Basic Trope: The generic heroic, noble male character with a royal title.
- Straight: Prince Robert is a handsome, noble character who rescues Princess Alice, a helpless Damsel in Distress, from danger. They fall in love, and he takes her as his bride and queen-to-be.
- Exaggerated:
- Prince Robert is the Messianic Archetype incarnated; he's so handsome it's almost painful to look at him, and he is the bravest and most charming man in the entire kingdom. Ladies throw themselves at his feet, men curse themselves because they'll never be as great as he is, and his name is a byword for heroism where he hails from.
- Marty Stu.
- Downplayed: Prince Robert is a nice guy with a royal title, but his role is more of a regular nice guy who's interested in Alice.
- Justified: Prince Robert is the son of noble, decent rulers who taught him how to be charismatic so as to make his subjects like him.
- Inverted:
- Prince Charmless
- A young man who is good-hearted and heroic, but a commoner.
- Prince Robert is a noble character who rescues Princess Alice, but he drives people away due to being a brutal Gonk.
- Subverted:
- Prince Robert uses his good lucks, heroic reputation and charm for venal, self-serving ends. He's a Miles Gloriosus about his accomplishments and a ruthless casanova who uses his reputation to have his way with Alice before coldly and cruelly abandoning her.
- Prince Robert is considerably less charming when dealing with those beneath his station.
- Double Subverted: Prince Robert falls in love with Alice, and his desire to genuinely win Alice's love inspires him to become a better man.
- Parodied: Prince Robert is a complete imbecile who is utterly in love with himself; he's so self-aggrandizing about his own accomplishments and how he'll daringly and fearlessly rescue Alice from the clutches of danger that he doesn't realize that Alice has managed to rescue herself in the time he took to deliver his self-praising lecture.
- Zig Zagged: Prince Robert has a brave, handsome and noble reputation, and is that way on the surface, but is deep down quite venal and arrogant. He meets Alice, who inspires him to be a better person. But the worse elements of his personality are difficult to overcome, and he finds himself falling back into old habits — until his people rebel against him, at which point he is forced to confront the truth of himself and becomes a better person, establishing a constitutional monarchy...
- Averted:
- Prince Robert has some insecurities about the expectations put on him so he deals with it by interacting with people as a normal guy would.
- There are no princes.
- Enforced: The executives issue a mandate stating that every story produced needs a noble, charming prince as the male protagonist. Any story that doesn't is thrown in the trash.
- Lampshaded: "Truly, my beloved, your noble prince has found you! Surely I am everything your heart desires!"
- Invoked:
- The King and Queen raise their son to have values of nobility, classical heroism and decency installed in him.
- Alice is a rather lovelorn writer who creates Prince Robert to act as her 'perfect guy' — but Prince Robert gains fourth wall awareness and leaves Alice's story to romance her.
- Exploited: Robert the Rogue dresses as a prince and acts this way to con people into giving him money.
- Defied: Robert rejects his lessons and revels in his venal, corrupt nature.
- Discussed: "So that's Prince Robert, huh? I didn't think guys like him lived outside of fairy tales."
- Conversed: "You won't find Prince Charming anywhere outside a fairy tale collection, honey; work with what you've got, not some fantasy guy."
- Deconstructed: Prince Robert is a figurehead of a repressive absolute monarchy that cruelly represses the common folk. While Robert might be well loved by his fellow aristocrats for his charm and 'brave' reputation, because they are a Decadent Court he is despised by his subjects, who eventually rise up and overthrow him. Robert ends up being killed by his own people.
- Reconstructed: Although his family's reign is cruel, Robert himself is a genuinely decent and noble man who is unaware of what is truly happening in his land; once he learns the truth of what his reign means, he is outraged, and leads a movement that establishes Robert as a constitutional monarch.
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