy-tale he's involved in (he's not a Prince Charmless, just incompetent and not very bright). He also works as a dance instructor, under the name Prince Cha-Cha-Charming.

• Played straight in the Veronica Mars episode "Ain't No Magic Mountain High Enough" where Logan meets Hannah who he says is "like the hot daughter of a king he marries off to get like Denmark or something."
• Used in the finale of The Worst Witch TV series. Mildred discovers that her drawings can come to life - which comes in handy when the other girls summon the Wicked Witch from Sleeping Beauty by accident. Mildred makes her drawing of Prince Percy come to life - and his kiss wakes everyone up from their sleep. Note that this is individual kisses we're talking about; it's implied that he has to kiss the whole school.
  • The Christmas Episode also featured a pantomime of Cinderella. Drusilla was originally cast as the prince - but after some meddling from her and Ethel, they put Charlie in the role. Fitting since Mildred is Cinderella and he's her sometimes love interest.
• The White Queen: Played straight with Richard of Gloucester when he's a young man, who is a royal duke and the brother of a king, plus he's brave, chivalrous, gentle and romantic. He has a Rescue Romance with Anne Neville, a Damsel in Distress whom he saves twice. The first occurs when he fights off soldiers (and plays the part of a Knight in Shining Armor while doing so) who are about to gang-rape her, ^note she's even a Princess by her first marriage, which further adds to the almost fairy tale-like tone of their courtship and the second is when he offers her a way to escape George of Clarence's guardianship, as she's a prisoner in the latter's residence. After Richard proposes marriage to Anne in a Garden of Love / Snow Means Love setting, he confesses the love that he has harboured for her since childhood, and they seal their engagement with a True Love's Kiss. They are Happily Married along with Babies Ever After. ^note Technically Baby Ever After since they only have one child.

Music

• Adam and the Ants have a song called "Prince Charming" on their album Prince Charming (1981).
• Megan and Liz’s song “Princess Charming.”

Tabletop Games

• Magic: The Gathering has the card Charming Prince, whose basis on this trope is in the name. He can help players live Happily Ever After (Scry 2, letting them potentially get rid of bad cards on top of their deck so they draw good ones sooner), can heal them with a True Love's Kiss (giving them 3 life), or whisk them off on a magical evening (temporarily exiling a creature, keeping it safe from dangerous effects). His name, however, is also a pun to MTG fans: "Charms" are spells in Magic that let players choose between one of three small effects, and the Charming Prince lets the players choose between three small effects when he's played.

Theater

• Cinderella (Lloyd Webber): Prince Charming is the favored son and heir of the queen, a handsome and strapping young land adored throughout the land. However, he's now vanished and the Spare to the Throne is seen as a lame nerd in comparison.
• Into the Woods actually has two examples: there are two Prince Charmings, married to Cinderella and Rapunzel, respectively. In the second act, they abandon their wives for Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.
  "I was raised to be charming, not sincere." - Cinderella's Prince
• Tsukino Empire - Unleash your mind - has Shun as the second prince of the empire. He certainly is charming, enough to win over Kai to being his knight upon their first meeting. The twins from the fourth fleet are also dazzled by him.

Video Games

• Prince Dimitri of Fire Emblem: Three Houses is an interesting play on this trope. He comes off as a classic example—sincere, sweet, cheerful, and even boyish at times. His looks are also fairly archetypical of a fairy tale prince with blonde hair, big blue doe eyes, and soft features. While he is genuinely good-natured, it's to the point that he's had a thirst for vengeance and violence after childhood trauma, and his pristine character is a mask he wears. After the timeskip of his Blue Lions route, he's allowed himself to become He Who Fights Monsters, and prioritizes his revenge over his kingdom.
• Despite his infernal mode of dress, Prince Zagreus of Hades is handsome, generous, soft-spoken (if snarky), and friendly enough that it's easy to forget it's Hell he's prince of. Good thing Dark Is Not Evil.
• Alexander of Daventry pulls this off rather nicely, especially in King's Quest VI. It's given a bit of a Deconstruction in The Kings Quest Companion, though. Because he spent so long as a slave, he still thinks of himself as "Gwydion." The persona of "Alexander" is like a mask or a cloak to him.
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has Prince Sidon of the Zora. A handsome and extroverted Nice Guy, he is famous as a Warrior Prince who once took down a giant Octorok and also helps Link fight Divine Beast Vah Ruta. He's also a Chick Magnet among the Zora women, to the point that one female Zora soldier has even organized a fan club where the ladies can collectively swoon over him.
  Tula: Ah... Mmm... Prince Sidon... Just thinking of you turns me to mush...
• The game 100 Sleeping Princes and the Kingdom of Dreams relies on the lasting appeal of this trope. It's a Bishounen-collecting puzzle game featuring actually well over a hundred princes with varying styles of charm, but all of them are meant, first and foremost, to be attractive.
• Psychonauts's official Psycho-Pedia has this to say about Lili's view of Raz:
  Clairvoyance reveals that Lili sees Raz as a Prince Charming-type, complete with cape, rose and slicked-back hair. But she doesn't have a crush on him. Not at all. No way.

Visual Novels

• Prince Lucas Charming IV from Ever After Academy is a rare example of this being played completely straight, being noble, brave, kind, and a good leader.

Web Animation

• If Disney Cartoons Were Historically Accurate: The princess's entire "I Want" Song is about dreaming of marrying a dashing prince (who then forcefully impregnates her and she dies in childbirth). He shows up at the end... before dropping dead of The Plague.

Webcomics

• Girl Genius:
  • Gil is a kind of reconstruction. The Prince Charming has often been deconstructed by making him (the heir of) a tyrant or dictator. But Gil is very good at arguing his father is the most enlightened despot in the continent, and he's probably right. Gil is also a handsome warrior who always saves the girl; he just fails for the romantic side.
  • Another sort of reconstruction is Gil's rival Tarvek Sturmvoraus (though he's a prince of a principality instead of a king's son). He grew up in a Decadent Court and had to be an ambitious schemer to even survive, but his love interest Agatha ended up becoming his romantic Morality Chain, and in turn he gave her the know-how to survive the whole "lost heir" thing.
• No Rest for the Wicked has Prince Ricardo, aka "Picky Dicky." He's great with heroics, but insists on only marrying the best princess in the world, and has subsequently insulted just about every other in his search. His Establishing Character Moment has him getting through the vines surrounding Sleeping Beauty's castle, which have claimed countless other men, leaning in to kiss her...and then leaving in disgust when it turns out that she wheezes in her sleep.
• In Sinfest, is displeased with Happily Ever After so she declares Prince Charming really cheated on her so she killed him in his sleep.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: Prince Gumball from the gender-swapped episodes seems to be this (At least for what can be seen in his only two apparitions in the series) There is also Prince Huge from the episode "The Hard Easy"
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: "Frankie, My Dear" has a Prince Charming imaginary friend. He is indeed handsome, charming, romantic—and smitten with Frankie Foster. Frankie tells him that she outgrew his type years ago, but don't worry, Friends like him get snatched up by little girls in no time.
• I Am Weasel: In "The Fairy Godfather", there is a Princess Charming.
• My Little Pony 'n Friends:
  • My Little Pony: Rescue at Midnight Castle: At the end, Scorpan is revealed to be a charming human prince whom Tirac turned into a monster.
  • A named-as-such Prince Charming appears in "Through the Door" among the legendary figures released from behind the Golden Door. He serves as the archetypal fairytale love interest and, like all other legendary figures, he's a living archetype effectively limited to living out his narrative role. In his case, this boils down to professing eternal love and devotion to anything that moves.

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