- "Most people think time is like a river, that flows swift and sure in one direction. But I have seen the face of time, and I can tell you, they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm. You may wonder who I am and why I say this. Sit down, and I will tell you a tale like none you have ever heard..."
- ―Prince of Persia[src]
Prince (he is given no other name in the series - except perhaps Kakolookiyam, which is, in any case, fake) is the main protagonist in the Sands of Time series.
BiographyPrince[]
Childhood
The Prince is the son of King Sharaman; he is also the younger brother of Malik. Growing up in the palace of Babylon, the Prince was trained as a warrior and acrobat, but was also known for his kindness and good heart, often going out to speak with his people. This is also where the Prince learned his parkour-like skills, his years of playing amongst the street and rooftops, pretending to be "all manner of creatures".
The Prince's First Battle[]
One year, the Prince traveled with his father to India where the Maharajah's Vizier promised the king to betray his master in exchange for his pick of the Maharajah's treasures.
Sharaman accepted, and the Persians managed to conquer the Indians. Seeking his father's favour, the Prince snuck into the treasure vaults and stole the Dagger of Time which he was allowed to keep as a souvenir, angering the Vizier.
Opening the Hourglass[]
The victorious Persians stopped in Azad, where Sharaman decided to present the Hourglass containing the Sands of Time to its Sultan. The Sultan marvelled at the glow within the Hourglass, and the Vizier claimed that this was because of a marvel that lay within, which could only be unlocked by the Dagger. The Prince unlocked it, much to the glee of the Vizier, and unwillingly turned the entire court into sand monsters.
The Grand Rewind[]
- "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
"
- ―To live forever, when those I loved are dead and I to blame!? I choose death...
[src]
Desperately trying to stop the infestation, the Prince took the Dagger of Time and met up with the now free Princess Farah, with whom he formed an uneasy alliance. The Prince and Farah passed through many dangers but finally they reached the Tower of Dawn where the Vizier kept the Hourglass with the Sands of Time. The Prince succeeded in returning the Dagger of Time back into the Hourglass, thus returning the Sands. This was followed by a momentous Grand Rewind and the Prince found himself back in the war camp of his father's army at the gates of India. However, this time the Prince went to Farah's room and told her of the events that happened before the rewind. Upon the conclusion of this tale, the Vizier entered the room, intending to kill the Prince, who had now exposed the Vizier's true nature as a traitor. After the Vizier's repetoire of spellcasting was at last exhausted, the young hero defeated the traitor by delivering a final deathblow. Furthermore, the Prince returned the Dagger of Time to Farah whilst retaining her medallion, leaving her wondering whether his unbelievable tale was true after all.
What the Prince is unaware of, however, is that by changing the timeline and defying his own death, he has brought upon himself the wrath of the guardian of time, who is now after him in order to maintain chronological continuity in the Timeline.
Malik's Kingdom[]
The Prince fights off Solomon's ArmyAdded by Persian PrinceDirectly after the events in Azad the Prince travels to his brother's kingdom to learn from Malik due to the fact that his peers believe he still has not been in a battle because of the Grand Rewind. When he arrives an army is attacking and the Prince gets caught in the middle of it. Malik eventually releases King Solomon's Army to get rid of the attacking army and the Prince has to reimprison it, as they turn everyone they touch into sand statues. Malik becomes Malik releasing the armyAdded by Joelio13infected by Ratash and is eventually killed by the Prince much to his regret. The Prince had to journey back to Babylon and tell his father, King Sharaman.
The Kingdom of Izdihar[]
Sometime after the events in Azad, the Prince finds a female djinn named Zahra in a marketplace. With the promise of mastery over death, a princess, and a kingdom to call his own, the Prince purchases her and together they set out to find the Prince's new kingdom. After traveling through the wilderness for several months, Zahra reveals the kingdom of Izdihar. Using a shrine at the entrance of the kingdom, Zahra forges a bond between herself and the Prince, granting him immortality and access to her djinn magic.
As he explores his new kingdom, the Prince finds that it has been overrun by a plant called The Haoma. After unwittingly releasing a sorceress by drawing the sword that imprisoned her, the Prince is attacked by a massive creature, and the drawn sword breaks off in the creature's body. Zahra believes that the broken sword is the key to clearing the infestation, and they set off in pursuit of the creature.
As they pursue the creature, the Prince encounters the freed sorceress, who claims that Zahra, having been driven from Izdihar long ago, cannot deliver on her promises. The sorceress later asks the Prince to join the Haoma, promising Izdihar, and eventually Persia and the world. The Prince refuses, and the sorceress vows that she will kill the Prince upon their next meeting. When pressed, Zahra reveals that her people were once charged with the protection of Izdihar, but they could not defend against the Haoma.
