Crown Him King: Being the Singular Tale of How the Illustrious Kingdom of Snettle-upon-Snee Went Through Four Kings in the Space of a Week

The Pitch

Nobody's mourning the death of King Hustlebee III for any of the usual reasons.

Weeping fills the streets. Black banners wave from all the windows. Yet Hustlebee III never showed care or compassion for his subjects, and he had the unfortunate habit of finding himself more concerned with the amount of riches in his vault than the abundance of crime on the streets. He was not a particularly great king—or an adequate one, for that matter. Why, then, all this mourning? Why the wailing and gnashing of teeth? Simple. Even though Hustlebee III was a terrible king, Rufus Hustlebee IV, crown prince to Snettle-upon-Snee, is going to do an even worse job than his father.

And nobody knows this better than Rufus himself.

***

The kingdom of Snettle-upon-Snee has a problem: Of the four children born to Hustlebee III (rest his soul), only Thomas, the youngest, is remotely prepared to rule. The other three are too quiet, too unreliable, or too female. But Snettle-upon-Snee follows a strict policy of succession, and doesn't allow heirs to abdicate. The obvious solution? The three heirs ahead of Thomas—including Rufus—will each have to fake their deaths, so that they can pass down the crown until it finally comes to rest upon Thomas’s brow.

Our pilot episode follows Rufus upon the eve of his father's death, as he realizes that he's next up for the throne. Poor Rufus isn't a leader; he's a tangled snarl of social anxiety wearing a jacket, and he much prefers reading to ruling. He has spent hours in the palace library looking for a loophole. Alas, no loopholes have appeared ... except one. So Rufus calls together the other three Hustlebee siblings, and together they plan three fake deaths. Now they just have to keep the rest of their father's court from catching on.

Fans of irreverent medieval fantasy like The Princess Bride and Galavant will enjoy Crown Him King and its tongue-in-cheek parody of court politics and succession stories.

The Characters

• Rufus Hustlebee IV, Crown Prince: First child of King Rufus Hustlebee III (rest his soul). The biggest bookworm since the invention of books. He would much rather open a bookstore and never look anyone in the eye ever again than declare war or levy taxes. Hustlebee III may have been selfish and shortsighted, but Rufus is terrified of taking his place.
• Franklin Hustlebee, Prince: Second child of Hustlebee III. He has all the dazzling wit and bright-shining charisma that Rufus lacks (plus a killer set of dimples). Unfortunately, he also has a gambling problem. If left to his own devices, he'll bet the entire palace in a poker game.
• Eugenia Hustlebee, Princess: Third child of Hustlebee III. She has an abiding love for animals and a relentlessly practical outlook on life. The most frustrating practicality of her existence is the fact that she's a girl, during a time when gender equality and anti-discrimination lawsuits haven't been invented yet.
• Thomas Hustlebee, Prince: Fourth child of Hustlebee III. He's reserved, but not as catastrophically shy as Rufus. Charming, but not as low on impulse control as Franklin. Practical, but not as female as Eugenia. And he's Snettle-upon-Snee's last hope.
• Vauquelin, High Priest: Former religious advisor of Hustlebee III and stickler for protocol. Nobody knows his first name—probably not even God. Despite Rufus's best efforts at digging through landholding records, Vauquelin only ever appears as Vauquelin. And he seems awfully suspicious of the Hustlebee siblings lately . . .

Overview of the Series

Over the course of the first season, Rufus, Eugenia, and Franklin each go through the process of faking their deaths—with varying degrees of ease.

• Rufus pretends to have been poisoned by a rare, glowing mold that grows on the oldest books in the palace library. In order to fake his illness, he needs several rare botanical medicines. And in the process of obtaining them, he meets an awfully pretty apothocary’s daughter—the only person he can look in the eye.
• Franklin hires a mercenary he met in a gambling den to fake-murder him. The only problem is that he starts to wonder if the mercenary is maybe a little too enthusiastic, and maybe he isn’t going to be only fake-murdered.
• Eugenia plans to “go out” surrounded by what she loves—her animals. An exotic panther will appear to attack her, when in reality she has trained her pet to only look like it’s angry. The plan takes hours of logistical planning but goes off without a hitch.

After his “death,” Rufus settles down with the apothocary’s daughter and sets up a successful bookshop in a small town. Franklin, upon realizing that the mercenary was, in fact, a spy for a rival kingdom, switches places with the spy and becomes a double agent. (The spy does a bang-up job of presenting to be Franklin and, summarily, pretending to be assassinated.) Eugenia at first tries to get a practical job, like gutting fish or farming mushrooms, but no one will hire her—considering the whole she’s-a-woman problem. Eventually, she finds her place as an exotic animal trainer, and no one can deny her skill.

Meanwhile, Thomas fends off Vauquelin’s increasingly suspicious inquisitions. He sees how much fun his siblings are having, living their lives away from the palace … and he starts to wonder: What if he faked his death too?