Prince Charming Wannabe
A Wrong Genre Savvy Hopeless Suitor who fantasizes that he's the Prince Charming or Knight in Shining Armor who will effortlessly sweep the heroine off her feet and rescue her from a life of dullness and/or misery...all the while ignoring or completely oblivious to the fact that the girl absolutely hates him.
Why can't he see that? Because he's either an egotistical Hypocrite long overdue for a Heel Realization or he was Born in the Wrong Century and his ideas of what it takes to woo and win the girl are outdated and insulting. Contrary to what he thinks, she is not Playing Hard to Get and she's not flattered by the fact that I Love You Because I Can't Control You. Nevertheless, he insists he's the answer to all her dreams and hopes and desperately wants her to let him whisk her away to live Happily Ever After, unable to see that he's not a welcome Prince Charming, but an unwelcome Stalker with a Crush.
This trope is similar to the more cynical ways to play a Dogged Nice Guy; both tropes are about well-meaning, sincere love interests with wrongheaded ideas about what constitutes romance and how their object of affection actually wants to be treated. Compare with Casanova Wannabe and Small Name, Big Ego who exaggerate their skills with the ladies and have an over-inflated ego respectively.
Not to be confused with Prince Charmless, which refers to literal princes.
Anime and Manga
- Tatewaki Kuno from Ranma ½. Both of the girls he obsesses over can't stand him and clobber him every chance they get.
- Played for comedy, Kyonosuke Kaoru is this for Yukiji Katsura in Hayate the Combat Butler. She actually seems to have a fondness for him, but he seems to think he needs to sweep her off her feet which causes her to reject his advances.
Film -- Animation
- Gaston from Disney's Beauty and the Beast.
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Gaston: You know, Belle, there's not a girl in town who wouldn't love to be in your shoes. This is the day your dreams come true! |
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- In the stage version, he even has a song called "Me", extolling his greatness and how lucky she is to be the object of his affections. (This is in addition to "Gaston" from the film, where the rest of the town extols his virtues, although his plans to marry Belle only come up in the reprise.)
- And as egotistical as he is at the start of it, he gets worse later on in the movie when he goes into full-on Yandere mode threatening to throw her father into the asylum if Belle won't marry him and trying to kill the Beast who he feels is an obstacle to what he sees as his. Asshole indeed.
- Jean-Bob from The Swan Princess.
- Shrek
- Lord Farquaad.
- As is fitting for a Deconstruction of fairy tales, Prince Charming, but only in Shrek 2.
Film -- Live-Action
- Biff Tannen from the Back to The Future trilogy.
Literature
- Henry Crawford of Mansfield Park—self-affirmed Ladykiller in Love...who runs away with the already-married cousin of the girl he considers himself engaged to (regardless of said girl's thoughts on the matter).
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Henry: I will make her very happy, Mary; happier than she has ever yet been herself, or ever seen anybody else. ...Yes, Mary, my Fanny will feel a difference indeed: a daily, hourly difference, in the behavior of every being who approaches her; and it will be the completion of my happiness to know that I am the doer of it, that I am the person to give the consequence so justly her due. Now she is dependent, helpless, friendless, neglected, forgotten. |
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- Walter Hargrave of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:
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"By all means, leave him! cried he earnestly; But not alone! Helen! Let me protect you!" |
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"Never! while heaven spares my reason, replied I, snatching away the hand he had presumed to seize and press between his own. But he was in for it now; he had fairly broken the barrier: he was completely roused, and determined to hazard all for victory." |
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"I must not be denied!" exclaimed he, vehemently; and seizing both my hands, he held them very tight, but dropped upon his knee, and looked up in my face with a half-imploring, half-imperious gaze. You have no reason now: you are flying in the face of heaven's decrees. God has designed me to be your comfort and protector - I feel it, I know it as certainly as if a voice from heaven declared, "Ye twain shall be one flesh" - and you spurn me from you -" |
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"Let me go, Mr. Hargrave!, said I, sternly. But he only tightened his grasp." |
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- Lord Arlington from Lousia May Alcott's The Inheritance, who finally experiences a Heel Realization long after causing the heroine plenty of grief with his unwelcome advances and repeated marriage proposals.
- As indicated by his nickname, "Prince" Charlie of Eight Cousins and its sequel Rose in Bloom.
- Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice - though his motivation is less knight-errant than greatest village parson ever, to the great Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
- Geis in Against a Dark Background.
- Brian de Bois-Guilbert in Ivanhoe just can't seem to wrap his head around the fact that "Marry me, and I'll save your life; refuse, and I'll let you die" is something villains, not heroes, do.
Live-Action TV
- Noah's Arc: Millionaire rapper Baby Gat is this to Noah, trying to rescue him from his "mundane" life.
Music
- Jonathan Coulton's "The Princess Who Saved Herself":
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Princess: Hello? |
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Western Animation
- In the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode "Frankie My Dear", an imaginary Prince Charming is left at the home to be adopted, but falls in love with Frankie and tries to woo her. Unfortunately, he has to compete with Mac, Bloo and a pizza boy, all of whom have a crush on her as well. They all crash Frankie's dinner date with her actual boyfriend who turns out to be a jerk.
- Zap Brannigan in Futurama.
- Pierce Thorndyke III, in Beverly Hills Teens.