L'Antre de la Dragonne

In Hyrule, most people are well under the impression that princes are, in fact, impossible. the only male royals are the ones that marry into the family, and the idea of there even being a world where sons are born to the queen is sort of ridiculous. As far as the average hylian is concerned, the queens of Hyrule and the Gerudo of the desert have one thing in common; they always have female children.

But, naturally, we know that that isn't true.

No, in reality, as I briefly went over in A Crown Amidst Courage (chapters 7-8) the truth is that princes are real, but they aren't allowed to live for one primary reason: they cannot produce offspring reliably.

The way that magic works is that only a person with magic can have a magical child. A woman who has no magic cannot give birth to a child with magic, and if she and a man who has magic attempt to concieve, the results often are that the presence of magic newly inside of her in the form of the fetus will, in fact, slowly kill her. Magic is corrosive to those not built for it, and even those who have it stand a risk to being effected by it when it's suddenly increased. Bearing a child that will have at least as much magic as yourself will double the amount of magic inside of a person, which can, and has, overloaded their magic cores (something like a heart) many times in the past, and can kill both them and the infant.

Royals, being direct descendants of Hylia, have the strongest magic of anyone in Hyrule, so for the women, there is no worry of finding a husband who's magic may very well be stronger than their own. Perhaps their partner could, by some means, be equal to them in strength, but no one is stronger with magic than Hylia's young.

For a royal son though, his magic would be the same; stronger than all of his people. If we go with the concept of Legend being a prince, this would mean that he has the potential for much more magic than any non-royal Hylian could have (although I like making him magically disabled so...). For princes, this means that finding a partner with whom they can produce offspring is nigh impossible. They can risk it with those less magical then themselves, but the result is that most of their partners will die long before they're able to carry a child to term, even with the most careful of attention.

So yeah, Legend's doomed to never have direct descendants unless he can find a woman with a ton of magic.

Now, why would this lead to princes being killed? Well, put simply, because the process of having a child is so very difficult, and puts a terrible amount of strain on the royal mother's, it's very rare indeed for them to have more than a single child in their lifetimes. As soon as there is an heir, most royals cease any efforts to have children in order to prevent killing the queen. However, if there is a son born, then the bloodline is considered to be 'doomed to end' unless a daughter can be produced.

But if having a second child could kill the queen, how do they ensure that doesn't happen, and that they don't end up with a bloodline ending prince as the heir? Simple! They back Hylia into a corner and force her to have to provide them with a second heir. if there is no inheritor of the bloodline, the goddess will have to give them a new one.

So yeah, they kill off the boys the second they can.

Without an heir, the goddess does, always, provide a second child, and sometimes a third in the case that the second is likewise 'cursed'. Since females are more likely, statistically, in the royal family, one out of those three is usually a girl, and at that point, the queen will either stop immediately, or else often dies.

The thing is, the royal family is not aware of this. After all, there's no way that every queen for hundreds of thousands of years has consented to her children being killed if they come out 'wrong'.

No. There is, instead, a secret order within the walls of Hyrule castle, kept among the women of the high nobility; the Order of the Bee.

Bees, if you didn't know, will nurture the young of their queen as they see fit, feeding some to become queens and some to become workers. in the case of a queen bee being created, when she is hatched, she will fight against her mother for the right to the rest and, regardless of who wins, that winner will seek out all the unhatched queens in the nest and kill them off too.

Likewise, the women of Hyrule castle are the ones to determine whether the child of the queen is fit to be fed as a queen, or a corpse.

Most often, they are the attendants of the queen herself, and will be present in the birthing chamber. Because giving birth to a magical child is, in fact, more grueling a task than typical birth, the mothers are often so weak by the end, if conscious at all, that they aren't aware enough to know what's happening around them. Because of this, it's easy enough to ensure sons never take their first breath, be that by splitting their throats, suffocating them, or, in the case where the baby is born with complications, simply ignoring them until they pass on their own.

If the queen does ask for her child, they will wrap the dead-baby in clothes that hide whatever it was that they did to it, and show the queen with the announcement that the child was still-born.

In the case, however, that the mother is aware, or the father is in the room, or there is something that prevents the Order of the Bee from 'doing away' with the prince, then that is where they use their one other method.

Bees are famous, after all, for honey. And honey is toxic to infants. All it takes is 'a little luxury for the prince', and their problems are solved.

The Order of the Bee have existed since the first prince of Hyrul was born, raised, and managed to watch every single partner he had die until one of them did, eventually, bear him a child (premature) before also dying. That prince had twenty wives in the course of his life, and it was then that they figured out what was going to be a major problem with having godly descendants on the throne.

The women of this Order are no different than any other hylians, and the only way to identify them is by the presence of bee-themes jewelry which they will wear when at court. A lady with a bee broach will know that she is among sisters when she sees earrings, necklaces and rings bearing the same symbol as she wears herself, and often, any women of the court who lack these accessories will be snubbed or rooted out well before the birth of a royal child, to ensure that there is no interference with their work. These women will likewise bring up their daughters to their own beliefs, and ensure that said daughters are frequently around the new princess, as to ensure that they too may become court ladies one day and look after the next generation of Hyrule.

Do the men of Hyrule know of this practice? Most likely some of them do. Most ladies from The Order are married to knights and lords, and their sons are taught to "catch the ones that fall through the cracks".

It's not just sons either. If a child is deemed unfit for other reasons, be they birth defects, health problems, or some other cause, The Order will "handle" them, and ensure that a new child will be born to the royal family.

Because of what seems to be a rather high mortality rate for both mothers and infants in the royal family, royal children are not announced or celebrated until they have made it through their first year of life, and the people of Hyrule as a whole are left unawares of their existence until such a time as the royal family determines that they are out of the danger zone.

What happens to all the royals that don't make it though? They're hidden away of course. They cannot be buried in the royal graveyard because that would draw the attention of the people to the fact that so many of their royals die. Instead, 'unfit' children are often taken out to a the Lost Woods and buried at the base of a tree.