Who will Slay the Princess?: My theories about the upcoming visual novel
Will you Slay or Save the Princess, and who or what even can? Slay the Princess is an original horror visual novel developed by Black Tabby Games. This article isn’t sponsored.
So, there aren’t many games that I actually enjoy playing that don’t bog down my computer ram and make me frustrated more than happy.
That is until my friend told me about Slay the Princess, at least, the demo of the game that – as of this article – is yet to be released.
About Slay the Princess?
Slay the Princess is a fantasy horror visual novel where you play as the nameless, faceless, protagonist being guided by “the Narrator” in your head to save the world. Save the world from what? The Princess who is being kept in the cabin on the hill, of course!
It is said the Princess will bring about the apocalypse, and it is up to you to stop her, or even find out why she would do such a thing.
Going against the fantasy tropes of the noble knight saving the princess from the evil villain or dragon, Slay the Princess starts off with the premise flipped on its head and expects us to make value judgments and choices based on our expectations of the Princess, her character, our morals, and the world around us. The only one who seems to know anything beyond what we’re shown is the Narrator, who may not be completely on our side.
The free demo is live and available to play on Steam, which is where my connection to this game began. Even with just a demo, it is a rewarding and immersive experience.
There are reportedly 11 current “endings” that you can play and uncover in the demo itself, and they all lead you into at least the beginning of Chapter Two. How many chapters will there be in the full game? I can only imagine. The game capitalizes on the appeal and novelty of what readers feel when they start a book they know they’re going to enjoy, a mystery box with just the first few puzzles solved. It leaves us cold in our tracks with just enough information to set up the world, and the characters, and introduce the plot.
I’m going to delve into my main theories from here, so if you no longer wish to read this, please consider going to download and playing the first Chapter yourself. I’ve linked the Steam Store page here.
Okay, spoilers can be found below this line. Proceed with caution if you want to play the game.
My Theories
While I can fully admit that I haven’t played through all the apparent endings of this demo, I can say that the setup in Chapter One “The Hero and the Princess” is intriguing enough for me to run with a theory about the protagonist, or should I say, protagonists, himself.
The voice of the Hero is the first one, the one that seems to lead us in opposition to the Narrator’s wishes. He takes on the reluctant but noble hero role of “we’re supposed to save princesses, not slay them.” Traditional to say the least.
Once we meet the Princess, we’re left to ask her the questions to see where she stands on the whole apocalypse issue. The Hero and the Narrator, ever present in our mind, help us to come to whatever conclusion we deem worth our first effort in the game, to slay or to save.
While it’s more interesting to talk to her and ignore the Narrator, leaning onto the side of the Hero, we’re still met with an unforeseen fate. But before that, we see something even more interesting.
Our hand comes into frame from time to time, and at close inspection, we can see the cursor take on the same image – we don’t seem to be completely human ourselves.
This is where my main theory comes in. Since the idea of slaying the Princess is a flip on the traditional Western fantasy tropes we’ve known for hundreds of years, who’s to say that we aren’t a noble knight or king? If the Princess is the real monster, then are we the opposite?
What I’m meaning to say is… I think we’re some kind of dragon. We’re usually the ones in the Princess’s role, a threat to the world at worst and a nuisance to the people at least. We’re looked down upon and not trusted because of our scaly skin and terrifying sharp teeth; there’s no way we could ever be considered a hero.
Yet… here we find ourselves. Now it is up to the dragon playing the role of the hero to save the world from the eldritch monster of a princess.
It’s for this reason that the mirror scene in Chapter Two is so important to me.
We tend to lean into the Princess, seeing her cold beauty as a sign that, “she can’t be all that bad, right?” Someone that beautiful wouldn’t end the world or even know how. A terrifying, fire-breathing dragon on the other hand…
But, what if we were able to confirm this? There is an opportunity to see our reflection in a dusty mirror when we are about to go down into the basement a second time, and the most interesting part is… the Narrator claims to not see it.
When we resist him again, approaching the mirror to see our reflection, it disappears before we can wipe off any dust. All we’re able to see is our cruel claws and rough skin on our hand against an empty wall. The Narrator calls us stupid for this move, saying we look ridiculous, but the implication that the world and the changes in scenes and timelines are deliberately keeping us from knowing WHO and WHAT we are is something compelling to me.
