Princely Young Man

The Princely Young Man is the Spear Counterpart to the Ojou, being a young male of elite status, either by wealth, social position, or sheer force of personality and popularity.

Like the Ojou, he is rarely a Blue Blood, but he is either treated like royalty by those around him, or acts as a prince might, either stuck up and demanding respect, or regal and aloof towards his "subjects". Usually he is rich and his parents have a very high place in society, possibly in the form of a government job or ownership of an important company or corporation, which he might be expected to inherit. He is granted a great deal of respect by the "commoners" around him due to this, who look up to him and defer to his wishes. It is extremely common for an Instant Fanclub to spring up in his wake, often in the form of admiring fangirls with hopes of being his girlfriend. This popularity often allows him to have a high position in the Absurdly Powerful Student Council. He often has an Army of Lawyers or Corporate Samurai at his beck and call, enforcing his authority or acting as protection. He probably also has a Battle Butler, Ninja Maid, or Old Retainer who follows him around, doing his bidding. The Princely Young Man very often acts as the Love Interest of a female protagonist (particularly in Shōjo works). Reverse Harems often have many of them in varying types, or as a villain, heading the Student Council against the protagonist.

There are a few common types, though how strictly a character adheres to the types varies. These types include a Prince Charming type, an Ice King type, a Gentleman Type, and a Spoiled Brat type. To read about how these types tend to play out, read the Analysis for this page.

Kikōshi is the Japanese term often used for this. Often it is translated to "Young Master", which these characters might be addressed by, especially by their servants, should they have them.