The Prince eventually corners the creature in the palace, and offers to help the creature, or at least leave him be, if the beast surrenders the broken blade. The creature refuses, and the Prince kills it. As the creature dies, it reveals that it was the last sultan of Izdihar, and begs the Prince to save his daughter from the Haoma.
Having recovered the blade, Zahra leads the Prince to a forge dedicated to the gods, which allows the Prince to repair the broken sword by proving himself worthy of wielding the power of the gods. After repairing the blade, the Prince and Zahra make their way to the heart of the Haoma, and confront the sorceress once more.
After the Prince kills the Haoma, the sorceress collapses, revealing the princess of Izdihar, Nasreen. As the Haoma drags Izdihar into the sands in its death throes, a vine latches onto Nasreen, and the Prince passes his djinn powers to the princess to save her life. Zahra attempts to guide the Prince out of Izdihar, but is forced to warp the Prince back to the shrine where they first forged their bond. The Prince, not finding Zahra with him, sets off into the desert where Izdihar once stood, alone.
Abduction By The Cult[]
Afterwards, the Prince is abducted by the cult. This cult brings the Prince to an ancient temple in India and uses his sword, which houses the Djinn queen Razia, to obtain a blood sacrifice from him. Using the Prince's royal blood and Razia's Sand powers, the cult liberates an evil force locked in the temple, erasing the Prince's memory and stealing Razia's powers in the process. The temple collapses as the evil is freed, and the Prince falls into a pit. At the bottom, Razia's spirit leads the Prince to his weapon, and tells him that the ceremony he was abducted for is the reason why he doesn't remember anything. She informs him further that he is a prince, and that he and Razia are longtime friends, which the Prince believes. He decides to follow her instructions warily, as he doesn't remember anything himself. They escape from the bottom of the collapsed temple and Razia tells the Prince that their quest must be to hunt down and kill the three members of the cult who abducted them.
The three cultists stole the Prince's memories and Razia's Sand powers during the ceremony and therefore mutated into gigantic Sand monsters.The Prince and Razia then set out across India to hunt down and kill the three cult members, which they succeed in doing. With all their powers and memories restored, they now set out to hunt down and kill resurrected leader of the cult, who is slowly conquering the world, starting with Babylon. They succeed in killing him, but at the cost of Razia's life. The Prince throws the sword in which Razia resided off of the top of a tower in Babylon, and it dissolves in the desert sand.
The Sisters Of Time[]
The story takes place after the prince's abduction. He returns to his kingdom, where he finds out that many of his cousins have mysteriously disappeared. The culprit is a powerful fire spirit who, legend has foretold, would eventually be defeated by a lonely hero with the blood of a king. Knowing this, the evil spirit has been killing every man with royal blood to ensure its survival. As the young and brash prince, you receive help from a female spirit by the name of Helem, who offers to lead you to the one responsible for hurting your family in exchange for helping her free her sisters from imprisonment.
Pursued by the Dahaka[]
Kaileena helped the Prince before he discovered her true. When we meet the prince again seven years later, we find that he has developed a more violent personality as a result of the events that have transpired. He has been continually hunted by the Dahaka, an ethereal being who seems to find him wherever he runs. Besides his dark, morbid, and restless mood, the Prince's facial features show that he has suffered from the crushing knowledge of his own inevitable doom.
In an act of desperation, the Prince seeks council from the wise old man that had raised him. It is with him that the Prince learns of the existence of The Island of Time - the birthplace of the Sands of Time, and governed by the Empress of Time. At the time Prince arrives to seek advice from the old man, the Tower of Babylon is starting to grow up from the ground as seen in one of the Warrior Within cinematics. Thinking only of his survival, the Prince sets sail for the island to prevent the sands from ever being created. His belief is that if the sands never existed then the Dahaka would have no quarrel with him. However, many obstacles have ominously materialized in order to prevent the Prince from reaching the island and his goal. First, his ship is attacked by an army led by a mysterious woman in black named Shahdee. During the ensuing combat, she manages to throw him overboard, ravage his ship and slaughter his entire crew. Luckily, the Prince manages to survive on a piece of wreckage, which incidentally brings him to the shores of the Island of Time.
