Today is your seventeenth birthday. It is customary for every boy of noble or royal lineage in your kingdom, if he has not yet taken a lover by his seventeenth birthday, to be given one to court. Then, by his next birthday, if all goes well, they be set to wed. Your parents, the king and queen of Wessden, had never noticed you cast anyone that special glance. They hadn't much time in their day to speak to you, one of their many children, about idle, pleasant things like courtship, so frankly... they had no idea what you might want.

Surely, if they simply walk you into a room full of pretty young ladies and handsome young men, you'll be content with one of them. And of course, you would pay no mind to the faerie boy dusting the figures on the mantle in the back.