Greetings from your team at The Royal Mini-Guide, and welcome back for our final release: How to Say Farewell.
How does one deal with saying goodbye? We’ve been asked this question many a time– and we’re now having to ask it (and similar questions) ourselves: for a proper, royal goodbye, does one need send-off flowers, a tearful poetry session, or chocolates? And, can one still have chocolates even if it’s not necessary?
All good questions– and we know many more abound. But fear not– this article will walk you through each step of the classic Dramatic Farewell Sequence, and here’s some good news for you: you won’t actually have to say goodbye to true love at the end of your fairytale’s seeming adieu! (Because, let’s be honest, everyone knows the best way to say goodbye is to avoid saying goodbye altogether.) With that, we give you our formula for the perfect farewell sequence!
Criterion #1: A Chance Meeting in some dreamy abandoned forest leads to the deepest connection you’ve ever had with another human being. You both quickly fall in love and decide to get married– this usually happens within a couple of days, although, if you’re the type to really bide your time and hold out, it could be a whole week before you decide to commit yourself and your eternal devotion to a complete stranger. (See here for the details on how to structure those pre-wedding days.) Everything is set up for you two to be together forever, and you’re happily dancing with your woodland BFFs and writing an opera about your future, when…
Criterion #2: The Dramatic Exit strikes. One of you is somehow lured away to chase a runaway sister or attend an inconveniently placed sweet-sixteen-slash-betrothal-to-someone-else party, and suddenly your beautiful future on Broadway-but-in-the-forest falls into jeopardy. And, of course, we know one of your local villains is behind this somehow, thanks to the dramatic music cued up every time their name is mentioned. (Although it really would be nice if the aforementioned villain would check your calendar before deciding to curse you for eternity or slay you via poisonous pippin. To all you evildoers– please wait until after your royal target’s date to execute your world takeover. It’s terribly impolite to interrupt their oblivious romance with reality.)
Once all is decidedly lost, we segue to Criterion #3: Zero to Hero, where our protagonist dons shining armor or a chic cloak and steels him- or herself for the ultimate showdown. Cue Criterion #4: one or both of you make an attempt to Salvage the Relationship, which we all know will be unsuccessful. What would society be coming to if royals relied on logic and reason to fix their romantic dilemmas? But it’s okay– all this relationship drama really is adorable.
Until it’s not. Yes, things have now become significantly (Criterion #5:) Less Adorable Now. In fact, while you were dodging your antagonist’s attempts to ambush you with a giant hammer or lock you in an ice-cold room, your relationship has reached the end of the line. Evil is about to triumph and leave you and your significant other in eternal anguish about whether to change your Facebook status from “One true love” to “It’s complicated.” (Our buddy the villain is also about to take over the world and potentially vaporize all civilization as you know it, but that’s less important.) Luckily for us, (Criterion #6:) True Love Always Wins Out! That’s right, in the face of you and your true love, evil had no way to stand against you. (Quite literally, in Mother Gothel’s case.) It doesn’t matter whether or not the aforementioned villain had a top-notch world-takeover plan because true love is like a good lawyer– it finds all the loopholes to thwart evil and costs nothing except your soul!
We hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of The Royal Mini-Guide… because it is, unfortunately, our last. We, your writers at The Royal Mini-Guide, inform you with deepest sorrow that we must now depart, never to be heard from again. (Unless you hear us singing one day in some lovely abandoned-tower-type location and come to save us, bearing mint chocolate brownies, in which case you are heartily welcomed to hear from us again.) Our valiant efforts to defend you from your foes of bad advice, social awkwardness, and an eternity of not knowing how to handle day six of the courtship process have continued faithfully up to this day.
We now urge you to arm yourselves with the advice given you thus far! You’ll certainly need it in the dark days to come. What a tragedy it is that the critical criterion of our perfect farewell formula, True Love Always Wins Out, has failed, for the first time in history, and when your dire circumstances most demanded it, no less…
Photo Credits: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3i3mu0