Once upon a time in a faraway kingdom called Crecy there lived a King who ruled over the whole land. Naturally the king had a wife, and they had one child who was his one and only heir. He always respected those who respected him. However, he sought out and violently beheaded those of whom he was not fond. Other than this he was a fine ruler.

There was another ruler in particular that the king of Crecy did not like. This ruler had never helped him in times of war, so the king thought it was time to eliminate another one of his enemies. Freshly painted parchment was posted on every street corner announcing war on the enemy kingdom, and everyone was expected to register and try out for the army.

Even the king’s son tried out and showed the same skills he had used in carrying out past violence against his father’s enemies. One night during the feast the prince announced to his father that he had been accepted into the army. His father was so overjoyed that he missed the fact that a messenger had bolted through the large wooden doors to deliver the news that his enemy was at the gate. Immediately the king jumped from the table and dashed to his commanding officer. The proud official no longer seemed so noble. Instead, he appeared to have a look of sheer terror across his face. The king was astonished that his closest friend was so scared, but he soon found out why when a soldier ran in to tell them the news that several villages had been taken earlier that morning. Just as the shock registered in the king’s body, sounds of metal and wood clashing together boomed throughout the castle and lumpy objects flew over the towering walls.
To the king’s surprise, the enemy was firing the heads of the people who had been captured from the other villages. Soon, the stench of death and decay wafted through the large fortress and quickly weakened the morale of the king and the village. Just as it seemed as if the bombardment could not get any worse, a shower of arrows fell upon the castle splitting through glass, roofs, and flesh. A cloud of arrows sailed toward the main hall and the balcony on which the king and the commander stood. They quickly ran under cover, but it was pointless as the arrows pierced through the stained glass windows and into the dining hall where his queen sat feasting on that night’s dinner. As fast as lightning, an arrow found its way into the building and directly into the queen’s head. The king sat under a stone archway and stared in horror as he watched his wife slip to the floor with blood pouring from her broken skull.

The commanding officer quickly gathered his wits and ordered the king’s best men to drive away the intruders. The fierce king rarely lost a battle. After the tragedy in the great hall, the king spent many nights locked in the highest tower, muttering to himself in the dark, mourning his wife’s death. As he stood in the tower day after day, night after night, he looked out the window at all that he had accomplished, including all the graves sprinkled across an open field. He watched his motherless son march out of the castle preparing for the war that he had started. As the prince of Crecy marched out of the castle, he stared back at his grief-stricken father drowning in depression.

The widower stayed in his tower most of the time making believe that he had died with his wife in the catastrophe. While locked in the tower the king came up with a cunning plan to kill the leader of the army that had so brutally murdered his wife. He set out the next day on a white horse with a golden breastplate to protect its exposed and naked body. The king dressed that morning in his finest armor and road out of the castle in a great parade full of both horror and honor. The king of Crecy knew the journey would be long and hard, but when he thought of his lifeless wife rotting with his ancestors under the ground, he knew it would all be worth it.
The determined king road for three days, and on the fourth day he passed his army. The sight of the king gave the army hope that their king was not dead. A day later, he rode into a large field that had held a great battle many years ago and was very close to the enemy castle. As he rode swiftly across the field to avoid detection, he noticed a guard tower to the right of an old windmill. The guard in the tower noticed him, too, and recognized him as the King of Crecy. The enemy soldiers pulled a single crudely-made arrow from a tattered quiver, dipped it in oil and lit the tip on fire. As the king rode across the field the arrow shot up into the air without his detection and came down with such speed that it sliced through the king’s side like warm butter and sent the king to the ground along with his steed.

A mile off, the prince marched to the field quickening his pace when he saw their dead leader lying upon the soggy ground. The now-orphaned Prince of Crecy opened the top to his black, pointed helmet and stared at his deceased father while his army struggled to catch up. The young prince and his army soon conquered the tower from which the flaming arrow was fired, and they took the king’s body back to the castle to be buried next to his wife. The war was brought to a halt after the prince apologized for his father’s actions. The kingdom mourned the death of their leader but kept an eye on his son. In the end, the king’s son lived to a very old age and never made the same mistake his father did. The prince never entered into a war with any other land for as long as he ruled over Crecy.