Compare Man of Wealth and Taste, The Wise Prince, Sheltered Aristocrat, Spoiled Brat, and The Proud Elite.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Black Butler, Ciel Phantomhive is an alarmingly young Ice King, although he's frequently described In-Universe as a Spoiled Brat because of his Manipulative Bastard and Jerkass tendencies.
• Might Senpuuji of The Brave Express Might Gaine fits the trope to a tee as the 15-year-old CEO of the world's largest transportation company with loyal staff members, and the qualities of the Prince Charming, The Wise Prince, and even Warrior Prince.
• Jun Misugi and Genzo Wakabayashi from Captain Tsubasa fit in pretty well, with Misugi as the Gentleman and Wakabayashi as the Ice King. One of Misugi's early epithets is even "The Field Prince".
• Case Closed:
  • Ninzaburo Shiratori is both the Gentleman type (with dashes of Ice King) and a rather competent policeman. While not a bad person, he can be kind of an Upper-Class Twit when at his very worse though he softens up with time, and especially once he finds his childhood love. Also his former classmate Fumimaro Ayanokouji, who actually is from Royal Blood according to Sato, and is an excellent example of the Ice King trope.
  • Since Shinichi Kudo is the son of two very famous entertainers (a former prize actress and a famous mystery novel author) and lives in a Big Fancy House on top of being an Amateur Sleuth and a Lonely Rich Kid, he can be said to be an Ice King type at the start. Then he gets shrunk, as Conan, he goes to live with his middle-class "not girlfriend" Ran Mouri and her Private Defective father Kogoro, and the story properly begins...
  • And naturally, more than one of these dudes are among either victims, witnesses, and/or culprits in the series...
• Claudine: Claude and his brothers were raised to be distinguished gentlemen who treat women respectfully.
• Light Yagami of Death Note is one of these, most definitely of the Ice King variety, and shows absolutely no sign of defrosting - maybe even getting colder. A popular Broken Ace (though you'd never know it) and Consummate Liar, Light uses his natural charm and charisma to literally get away with murder; he's a Manipulative Bastard toward his Genki Girl love interest, and his Black-and-White Insanity and pathological narcissism are well-hidden under his attractive and empathetic exterior. To top it off, he's also a Badass in a Nice Suit most of the time.
• Gouiche from The Familiar of Zero is the Prince Charming Type.
• Victorique's half-brother, Grevil de Blois is a Princely Young Man to her Ojou in Gosick.
• Touga in Gravion fits the composed variety, and forms an Odd Friendship with the largely manners-less Eiji often driven by his quiet curiosity about the "real world".
• Hetalia: Axis Powers:
  • Austria is a mix of the Ice King type and the Gentleman type, leaning more towards the first in the past and more towards the latter in the present.
  • Luxembourg is also this, with Blue Blood influences due to a royal family he once had. He's described as "exuding elegance." He's also prim and proper, and is a dead-ringer for the Gentleman type, being a Nice Guy.
• In the Clear Moonlit Dusk: Subverted with Ichimura. He has the wealth, the status (his dad is the CEO of multiple businesses), the good looks, and the slightly aloof demeanor to fit the bill. On top of this, his peers jokingly call him "Prince." But as his bleached hair and piercings indicate, he's much more of a rake than a prince, and much like Yoi, he's aware of the mismatch between his personality and the image others have forced upon him and doesn't care for it much.
  Yoi: Rather than being a prince, isn't he more like someone from a gang?
• Yuna Roma Seiran from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, a Spoiled Brat, proves why letting one of these gain power can be a really, really, bad idea. Luckily eventually they Dropped A GOUF On Him.
• Lady!!: If Sarah is a Proper Lady, Arthur Brighton is a proper man. He always acts well-behaved, kind and noble, unlike some of the stuck-up members of the Russell and Waverly family. Lynn and Mary have crushes on him because of his gentleness. Alas, he likes Sarah.
• La Seine No Hoshi: Robert is from the esteemed de Forges family, and wants justice to come to the nobles that slaughtered Simone's family, is endlessly supportive to Milan's ideals of freedom, and a good friend and protector to Simone.
• Naruto:
  • Sasuke Uchiha is one of the last members of a powerful ninja clan. He, an Ice King, is very talented, not outwardly emotional, and at first considers everyone beneath him, even his teacher Kakashi.
  • An arguably better example than Sasuke, was his older brother, Itachi Uchiha. Itachi was more of the Gentleman type, with a healthy mix of Ice King. At times he was even more cold and ruthless than Sasuke, but there was still kindness within him, it was just suppressed by many years of trauma and regret.
