The tale starts with the birth of the brave and powerful King’s
son, driving yet another wedge between the king and his brother who – despite being physically weak – is the more canny of the brothers and resents the way in which he has
been marginalized. The King makes
matters worse as time goes on, teaching his son to treat the kind and
intelligent Court Advisor as a fool, publicly humiliating him by making him the
butt of practical jokes, and instead favouring the semi-coherent ravings of a
half-mad mystic as guidance for his rule.
As the Prince grows, he becomes ever more spoiled and
arrogant, going so far as to deliberately disregard the Advisor’s warnings in
favour of a frivolous adventure that takes him into a dismal slum populated by
the kingdom’s oppressed underclass. The young Prince trespasses and mocks the
conditions in which the underclass lives, and finds himself on the sharp end of
trouble when he’s cornered by a group of toughs. The King, however, has been warned by his
loyal Advisor and uses his own power directly to slap down the toughs and make
personal threats of retribution against the people of the slum if the Prince is
ever harmed.
Despite this near-miss, the Prince becomes even more
obnoxious, and at last the Royal Uncle can take no more – dissatisfied with
what he sees the future holding for the kingdom, he goes in secret to the slums
and makes contact with the fierce fascist revolutionaries there, harnessing
their ability to mobilize the downtrodden in support of his try for the throne.
Together, they formulate a plan to assassinate the Prince in a hunting “accident”
and when the King leaps to his son’s aid – ever the brainless “hero” – the Royal
Uncle takes advantage of the situation to kill the King as well.
The Prince survives this assassination attempt, but
horrified at what his incompetence has wrought, he flees his responsibilities
and eventually takes up with a pair of ne’er do well fools who spend their
lives in dissipation and idleness. As the Prince grows up in the company of
these sodden idiots, the Usurper’s grip on the kingdom begins to crumble:
He eliminated all the real challenges immediately of course,
using the muscle of his fascist allies, but the ladies of the court are
resisting him in every way they can, using their position to stymie attempts to
get the economy working properly after the confusion of the coup. Knowing that
only the Advisor has the brains to truly challenge him, he has him jailed and
kept nearby, but the Advisor turns out to be too loyal to the old regime and
willing to watch the kingdom fall apart rather than help the Usurper in any
way.
Desperate for some way to save her homeland, one of the
young ladies of the court flees the kingdom, throwing herself into self-imposed
exile as a way to hone her skills and perhaps return one day to dislodge the
Usurper from the throne. One of the two
dissipated fools who adopted the young runs afoul of her, and as she is about
to skewer him the Prince Prince – who has grown into a fine bully-boy to
protect his two “uncles” – arrives to save the day. The two cross swords, but
are an even match, having been trained in their youth by the same masters.
In the course of the battle she recognises him as the
rightful heir, and begs him to return with her to set things right. At first,
the Prince refuses – not only is he still wracked with guilt for his recklessness
and cowardice in running away from responsibility in the first place, but he
has grown used to the indolent lifestyle of his “uncles” and reluctant to make
any major changes. She puts her charms
to work, however, and ultimately seduces him before manipulating him into
joining her to at least see what has become of his kingdom.
Arriving, they discover that the ladies of the court have
given up all hope of help coming from outside, and have attempted a
counter-insurgency only to be beaten mercilessly by the fascists, who are now
straining at the flimsy leash the Usurper holds on them. Seeing that a full
fascist takeover is imminent, the Prince and his Consort organise the royals
for one last attempt at regaining power.
In the final battle, the Prince is brought face to face with the Usurper,
and is forced to kill him.
In the aftermath, the fascists are driven back underground,
those loyal to the Usurper are forced into exile, and the Prince re-establishes
the power of his line – reinstalling the Royal Advisor, but also using his
power to offer positions of authority to the dissipated “uncles” and other
cronies, and once again looking to the addled mystic for advice.
And so the cycle begins again.
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Source: The Lion King http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110357/
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