Wandering along the massive cliffs, he encounters Shahdee once again, whom he chases deep into the fortress of the island. During his chase, he inadvertently follows her into one of the many time portals in the fortress, which connect the present with the past. Continuing his pursuit into the past, he finds Shahdee trying to murder an unknown woman in red named Kaileena. The Prince engages Shahdee once more in battle, kills her, and saves Kaileena. Denied an audience with the Empress of Time to state his case, the Prince is then faced with the task of activating the two island towers, which will unlock the doors to the Empress' throne room. The Prince eventually succeeds in reaching the throne room only to discover that Kaileena is the Empress of Time.
The Empress of Time[]
Kaileena has seen her doomed position in the timeline - to die at the hands of the Prince. Motivated by his persistence, she also attempts to defy her fate. Ironically, it is only because she attacks that the Prince kills her, fulfilling the timeline. At this point the Prince believed it was all over. But he could not have been more wrong: Kaileena's remains became the Sands of Time itself. So just like her, while the Prince sought to prevent the Sands from coming to be, it was his own actions that created them, leading him along his destructive path. Losing all hope, and still pursued by the Dahaka, the Prince eventually stumbles across a mural which shows the impossible: The tale of the Mask of the Wraith.
Using this artifact, the Prince becomes the Sandwraith, and is allowed one last chance to avoid his destiny. He heads out to prevent himself from killing Kaileena in the past, planning instead to take her with him into the present. This way the Sands of Time would not be created in the past, the Maharajah would never find them, and thus the Prince would never open them. Kaileena, however, does not belong in the present, and by saving himself the Prince has resigned her to the same stalking menace who once chased the Prince. In a last effort to save Kaileena, the Prince confronts the Dahaka, and finally defeats him by stabbing him through the skull with the mystical Water Sword, plunging the demon into the sea below.
Return to Babylon[]
After the Dahaka's defeat, together, the Prince and Kaileena set sail for Babylon, finally at peace. Wary of the constant peril he has faced, he looks forward to a glorious return to Babylon with his beautiful companion. He promised that no harm would come to her. During the journey, the prince stares at his reflection in Farah's medallion, the very medallion that he had used to protect himself from death for seven years. Now sure he was free of the Dahaka, the Prince drops the medallion into the sea, and proceeds to engage in sexual intercourse with Kaileena. However, unlike with Farah, he has not truly fallen in love with Kaileena, and despite the relative peace the Prince was now experiencing he had caused a greater disturbance to the timeline than he had realized. The old wise man had warned him: "Your journey will not end well. You cannot change your fate. No man can..."
Sailing swift and sure to Babylon, his comfortable home was nearly in sight. His sails unfurled in the light wind and the bow of his wooden boat pitched gracefully over the soft waves that rolled into Babylon's port. Sailing between the massive cliffs that protected his city from the open sea, the stones as old as the world marked the entrance to his home. Babylon and its signature tower appeared before him, but something was wrong. Relief became shock and panic when his small vessel was met not by cheers and the embrace of family, but by smoke, fire and arrows. The smoldering walls of his homeland had seemingly stretched up against him, vicious and foreign. He was not safe, nor was Kaileena beside him.
He came home seeking comfort and found only war, but war with whom? The Prince had little time to contemplate this as his ship was destroyed by a flaming catapult. Both the Prince and Kaileena struggled for their lives, clinging to the ships wreckage. They both washed ashore, separated, but alive. When the Prince awakens, he sees soldiers dragging an unconscious Kaileena away. Remembering his vow to protect her, the Prince vigilantly gives chase, not out of love, for he did not love her, but out of duty. The Dark Prince on the ThroneAdded by Draconai
The Dark Prince with the daggertail.Added by WillotakuThe Dark Prince
Making his way through the palace, he learns that his enemies' leader is none other than the evil Vizier he believed long dead. He realizes that without the Hourglass, most of the past events never happened. The Vizier had never craved the Maharajah's treasures, had not perished at the Prince's hand, but he still had his reckless ambitions of immortality. Following a voice from the Dagger, he had seized power and led the Indian army to Babylon. When the Prince finally finds Kaileena, she is held captive by the Vizier who plans on murdering her in order to obtain the Sands. The Prince leaps forward but is attacked from behind by Mahasti, one of the Vizier's lieutenants. With her Daggertail whip stuck in his arm, restraining him, the Prince is forced to watch as the Vizier, Dagger of Time in hand, murders Kaileena in front of him and unleashes the Sands of Time once more. The promise of power fulfilled, the Vizier stabs himself, gaining immortality and transforming his body into a giant winged creature. The sands, as before, sweep across the palace and infect all in their wake. As the terrace begins to collapse, the Prince grabs the dagger and falls into the darkness.