  • Later we have Boruto Uzumaki, who is Blue Blood from both of his parents, Naruto and Hinata. He's a Spoiled Brat, is very talented, and loves to brag a lot. He abuses his status to get cheats and the latest technological advancements for his own joy. It's not surprising that he asks to be the apprentice of Sasuke Uchiha and decides to follow Sasuke's path rather than his own father.
• Nozomu Kanou of Nurse Angel Ririka SOS is an example of the Gentleman type. He's the School Idol and he touches all the old money bases (his loyal butler chauffeurs him to school every morning, for instance.) Everyone treats him like nobility, and he responds with cool politeness.
• One Piece:
  • Helmeppo is definitely the mean, pompous buffoon Spoiled Brat type of this, the way he uses his father's rank and reputation to get what he wants, but eventually does a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Then we have Sanji, who isn't treated as a prince at all, but who very often imagines himself as one. Because he is really one, as it was revealed that he hails from the Germa Kingdom, ruled by a royal family of assassins, which in turn makes him a literal Mafia Prince as well
• Hanabusa Miyabi from Ore-sama Teacher is unrepentantly a Gentleman type.
• All the boys in Ouran High School Host Club. In particular, Tamaki fits the Prince Charming type and Kyoya fits the Ice King type.
• James from Pokémon: The Series comes from an absurdly rich family and grew up with scads of tutors trying to teach him everything a rich kid should know... but as a member of Team Rocket and sort of a big idiot, Despite being a villain he's more of a Prince Charming-type than a Spoiled Brat version of this trope.
• The Prince of Tennis:
  • Keigo Atobe is the Ur-Example of the Prince Charming type.
  • Since Hyoutei seems to be a school for rich kids and several players attending this school fit. Oshitari comes off as a Prince Charming type, while Ohtori fits fairly well as a Gentleman.
• Jun Kenzaki from Ring ni Kakero The Rival, a Child Prodigy, and this. He's an Ice King type, by the way.
• Romeo Candorebanto Montague from Romeo × Juliet, in addition to being the Mad Dictator's Handsome Son, is definitely the Gentleman type. His best friend Benvolio di Frescobaldi also is like this, but once his family is stripped of its noble status, he adapts to peasant life very quickly and happily.
• Mikogami Hayato from Sekirei is a Spoiled Brat from an extremely wealthy (but distant) family. He's selfish, petty, aggressive when it comes to getting what he wants, and infamous for collecting Sekirei as though they were Pokemon. However, he turns out to be a Ditzy Genius with a strong commitment to playing by the rules and a Lonely Rich Kid deeply afraid of being abandoned. The majority of his Sekirei are petty and cruel, behaving like a pack of fangirls eager to tear down anyone that annoys him — the primary two that serve as his personal bodyguards, on the other hand, are both quiet but kind-hearted and utterly devoted to him.
• In Seraph of the End, Mikaela, who was turned into a vampire by the vampire queen Krul, gets the princely treatment in a Knight in Shining Armor kind of way. Turns out he's a real prince because his father was once the king of the planet Earth in prehistoric times.
• Uta No Prince Sama:
  • The two rich boys. Masato is the Ice King type crossed over with the Gentleman, and Ren is the Prince Charming type, right down to Something about a Rose, the blond hair, and Instant Fanclub.
  • Tokiya also has elements of this being an Ice King who speaks keigo all the time, even in private.
• Seto and Noah Kaiba of Yu-Gi-Oh!, representing the Ice King and Spoiled Brat respectively:
  • Seto Kaiba is a gaming genius who not so much inherited his abusive adoptive father's company as he did trick him into letting him buy the company out. Meddling is probably the nicest possible word for Gozaburo Kaiba's parenting technique, and the emotional scarring is still very much apparent.
  • Noah Kaiba was a Blue Blood variation on the Spoiled Brat archetype. He had everything handed to him on a silver platter until he was hit by a car, and his father was forced to put his brain into a supercomputer to save his life... and his father left him to move on to greener pastures in the form of Seto. Noah was envious of Seto and sought to take back all he felt Seto had stolen from him, including Seto's little brother. In the end, he did redeem himself, but not before nearly killing everyone in one final petty act of revenge.
• Kurama from YuYu Hakusho is the Prince Charming type with shades of the Gentleman type. He's not rich or nobility but he's treated that way by girls at school and has a superior air because of the knowledge that he's a high-class demon.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • Damian Wayne is the Spoiled Brat type, but instead of being a king, he wants to be seen as the next Batman. Meanwhile, Richard "Dick" Grayson is the Prince Charming type and tries to help Damian to fix his issues; it looks like it's working, as Dick is one of the few persons Damian seems to respect.
  • Damian's father Bruce Wayne — he often plays a Prince Charming and Spoiled Brat type in public but in private, he's actually an Ice King.

