Cabbages and Kings

He is an actor, though not a very good one according to most accounts but his own. He certainly is not a prince, but he’s been persuaded to pretend to be one. It’s just for a little while, after all. What could possibly go wrong? Then he arrives at court, after barely dodging two attempts on his life—one before breakfast!—and finds his troubles, instead of being over, are just beginning. The queen's on her deathbed. A multitude of ravenous princesses are after his hand in marriage, and other body parts for quite different reasons. And most disturbing of all, the woman he has just now found out he loves cannot possibly love him back. In fact, her former lover is on the way to the castle to murder…someone or other. Add in a line of dancing princes, a friendly rat, and a slug with a bug on its rug, and it just goes to show that some days it doesn’t pay to be the new ruler of the land…