The Prince Returns

My favorite story pattern is what I call "The Prince Returns," a special case of the Hero's Journey Private or Broken Links
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. In it, a prince, usually a young or middle-aged man of noble character, finds himself lost in the world and forced to complete a voyage home, often guided by a sage.

  1. In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus's nostos takes him from Calypso's Ogygia to Ithaca, where his wife Penelope and son Telemachus await him. Athena guides Telemachus in the form of Mentor.
  2. In Virgil's Aeneid, Aeneas is prince of Troy, displaced from his home when it is burned down by the Greeks. He must find his new home in Italy.
  3. In the Oresteia, Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War, only to be killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. The prince Orestes then returns to his homeland to avenge his father. Like Telemachus, he finds a guide in Athena, who rescues him from the Furies.
  4. The Buddha began as Siddhartha Gautama, a prince who was sheltered. But he became a sage when he realized there was suffering and death in the world. In this story, the prince returns home not physically but spiritually.
  5. Paradise Lost Private or Broken Links
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    is also a kind of prince-returns journey in that Satan, prince of darkness, tries to establish a home in hell.
  6. In the Divine Comedy, Dante finds himself lost in a dark wood. Metaphorically, he has wandered from the straight and narrow path. In three canticles, Dante and his guide Virgil traverse Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.
  7. Hamlet Private or Broken Links
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    is an interesting variation on the archetype because he the prince doesn't complete the journey. For that matter, he hardly starts it.
  8. The Count of Monte Cristo tells the story of Edmond Dantes, betrayed by his peers and sent to prison. While wasting away, his father dies, and his fiancee marries one of the men who betrayed him. He meets Abbe Faria in prison, who teaches him everything he knows and equips him with the knowledge and skills to acquire hidden treasure on the island of Monte Cristo. Once he escapes from prison, Dantes creates a plan to exact revenge on the men who put him in prison.
  9. In the Bhagavad Gita Private or Broken Links
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    , prince Arjuna looks to Krishna to tell him what his place in the world is.