You start inside the cabin this time. The plain wooden interior is instead a grand chapel-like foyer with stained glass windows lining both walls. The door at the end of the hallway does not lead to a basement. In fact, the stairs go up for the first time in all your ventures.
The stairs lead you to the Princess, who is wearing the pristine blade as a necklace charm. She is sitting in a grand hall lit by four torches. A massive shadow looms behind her as she says, “You’re here! Now we can start being happy together.”
Introduction to Slay the Princess
Black Tabby Games’ horror adventure video game Slay the Princess (originally released in October of 2023) received a massive update in October 2024 called The Pristine Cut. The Pristine Cut added roughly over 10 hours of gameplay and content to the base game for free. One of the brand-new routes added was “Epilogue: Happily Ever After”. It is a continuation to the “Chapter II: The Damsel” Route.
In order to access “Happily Ever After”, the player must rescue the Princess in the Damsel Route but not leave the cabin with her. Instead, the player chooses to follow in line with one of their inner voices – the Voice of The Smitten – and choose to stay with the Princess inside the cabin forever. The Princess is quite apprehensive at the suggestion and it is the only time during the Damsel Route in which she is openly unsure about any scenario the player or the Smitten is able to pitch to her.
In order to convince the Princess that his love for her is true, The Smitten usurps control of the player’s body and rips their chest open, revealing a still-beating heart among organs and bone. As if in a trance, the Princess reaches for the player’s heart. And then everything goes dark, and you die.
And They Lived “Happily Ever After”
“Happily Ever After” is the only route in Slay the Princess to be labelled as an Epilogue, but it progresses like any other route in the game. Though it has quite a few notable departures from the typical route progression. You lose an inner voice rather than gain one. There is no basement. The pristine blade is with the Princess from the very beginning instead of it being on a table for the player to decide whether to take it or leave it. Not to mention the giant shadow hanging over the Princess’s head once you meet her in the route.
Like almost every other route, the player hears the Princess before they see her. She welcomes them home, like a wife greeting her husband coming back from work. The Narrator remarks in-game that the Princess sounds a bit fatigued as she beckons the player to dinner.
The Princess is not in the basement of the cabin, but instead an upper floor decorated with tapestries that depict grandiose scenes of romance and chivalry in the game’s own words. The room is lit by four torches. She is seated at the end of a long table and the player, no matter their choices, is forced to sit opposite her at the table. Should you try to stand up, the Princess relays that neither of them are permitted by the shadow behind her to leave their seats. You two have everything you need in this one hall, there’s no need to ever leave this place, right?
There are two different voices that can accompany the player during “Happily Ever After” depending on their actions in “Chapter II: The Damsel”: the Voice of The Opportunist or the Voice of The Paranoid. If the player has The Voice of The Paranoid with them, they are given explicit confirmation that the shadow behind the Princess is The Voice of The Smitten.
Blinded By Love
The Smitten is the mastermind behind the “Happily Ever After”. It is the life that he thinks he and the player deserve to have with the Princess – and in turn, the life he believes that she deserves to have. He shaped the cabin to be a grand, castle-like abode befitting royalty and can set a table to suit a feast or a game night at the snap of a finger. Everything he does is for the sake of maintaining this “Happy Ending”: this eternal moment of complete and utter bliss. But, is it truly bliss?
The “Happily Ever After” that The Smitten creates is a misguided attempt to make the Princess, his one true love, happy. It is an imitation of a typical fairy tale ending: the brave “knight” saves the damsel-in-distress princess and thus lives the rest of their days in romantic bliss. However, the Princess and the player are practically strangers, they have no real relationship for them to live out this romance-tinged fantasy. Both the player and the Princess are treated like puppets to act out what The Smitten deems to be the happiest life for them both.
How the Princess reacts towards the player and the shadow of The Smitten contrasts this well. It is whenever she expresses displeasure and tiredness with the circumstances that the lights in the room fade. The Princess reacts severely when she lets those thoughts slip, at one point in the game she says, “But it was wrong. I took away a piece of our light. I’m not supposed to do that. I don’t want him to be upset with me.” in response to the player telling her it’s not wrong to say how she truly feels. What she said there feels more in line with a wife afraid of her husband lashing out at her than someone who is truly happy with their life as is.
Are You Happy?
The Princess does have the freedom to suggest ideas for The Smitten to conjure up for her and the player to partake in, but he makes them loop the ideas ad nauseam – until the action leaves only hollowness behind. As The Smitten won’t permit either party to leave the cabin, all the ideas that the Princess gives are restricted to what they can do inside. The player has the opportunity to ask the Princess what she would want to do, without worrying about The Smitten or the torches in the hall, to which she says that she thinks she would like to dance under the stars. An action that would require her and the player to leave the cabin.
The more the Princess and the player express their unhappiness with the situation, the more the torches in the room dim and eventually fade. When there is one torch left, the player is given the choice to either let the torch keep burning or to let it go out. Keeping the torch burning, maintaining the illusion of this so-called perfect life, will lead to the Princess being taken by the hands of the Shifting Mound soon after. If the player lets the torch go out, both they and the Princess finally have the freedom to stand up and leave – to leave behind the life neither of them asked for.
The player can choose to either drive the blade on the Princess’ necklace into her chest or to leave the cabin with her. If the player chooses to slay the Princess, she will not resist them in any way. She will simply say, “It’s finally over.” Through death, she is free of this eternal, numbing bliss. If the player does not kill her and leaves the cabin with her, they and the Princess dance under the stars together.
She and the player find freedom in being able to choose what they want to do for real and to define their relationship by their own merits. The Shifting Mound will not take the Princess until she and the player have finished their dance – until they have had their moment of true happiness together.
And? What Happens Next?
It is only upon leaving the confines of The Smitten’s scenario that the Princess and the player can find their true happy ending.
That is what a “Happily Ever After” should be. “Happily Ever After” should be something that is chosen by the individual themselves, not chosen for them by an outside force. It is not forcing oneself into a specific role because “that’s how it always is in fairy tales.” It is something that, depending on the individual, can even be a team effort. Through communication and negotiation, two or more people can find “Happily Ever After”. A happy ending can be made, but it should never be forced upon another.
To be able to choose “Happily Ever After” should be a choice that anyone can make for themselves.
