The Wicked Prince

When power is won at the point of a sword, a king rules through fear.

Hello again, readers. I found this story a few weeks back and I thought it would be apt for our world these days. I didn't realize how apt it would be. The Wicked Prince is a story by Hans Christian Andersen and it's about a leader of a nation that creates his power through war and demands to be the ultimate power in his kingdom. When that doesn't work out for him, he reverts to the only thing he knows: more war. At least this fairy tale has a happy ending. Read the story at the link above and continue reading below to analyze it with me.



I need to start out by saying Andersen was not messing around here. He roasted the idea that power is everything. This prince has no name, so all we can call him is The Wicked Prince. The beginning of this story is also very deliberate. We start not by hearing about the riches this prince gains, but by the way he got them. Andersen tells us concisely, but bluntly, what kind of wars this prince wages and why. It's hard to get the image of that mother out of my head.

However, in his kingdom, the prince is seen as a man of great standing. He's rich and he keeps expanding his kingdom. Even here, however, we find out how cruelly the prince treats the captive kings. Horses, even ones pulling a carriage, can go pretty fast. It's hard for a person to keep up, but if you're chained to the back of a carriage, you either have to keep up, or be dragged along. The prince shows some of his cruelty to his subjects, but no one seems to say anything. Whether that's because they're afraid of him, or because they depend on him for their own power is up to the reader to decide.

Finally, the prince's ambition makes him go after the one place he hasn't tried to conquer yet: the church. Now, religion in Denmark in 1840 was very different than in our time and place in history. That being said, the important thing was that the prince finally found people who were more afraid of someone else than him. The priests were afraid of upsetting God by putting the prince's statue on their altars. So the prince decides to go to war with God. Hey, it worked for him in everything else.

Whatever your actual religious beliefs, for the purposes of this story, the wicked prince was fighting an enemy he couldn't win against. God is all-powerful and immortal. So, despite the weapons the prince brought out, God wasn't even fazed. In fact, God defeated this prince without using any weapons. God used a gnat.

This prince, who has won his power through fear and bloodshed, was brought low by a single bite from a gnat. In the instant the prince threw off all of his clothes to try to get some relief, he lost everything he'd fought so many wars to get. He lost his power. We don't get much after this part of the story. We find out the prince's soldiers mocked him and called him mad. Who declares war on God?!

After that point in the story, it's up to the reader to decide if the prince had an accident in his flying ship or if he made it to the ground and then lost all of his power afterwards. Either way, this man, who set so much store by the fear he could command and the power it gave him, now had neither fear nor power.

The moral of the story is: don't be an atrocious ruler and hurt people for your own power. Alternatively, don't declare war against God.

Have a different moral? Surprised Andersen got so political? Have a different story you want me to talk about? Comment below!