Your wholesome sleep paralysis demon

someone did something they shouldn't have

someone did someone they shouldn't have

separation anxiety

needs attention

Angus: Zargothrax quivers before him!

Me - "oh so thst means hes like....second in command after Angus?"

Gloryhammer - "He flies the submarine 🤗"

Me - "....what"

Gloryhammer - "Through space 🤗"

Me :

He is, as his name/designation suggest, a Prince. He probably has a whole team of repair robots on standby back in Auchtertool who patch him up whenever he comes back from battle.

He probably knows how to do some minor self-repairs just like an average person knows how to treat a cut or a minor burn, but doesn't see the point if he'll get a thorough maintenance when he gets back.

Perhaps he just sucks at taking basic care of himself like all people who believe that it is their purpose to help others and thus spare little thought for themselves. It's not that he forgets (although sometimes he probably does), it's just all those popup alarms and error messages feel a lot less important than what he's currently doing so he just dismisses them most of the time.

"He Has Returned" sings that he seeks out epic battles to escape his destiny, aka to reign forevermore.

Why would you seek out battles to escape eternal dominion?

He is the Robot Prince. The legend. The demigod. The hero. How often do you think he gets to rest? How often do you think he gets to do something he Wants, not what's Expected or Foretold or Programmed into his circuits?

How often do you think he flies into battle just a little too fast, just a little too recklessly, ignores just a little too many system errors, hoping deep down that maybe this will be the one? Maybe this time he will escape destiny? Maybe this time he will be allowed to rest?

At the end of the day, he survives. He drags himself back to Auchtertool and lets himself get cobbled back together to optimal functionality. He is, after all, the Prince. He is needed. For as long as evil still prowls the decimated lands of Imperium Dundaxia, he is needed to help whatever few survivors remain.

One could headcanon that he cooped up with some non-corrupted survivors and kept fighting. However, without regular maintenance (and possibly spiced up with some survivor's guilt) his functionality began to deteriorate until he started literally falling apart OR went into some sort of stasis. We've seen the pieces reassemble themselves automatically as soon as Angus gave him that true love's zzt, so either he can just rebuild himself but can't function correctly without all the pieces, or he just needed that spark of energy to jumpstart back to life. So maybe they just assumed he died and buried him while he was just in stasis and waiting for a jumpstart.

This is Hendersonverse, mind you, [OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER THAT THE MUSIC VIDEOS AREN'T CANON BEFORE SOMEONE COMMENTS IT HERE ANYWAY] so we don't know what he was up to in band canon. It's a hell of a good point, though, and I'm beginning to wonder what when exactly "He Has Returned" is set. The war for time? The battle raging over the sea? Blasting higher, into space? Now the cosmic dust has cleared? He'll fight until he's finally dead? So he hasn't died before. HHR is a prequel to Maleficus, then, because that's when he DIES dies.

Unless... That was 38B Tooley. We don't know what happened to prime timeline Tooley. What are the odds that we'll see him again? 👀👀👀👀👀