Shakespeare one shots

Hamlet is, after all, a prince

Exactly what the title says. Alongside being rich, hot, funny, smart, and occasionally competent, Hamlet is (though I sometimes forget about it because he's such a dumbass) royalty, and that gives him a whole myriad of strings to pull as he pleases.

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Hamlet, by his own opinion, was simultaneously the most perfect and most ill-suited for his title. Of course, he always failed to take into account his baby-soft skin, his large collections of books, his ability to talk to anyone he wished to at any time, and his wardrobe which cost more than the average Danish farmer made in a year.

All of the above tipped him more toward perfect, but he resolutely clung to his fierce hatred of all the pomp and circumstance. He wished for the crown but was too lazy to walk down the red carpet to fetch it and would instead whine about it from the entrance hall, draped over a velvet chaise lounge.

Per his aforementioned ability to talk to anyone he wished to at any time, he had barged into a professor's office long after hours and bribed himself an extension on a particularly troublesome essay. He was gloating to himself for this accomplishment, smiling a smile of cat-like smugness, and fussing over the clasp on his cloak.

It was winter at Wittenberg and there were no gaudy bearskin rugs to lay on as there were back home in Elsinore, so all the rich young bastards were making do with fur-lined everything and pretending that shivering in silence was noble.

His princely, fur-lined boots crunched over the snow of the courtyard, leaving behind indents and then large sweeps of cloak among the patterned footprints set over the course of the day. As much as his more regal side hated to admit it, the many childish parts of him were positively sobbing about how the wind bit at his face, so he almost mistook it for his own internal monologue when he heard a cry of distress.

Almost. Hamlet looked up, and wasn't terribly surprised to see a group of three boys in fur-lined cloaks (of slightly worse quality than his, he noted, though they obviously couldn't help it) jeering at a lad without a cloak who was frantically trying to rescue a small explosion of parchment from the snow.

The cloakless one dutifully ignored the synonyms of "dirty peasant" thrown his way, blowing snowflakes off his papers and replacing them carefully in his bag. Hamlet mentally commended him for his dedication, and was about to continue on his way when one of the cloaked boys ceased his name-calling to land a hard shove on his victim's shoulder, sending him sprawling backwards into the snow.

Hamlet could not imagine the discomfort of laying in snow without the proper clothing, and the boy's evident lack of anything warm aside from the knitted scarf around his neck nearly gave the prince a cold just thinking about it. So, figuring he couldn't get into too much trouble, he fixed a bored look on his face and sauntered over.

"Ho there," he called, causing all four fellow students to look his way. He smiled under the attention. "Having a snowball fight, are we?"

Hamlet wasn't sure whether it was his distinctly sardonic tone or the fur-lined everything he was wrapped in, but the cloaked boys seemed to decide he was friend rather than foe.

"Just a little horseplay, my lord," said one of them. "Apologies if we disturbed your peace."

"Oh, not at all," said Hamlet. "My peace has been overdue for a disturbance. I don't believe I've made your acquaintance?"

The cloaked boys recited their names and titles (Basil, Maynard, Remington) with the proud tone only achieved by people with lofty expectations and no will to reach for them, but fell awkwardly silent when Hamlet looked expectantly at the cloakless boy on the ground, who had recovered himself and almost all of his parchment.