Fan Works

• Once he's adopted into the noble Shiba clan, Ichigo, of all people, becomes one in Swinging Pendulum. He is adored by many in the student body for his skills, much to his annoyance. He has a very high status due to being part of the main branch of the Shiba clan, one of the Five Noble Families of Seireitei. He comes across as the Ice King type as he can come across as being very cold and haughty to others.

Film

• Danny Saunders in The Chosen is more of type-2 Ice King sort.
• Dead End: Phillip Griswald, the arrogant little rich Spoiled Brat teen living in the fancy apartments, who in both look and manner comes across as a forgotten Squib from the Malfoy family. He stupidly lets the Dead End Kids lure him into an ambush, which eventually gets the kids in serious trouble.

Literature

• Artemis Fowl starts the series as an Insufferable Genius Child Prodigy and heir to a lucrative criminal empire, and comports himself accordingly. He becomes more (overtly) compassionate as the books go on, but he never loses his haughty attitude or the loyalty of the family Battle Butler.
• Harry Potter: Draco Malfoy is unquestionably a Spoiled Brat type. He throws around his wealth and heritage like they're spells.
• The Raven Cycle: Gansey is referred to by other characters as "princeling".
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, Jon Snow, the castle-trained and educated highborn illegitimate son of Lord Eddard Stark. He is a good-hearted, moral character who strives to do the right thing but initially behaves arrogantly with the lowborn recruits due to his superior combat skills upon first joining the Night's Watch as a Wide-Eyed Idealist Sheltered Aristocrat — until he's immediately given a giant reality check by Donal Noye and his Cool Uncle who remind him of his privileged upbringing and open up Jon's eyes. Thanks to them, Jon quickly gets over his arrogance and becomes friends with the lowborn recruits who were his initial opponents, teaches them how to fight, and they become True Companions. Jon's positive princely virtues develop as a noble-hearted, well-intentioned, and empathetic (but brooding) young leader in which he comes to understand hard-living first hand, is devoted to protecting people, does his best to uphold honour and duty, and experiences The Chains of Commanding.
• The Sunne in Splendour: The protaganist, Richard of Gloucester, is a Plantagenet and once his older brother seizes the throne, Richard becomes a royal duke. As he grows up, he becomes a leader among his cohort of friends, the favorite of his brother the king and an able commander in his own right. He spends most of the story as The Fettered, taking honor and chivalry so seriously it often gets him in trouble.

Live-Action TV

• Game of Thrones:
  • Like his book counterpart, Jon Snow — the acknowledged illegitimate son of a lord — is raised with a highborn upbringing by his lord father. He is brought up with his father's strong moral code and he is educated, honorable, and a skilled swordsman. Initially, Jon starts out as the Sheltered Aristocrat — well-meaning but spoiled due to his privileged upbringing when he fulfills his aspiration of joining the Night's Watch like his Cool Uncle. Upon finding out the Night's Watch is no longer the noble order it once was (however, the Night's Watch is seen as a noble calling in the North which the Starks — Jon's family — have joined for generations), Jon is unhappy and acts a bit arrogant at first due to his superior skills, but he receives a lot of flak for this and after a few lectures from Tyrion and his Cool Uncle, Jon is set straight and realizes how rough the other recruits had it: they become friends, Jon helps teach them how to fight properly, defends the weaker ones, and he is made the better for it. He is a good-hearted, loyal, and compassionate guy, and along with the morality his father instilled in him, it is these qualities that help him become True Companions with other new Watch recruits. At the same time, Alliser Thorne nicknames Jon "Lord Snow" because he is a highborn illegitimate son with a young lord's upbringing ('Snow' is the surname given to acknowledged illegitimate children from the North with noble blood).
  • As the series progresses, Jon becomes The Wise Prince — literally; in Season 6, he is proclaimed as the King in the North, and in Season 7, it is revealed that Jon is the hidden trueborn son of Lyanna Stark and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. As such, he was the heir apparent to the Iron Throne under the Targaryen succession. As this meant that he was nominally King of the Seven Kingdoms after the deaths of Rhaegar and of the "Mad King" Aerys II (his grandfather), his very existence was a threat to the new Baratheon dynasty for which his mother's House Stark had fought. Thus, to save the infant's life, his uncle Ned Stark claimed his nephew Jon as his own illegitimate son to protect him and raised Jon as his own child.
• Sebastian Smythe from Glee is also a Spoiled Brat type. He gains command of the Dalton Academy Warblers and makes many references to his family's affluence.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Sano Mitsuru from Kamen Rider Ryuki was thrown out and forced to get a day job. His rich father hoped it would build Mitsuru some character. It didn't.
  • Kamishiro Tsurugi from Kamen Rider Kabuto. His personal motto is, "I am the man who will replace God and slash with a sword". He eventually discovers that his family coffers are more empty than he had ever imagined (as in, completely) and resolves to restore his family wealth whilst learning about the joys of "the common people", becoming much more quirky and likable in the process.
  • Sieg from Kamen Rider Den-O, an arrogant Imagin who claims that "the world revolves for [his] sake" and initially sees the DenLiner crew as his servants. Hana punches some sense into him, though, and he warms up to the others a lot quicker. Bonus points for his predominantly white color scheme.
• Er Kang in Princess Returning Pearl is of the Gentleman type, the firstborn son of a high-ranking official, and is a great favorite subject of the Emperor, who treats him like his own son. He is portrayed as an ideal man and the leader in the group of protagonists, despite the group also including a (literal) Prince Charming who is competent in his own right.
• Daniel Grayson from the TV show Revenge is a Prince Charming type.

