Once upon a time there was a kingdom ruled by three kings. Each king had one daughter, and each daughter bore a prince.

Peace in the kingdom was fragile. The kings despised one another, and each punished his daughter for that hatred. The three princes—once playmates and friends—were forced to watch their families suffer, then to grow up apart.

Decades passed. The kings died under mysterious circumstances almost at once, and the people learned a lesson: never again would three kings share a throne. The princes, now older and each holding a portion of the realm, turned their quarrel into war.

The first prince presented himself as devout—compassionate, kind, generous—but behind the sanctimony he loved killing. He had even murdered his own mother. Those who knew him best whispered that he loved blood more than God.

The second prince was sly and sharp, with serpent eyes and the bulk of a bear. He kept his people prosperous; none among them wanted for anything. His followers served him, and his mother lived in chains as a slave. Wealth and cunning made his rule feared and admired.

The third prince was fat on leisure and slow with thought. He urged idleness; his people starved, then turned to banditry. His mother, broken by grief, threw herself from the castle window. The prince fed her body to the starving crowds who had become cannibals. He was a pitiful man who spent his hours in wine and foolish songs.

He sat on his small throne one night, drinking and mumbling, "This throne is too small; my wine is tasteless." He hurled his cup to the floor and spilled the wine. His servants looked on, barely disguising their disgust.

His most trusted squire knelt and spoke plainly. "My lord, you are a fool. You have ruined what your father built and wasted everything. You have shown no mercy. Cursed be the man who sits this throne—may he burn."

Those were the squire's last words; the foolish prince had him killed.

Alone in his empty castle, the prince grew thin and hollow. Days bled into one another. Even when sleeplessness and hunger gnawed at him, he did nothing. Boredom ate at his bones until, at last, he snapped.

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop," he sneered, then laughed as if possessed. Like a wind turned to fire, he set the kingdom ablaze.

Malice spread: hatred, hunger, fear, and sin. No force stayed him. He laughed as smoke blotted out the sky. He laughed as his countrymen burned. He laughed at those who had left him to suffer, and when the flames consumed him, he laughed still.

The first prince bled to death, whispering, "I don't want to die." The second prince loomed over him, caught in the blaze, murmured, "I'm sorry, Mother," before the flames took him. The kingdom lay in ashes.

Idle hands had destroyed their home. An idle mind can hollow the strongest of men; the devil finds the easiest den in a man who does nothing. The kingdom of kings was no more.

I pray never to see its like again.

This is the tale of three princes whose lives were consumed by despair.