Meanwhile...
One problem with having a father named Mad Phillip is that you can never be sure
who your dad will have taken into the marriage bed
to begat you with.
In the case of Mad Phillips son the lucky bride had been a shapeshifting
horse-troll woman named Lady Vargeisa.
So the wedding bells had rung 22 years earlier whilst Mad Phillip had still been in the Tower
and so Prince Marc the offspring of a shapeshifting horse-troll woman and a
mad human had been born and spent his childhood in the troll tunnels
that run underneath the Tower.
I have absolutely no clue what he looked like in his natural form but his mother Lady Vargeisa had
quickly taught her son that
if he wanted to get out and about out of the Troll Tunnels and past the human guards in the Tower
it helped to appear like a lady in distress.Marc had avoided this indignity to his being for years
even though he had his horse-troll mothers shapeshifting power and could have gotten out and played with the dwarves
it he'd wanted to.
He hadn't wanted to.
However when Azeroth the Merciless Orc had swept in and murdered Mad Phillip 's brother Good King Stephen and Queen Matilda and the rest of the
Royal lineage,except for Princess Catherine,
politics got complicated since Azeroth the Merciless Orc had staged the murder scene so it looked like
Mad Phillip had done the deed.
Though the peasants didn't know all there was to know about
Mad Phillips secret marriage to a horse-troll woman
they'd incorrectly connected what rumours and facts there were.
Whilst honourable Mad Phillip seethed with rage at the indignity done to his honour
he had to listen to gossip that said he was
a shape shifting transvestite who got around as a mare at nights.
So despite the reluctance on the part of Lady Vargeisa and her
mongrel son Prince Marc
Mad Phillip had pulled strings to get his wife and heir out from under the Tower.
So it was the two were being escorted by pony legionairres riding feral dragons
near the Cursed Well that fateful day.
( AN Set around 1135AD in England
with a nod to Tolkien's dragon Smaug who always seems obsessed with dwarf ridden ponies.So I didn't say it notion is framed Mad Philip wanted revenge on
Azeroth the Merciless Orc for pinning the murders on him