When the Sands were unleashed the Prince was also infected. However, for a then-unknown reason, the infection progressed much more slowly than in the other victims, giving the Prince the opportunity to grab the Dagger in time to halt (but not turn back) the progression of the infection. Unlike the Vizier's army, whom have all been wholly tainted by the sands, the Prince is still himself; the only initial sign of his infection is his Daggertail wound glowing with the sands. Soon, though, the Prince begins to hear a disembodied voice in his mind. The nameless voice initially acts helpful and guides the Prince, but over the course of the game its criticism becomes less and less constructive. It (eventually) identifies itself as the manifestation of all of the Prince's darkest attributes. This "Dark Prince" constantly taunts as well as advises the Prince but it seems to have motives on its own. During extreme states of emotion, the Dark Prince has the power to force a transformation in the Prince's physical body, turning him completely into a sand monster. As the Dark Prince, Prince uses the Daggertail Whip in his arm as a weapon and is much stronger and faster. But the corruption of the sands constantly drains his life. The Dark Prince implies heavily that, should the Prince's health and mind be exhausted while in this form, then the Dark Prince will gain complete control of the body and Prince's identity. It is only through contact with water that the Prince can revert to his normal state. While this duality proves to be of advantage at times, it becomes more of a problem when the Prince, fighting his way through the city, encounters this timeline's version of Farah, who has followed the Vizier seeking vengeance for her murdered father. A stranger to her once again, he tries to gain her trust by hiding his darker side - something he regrets after she finally finds out, though the Dark Prince insists that losing her was for the better. After many disturbances, both of them eventually reach the palace.
As they enter, however, the Vizier captures Farah and casts the Prince into the palace's well system, which is now drained and totally dry. After being in the Dark Prince form for an extended period of time, threatened to lose control, the Prince finds his father's body. Finally, he realizes the truth: He has been childishly running from conflict all this time, instead of dealing with his troubles like a man. Seven years of survival-oriented over-reliance on the sands' ability to turn back time cultivated the habit of erasing his mistakes rather than facing the consequences - the Prince had been hiding from his personal failures rather than accepting that they exist and moving forward. This inner denial, coupled with over exposure to the Sands of Time (and artifacts like the Mask of the Wraith) is what gave birth to the Dark Prince. Coming to grips with this, the Prince takes up his father's sword, which illuminates the darkness, and with his realization and full acceptance of all his mistakes and their consequences, the Dark Prince's influence over the Prince's body is destroyed and he is able to revert permanently to his normal form at will. The Prince then goes forth to save Farah.
The Ultimate Victory[]
The Prince defeats ZurvanAdded by DakovskiAfter a long fight, the Prince managed to destroy the Vizier with the Dagger of Time and thus freeing the city from the sand monsters. However, after slaying the Vizier and apparently losing the Sands' taint, the Dark Prince appears once more and, in a last attempt to regain control, pulls the Prince into a strange dream-like realm of his mind. The Prince chases his dark counterpart through shifting landscapes (including various locations from the past games, such as the magic fountain room from Sands of Time and the ship from Warrior Within). The Dark Prince intends on distracting the Prince in this world, playing on his insecurities and making him angry, but in the end he is thwarted by Farah's voice, who urges the Prince to let go of his hatred and turn away. Instead of fighting his darker side any longer, the Prince ascends a staircase leading into a bright light and the Dark Prince is left behind once and for all, forever alone, afraid, and shouting into oblivion, as the Prince awakens. As the two warriors look out over Babylon, Farah asks the Prince how he really knew her name; he responds by telling her the tale from the very beginning, bringing the story full circle.
Trivia[]
- The Prince always has a medallion on his chest except for the Sands of Time, but is always a different one; the one from Farah, the one from Solomon's Army.
- The Dark Prince made his first appearance in the true ending of Warrior Within which was echoed in his appearance after the Vizier is killed. He is shown hooded, he picks up the crown and gives his exact line from Warrior Within: "All that is yours is rightfully mine. And mine, it will be!"
- The Prince's favorite color is blue, as it is revealed in a dialogue with Farah in The Two Thrones. The Dark Prince hates blue.
- The Prince hates pomegranates due to the fact that they're messy and impossible to eat with dignity, revealed in the same dialogue with Farah as mentioned for his favorite color.
- The Prince was voiced by voice actor Yuri Lowenthal for The Sands of Time, The Forgotten Sands and The Two Thrones. However, Robin Atkin Downes was the voice actor for The Prince in Warrior Within.
- The prince has a different suit throughout Warrior Within, The Forgotten Sands and The Two Thrones, though he has the same brown-silver armor.