Video Games

• Jorge Garcia from Backyard Sports is a Spoiled Brat type in the early games, and an Ice King type in the later games.
• Shirakaba school in Bungo to Alchemist, who are even actually compared to princes – these writers came from wealthy and influential family backgrounds, thus they're all dashingly handsome men dressed in regal white suits. Among them, Saneatsu "Musha" Mushanokōji exemplifies this best as a Spoiled Sweet guy with high idealism.
• That's Larsa Ferrinas Soldior of Final Fantasy XII on the throne in the page image. His family technically isn't royalty since Archadia has a ruling senate but he's often treated like one for his status and his princely demeanor. Players often mistake him for a girl, but he's pretty good in battle and works to help his people.
• Fire Emblem:
  • The male Lords tend to fill in different types of this. Eliwood, Sigurd and Prince Chrom are good examples of the Gentleman type, while Innes is a textbook Ice King.
  • Not only the lords but also their supporters and friends. Azel from Genealogy of the Holy War is a mix of the cute dork and the Gentleman type, while Virion from Fire Emblem: Awakening is the definition of the Gentleman kind.
• La Corda d'Oro Starlight Orchestra:
  • Kei Tsukishiro is an elite and famous musician who goes to an elite music academy in Tokyo, is the concertmaster of Japan's top orchestra, and whose father is the most powerful person in the orchestra world. He is a villainous take on this trope, as he's also elitist, arrogant, and can be straight-up cruel, leading people to call him a "tyrant".
  • Ukiha Mikado is the head of a once-big clan, is a traditional, cultured, and polite Yamato Nadeshiko, and even has a loyal servant of his own.
• Shaka Nyorai from Namu Amida Butsu! -UTENA- is former Indian royalty, and this background of his is played up in an event so he becomes this trope, complete with prince costumes.
• Goro Akechi from Persona 5 is presented as the Prince Charming type. He’s known as “The Second Coming Of The Detective Prince”, has reached celebrity status due to his good looks and various TV appearances, has a large array of fangirls, and his Metaverse outfit has him dressed as a prince. Then it turns out that his whole personality was fake. And so was the outfit. That being said, his true self appears to be a mix of Spoiled Brat and Ice King.
• Cherry Bìluó from The Tale of Food manifested in a wealthy merchant family and was adopted into Persian royalty, as such he's a handsome, well-dressed and cultured young man with a sweet and courteous personality and even a penchant for flirting.
• Touken Ranbu: Ichigo Hitofuri was an Imperial treasure, thus he's designed with clearly prince-inspired clothes and is a polite, courteous man.

Web Original

• Phase, Ayla Goodkind of the Whateley Universe. Born into the richest family on earth, and used to having his own way all the time. When he turns into a mutant and gets kicked out of the family, he finds out he doesn't know how to do anything, including using a can opener or a microwave. He just about has a coronary seeing what a real grocery store is like.

Western Animation

• Prince Blueblood from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic at first appeared to be the Prince Charming type, but turned out to be more of a Spoiled Brat.

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