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Revision as of 06:49, 21 December 2005 by DethFromAbove (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Prince is the main protagonist from the Prince of Persia series of computer and video games. Throughout the games' history, his name is never explicitly stated.
The Prince
The Prince first appears in 1989 in the Prince of Persia game. With time and with new games from the series coming out, more information about The Prince is given. However we can distinguish The Prince from the very early Prince of Persia games and the one that appears in the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time game and later in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. Since their stories are completely different we can treat them as two different persons.
Early Prince of Persia games (Original Trilogy)
In the first two games very little information about The Prince is given. In Prince of Persia The Prince (locked in the prison by an evil vizier Jaffar) needs to save his love, the Princess, who stands before a choice - marry Jaffar and give him the rights to the throne or say no and die. The Prince escapes from the dungeon and advances through the palace. Eventually he is forced to leap through a magic mirror creating a shadow prince. As the Prince nears Jaffar he and the shadow become one again. The Prince defeats Jaffar and saves the Princess.
As the next game, Shadow and the Flame, begins, the Prince approaches the Princess, but something is wrong. Another Prince, who is actually Jaffar in disguise, is already there. Jaffar tries to have the Prince arrested, but he leaps through the window and stows away on a merchant ship. The Prince dreams of a mysterious woman who says, "Come to me." Jaffar destroys the ship with a conjured storm and the Prince arrives shipwrecked on an island. The Prince finds a magic carpet in a cave on the island and is brought to some old ruins. When he attempts to pick up a sword, the woman from his dreams explains that this was once his father's kingdom, and he was the only one who survived. From there he gains a magical horse and rides it to a temple. The Prince is killed, but his shadow form rises up, gains the power of the Flame, and revives the Prince by reentering his body. With his new power, the inhabitants of the temple bow to him, and the Prince returns to the palace. Jaffar is defeated once and for all, burned to ashes, and scattered to the winds. The game ends with a mysterious old woman watching the Prince and Princess in a crystal ball.
In Prince of Persia 3D The Prince (an orphan, who never knew his parents) lives on the streets. One day he captures the heart of a Princess and here the story begins. The Sultan's brother, Assan, wants the Princess to marry his son, and the Prince has to stop him.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
The young Prince and his father, persuaded by the Vizier, attack a mighty empire. Their goal is the treasure room in which the Maharaja holds a magical Hourglass with The Sands of Time. During The Prince's first battle he finds the treasure room and the mystical Dagger of Time. The Prince keeps the dagger and since it was the price the Vizier wanted for his help, the Vizier decides to take his vengeance. When The Prince and his father visit a friendly sultan, giving him the magical Hourglass as a gift, the Vizier persuades The Prince to open it with his dagger. When The Prince does, all but him, the Vizier and Princess Farah turn into sand demons. The Prince will have to fight his way to the Hourglass and put the sands back to undo what he has done.
In this game The Prince is a young and romantic boy. Feeling guilty and stupid, for what he had done to his father and other people, he becomes suspicious and stops trusting anyone.
An important part of the game is the Prince's romance with Farah. As we know from what he says to himself during the game, he becomes more and more attracted to her since she's beautiful, smart and comes from a royal family. The romance however ends when The Prince puts the sands back into the Hourglass and turns back all that have happened.
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
Because The Prince has manipulated time, he begins to be chased by a mystical demon Dahaka, who is the guardian of the timeline. To save himself he decides to go on to the Island of Time where the sands were once created. His goal: to stop the sands from ever being made, so that he could never have changed the timeline in the previous "Sands of Time" game. During the game The Prince has another romance. This time with a mysterious Kaileena. In the alternate ending he takes her back with him to Babylon.
In this game The Prince is seven years older then in the previous one. As a grown man he learns new skills and combat moves making him a much better fighter. He has much more anger and determination to fight for his goals.
The Shadow
The Shadow Prince is created in the original Prince of Persia. When the Prince leaps through a magic mirror, it comes out the other side. The Shadow hinders your progress several times in the game, and in the end you eventually defeat him by putting away your weapon and running into him, becoming one person again.
The Shadow returns in the second game if the plater continually turns left and right after a certain point in the game. The Shadow receives the power of the Flame when the Prince is killed by a temple guard. The Shadow revives the Prince when he goes back into his body. During the last sequence, the Shadow is required to defeat Jaffar. Once Jaffar is cornered, the Shadow must throw the Flame at Jaffar, burning him to ashes.
The Sandwraith
The Sandwraith appears in Warrior Within as a male, humanoid creature in some state of decay. It is wrapped in shreds of fabric that swirl in a supernatural wind, and its eyes glow a bright blue. The Prince sees it just as he enters the primary complex of the Fortress of Time, and for the first two-thirds of the game its nature is cloaked in shadow and mystery. It even appears to be hostile to the Prince. Just prior to his confrontation with the Empress of Time, the Prince witnesses the apparent demise of the Wraith at the hands, or rather, tentacles, of the Dahaka, which then curiously proceeds to ignore the Prince entirely.
Following his first, failed attempt to prevent the creation of the Sands of Time in the past, the Prince finds himself again on the run from the Dahaka in the present. Evading the creature, the despondent prince finds himself in a vast crypt. Wrought with the cruel irony of his situation, he brushes his hand over a wall covered with ancient markings. Perhaps reacting to his touch, the amulet he wears, or simply coming to his attention (the cut scene doesn't make the cause clear), the markings tell a story of a member of the Maharajah's army in his raid for the Sands. While the raid appears to succeed, the man himself dies, but through an artifact called the Mask of the Wraith rewrote his Fate and escaped death. The game's manual makes reference to the Maharaja himself using the Mask to retrieve the sands, and is depicted in the ancient markings found in the crypt.
The Prince then hunts down the Mask and puts it on, becoming the Sandwraith, a creature not only able to shift time, but to take up another space in the Timeline, separate from the Prince. Thus the Wraith sets out to stop his past self from killing Kaileena. When he reaches the Prince at last, it is at the point where the Wraith was originally killed by the Dahaka. This time, he lets the Prince die, and the Dahaka, apparently satisfied, leaves. The Mask then loosens and the Prince returns to normal.
The Dark Prince
The Dark Prince first appears in Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. Not far into the story, the Prince becomes tainted by the newly unleashed Sands of Time. He embodies every negative aspect of the Prince; he's violent, selfish, and arrogant. It was originally said that he is voiced by Robin Atkin-Downes, but in the game Ben Miller voices the Dark Prince.
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