We’re trying to discover who the Princess really is, why the Narrator wants what he wants, and the extent of his capabilities; I think the idea that our own identity as the protagonist of many voices is the most fascinating of all.
But what are the voices? They appear with every new chapter and restart of the game. There’s the Skeptic, the Contrarian, the Broken; the Opportunist, the Smitten, the Stubborn; the Paranoid, and the Cold. All come from the previous choices made in the first chapter and are a direct result of the consequences of those choices.
We seem to be more than one person, or at least share a consciousness with more than one mind. When contemplating my dragon theory, another idea popped into my head concerning these voices: a dragon with many heads.
You’ve all seen Dragon Tales, right? Or at least are familiar with the phrase from Game of Thrones, “The dragon has three heads?” Even if you haven’t heard of either of those things, it’s not hard to come across stories and legends about dragons where there would be several heads to decapitate for the hero slaying the beast. Hercules is a very popular one. I know, that one is technically a hydra, but my point still stands.
My final theory is that we are a hero trapped in the body of a two-headed dragon by Chapter Two. Either that or we always were a dragon and have no memory of our past and what our life was like before waking up in the woods outside the cabin. If we are some kind of knight or hero inside a new beastly body, that could be why we aren’t allowed to see ourselves. That could also mean that the Princess and the Narrator themselves are inhabiting different bodies than they normally would. The Princess is clearly not human at all and is capable of all kinds of shape-shifting. It could be that we’re the real princess and the mind of the villainous dragon is inside the morphing Princess.
But when she kills us and we wake up again with a new voice, and in my opinion, another head on our shoulders, we can talk and reason with our past through real-time conversation.
There is the slim possibility that the Narrator himself could be another head as well since all the heads would need their own brain to think independently. Another reason for this idea is that in Chapter One, there is a part where the Narrator takes over our body and tries to force us to stab the Princess in the back. (It also helps that they’re all played by the same voice actor, too.)
What makes this “Narrator as a head” theory not make as much sense is that the Narrator cannot see the mirror (or claims not to), and isn’t properly heard by anyone else other than ourselves and the voices. The Princess likely knows the Narrator is there speaking to us, but cannot hear them herself.
Again, these are just my thoughts.
Lastly, I kind of like the idea that we’re some dragon that perhaps was misunderstood by humanity in a past life and wanted to be the hero who saved the princess from mortal danger. Somehow (perhaps we made a wish), we end up in the woods and are given the grueling task of not saving a princess, but killing her – the very thing that we were expected to do in our past life and the thing we never wanted to do. The knights would’ve slayed us in the attempt of getting anywhere near her.
So we’re confused and reluctant but lean on the Narrator for guidance. If we have an opportunity to find a princess and help save the world, we wouldn’t want to mess it up.
When the Princess and the Narrator show more and more of their true intentions, we’re left to decipher our own understanding of good and evil and that appearances and circumstances play no meaningful part in who is the victor; visuals are only illusions in this world.
Ultimately, this horror fantasy dating simulation visual novel may be more about self-discovery than we’d first assume. The Princess is dangerous, the Narrator is biased, and we’re left to pick up the pieces of our fragmented psyche, like pieces of a broken mirror. All the while coming to our own conclusions about our values and how we want to treat others in the world, even under dire circumstances.
Live Event
Slay the Princess will be featured at Steam’s Fear Fest, hosted by IGN. There will be live events streamed on the IGN official YouTube channel on September 6th, 2023, where the creators from Black Tabby Games will be present. I don’t know everything the event entails and if the game will fully release soon after this event, but it seems like a great opportunity to learn more about the developments and other information about the game.
Check out Black Tabby Games online on Steam and on their website.
Another cool article about Slay the Princess can be found on Kotaku.com, written by Kenneth Shepard.
The voice actors who worked on Slay the Princess are Nicole Goodnight and Jonathan Sims. The creators of Slay the Princess also created Scarlet Hollow.
Thank you for reading.
This article isn’t sponsored.
I have every intention of finishing the full game soon and would like to write more about this game afterward. Would that be interesting? Let me know what you think in the comments.
‘Til then, you can likely catch me playing this game on my Twitch live streams or on some posted VODs. Join my Discord server to get updates on when I’m going live and links to all my VODs.
