Listen closely, mes petits enfants. This is the story of how your papa met your father. It's quite romantic, if I do say so myself.

...Are you ready? Très bien. Allons-y!

Once upon a time in a kingdom far away, because that is how all fairy tales begin, there lived a gorgeous prince. He was magnificently handsome and suave; all the lords and ladies swooned over his perfect visage, sexual prowess, rapier wit, and fully stocked wine cellar containing some very nice vintage Bordeaux. He was, in short, Adonis and Eros and Hermes and Dionysus all rolled into one, except he wasn't Greek. He was French, which was even better.

Prince Francis charmed his way throughout the court without a care for the broken hearts he left behind. That was his folly. For all his outward perfection, he was, to put it bluntly, a no-good Don Juan. (Except a Frenchman, not a Spaniard, oui?)

One day, he toyed with the wrong young lady. She grew vengeful once he had moved on, and so she hired the services of a mysterious wizard from an isle across the sea. She had the wizard craft a potion for her which would cause whoever drank it to make a fool of himself.

"I want him to lose all of his charm," she told the wizard. "I want him to self-destruct! I want him to see what it is like to be cast aside by everyone he has ever scorned!"

The spiteful woman had planned to slip this into the prince's wine at the next party. Indeed, she sidled up to him at that grand event with just that in mind.

They were in the ballroom, where there was laughter and revelry all around. It was a spectacular party being held in honor of the king's latest wife, the fifth such lady to hold the position of queen. Officially, it was for her birthday. Unofficially, it was being held in the hopes that she would stay married to the king longer than the other displaced former queens, for the king was as much a player as the prince. He was worse, actually, for Prince Francis had declared that he would never marry at all if he could not find The One, whereas the king married every lady who caught his eye and had dalliances with men on the side.

...It ran in the family.

But although everyone knew the secret behind the celebration, they all ignored it in favor of having a good time. Music filled the air; in the center of the room, dancers twirled every which way. The prince excused himself from his current belle and headed toward the refreshments for a flute of champagne.

At that moment, the woman tapped him on the shoulder. Francis turned around to converse with her, not noticing as she slid her hands down along his arm to flick the contents of a small vial into his drink. When she pulled away, Francis graced her with a stunning smile. He raised his glass to her - drank to love and luck, ironically - and then the poison was sliding down his throat, just as she'd planned.

The woman slipped away into the crowd, and was gone by the time the prince noticed anything was wrong. (In truth, he had laughed and joked with so many ladies that night that he had no idea who among them wished him harm.) It started as a tingling in his throat. He found himself feeling an odd scratchiness that wouldn't go away no matter how many times he cleared it. Francis considered leaving the party for a while, perhaps to check the medicine cabinet for a lozenge, but it was at this moment that his father called for him.

"Come, come!" the king said. "You have a magnificent way with words, my son. How about leading the toast?"

Francis bowed to his father and made his way to the raised platform at the front of the ballroom where the guest of honor was waiting. After all, he couldn't very well refuse a chance at being the center of attention... Francis merely raised his glass again, and all eyes were on him.

"Welcome, everyone! Tonight we are gathered here to celebrate a most gracious woman..." He paused to kiss the queen's hand. "And-"

The words caught in his throat. Francis tried surreptitiously coughing off to the side, but the itching kept growing stronger. He swallowed, and hoped for the best. "And this woman, this..." His voice cracking, Francis turned toward the queen and gave her a blindingly bright smile. "This charming, beautifuuULLLAAAAAARGH!"

Splat! Splat! Splat!

A slimy green torrent of amphibians exploded out of the prince's mouth and hit her right in the face!

"Yeeeeek~!" Her screams were followed by the horrified shouts and exclamations of all the other guests, as well as many of the frogs in her face diving within the valley of her cleavage and down into her dress.

"Oh, no! No, this cannot beeEEWAAAAARGH!"

Frogs shot out of Francis' mouth whenever he opened it. At first they dripped from his every vowel, splattered and squished on the floor, piled and hopped over the tables and on the dance floor, but then he couldn't even speak. He coughed, and frogs came out. He held his breath, but it made him feel like choking, so he coughed, and more frogs came out!

There were frogs in the hors d'oeuvres and frogs in the punch. Frogs climbing curtains and frogs climbing bouffants. Croaking frogs, singing frogs, drunk frogs floating dazedly in the wine. Frogs, frogs, frogs! Of every size and color imaginable, the little creatures completely swarmed the ballroom and poured out to the rest of the castle.

"Francis!" the king shouted, his face quickly growing red with rage. He stomped over, kicking aside hordes of poor frogs, smashing them and slipping on their entrails, and grabbed Francis by the collar. "You have ruined my wife's party!"

Francis opened his mouth to try to defend himself, but all that came out was a froggy croak like before, and then another frog squirmed its way out of his mouth by magic. It plopped onto the king's chest and hopped away as Francis held his hands over his mouth in horror.

This further incensed the king, who shook his son and shouted even louder. "You are banished, you hear me? Banished!"

One shake, two shakes, and then-

Poof!

On the third shake, the king was left holding a handful of rich cloth with no prince in sight. He was quite bewildered for a second, until a little green form tumbled out of the left leg of the prince's silk trousers.

"Oh! Well... At least I can speak again without frogs coming out of my mouth. That would be most awkward," the frog said. "I'm sorry about this, father. I have no idea why this is happening to me and-"

"Didn't you hear me? I don't care what's happening to you - you're banished!"

"Nononono. This isn't my fault! I'm- Listen to me-" Francis, now a frog, hopped alongside his father as best he could, feeling slightly queasy at seeing the corpses of his fellow froggy brethren strewn all across the floor.

"Ludwig! Take this thing and get rid of it!"

"Father! Father! Nooooo~!" Francis cried. "Nooooooo~!"

He scrabbled and struggled the best he could to get out of the guard's grasp, but Ludwig had been considerably bigger than him even in human form. Now he was a veritable mountain of a man, and Francis' soft frog-fists against his meaty palm were nothing.

Francis was summarily dumped in a box and jostled around. For what felt hours, he rode along in the darkness and cursed his horrid luck. At least Ludwig wasn't going to kill him, right? His father had said "get rid of it", which might have been a backhanded way of saying "Yes, of course you may slaughter my only son." And all because Francis had ruined his father's chances to score tonight? Truly, the king's priorities were off. He was thinking with the wrong head!

An eternity later, the box opened and Ludwig's giant sausage-arm reached in to grab hold of the prince-turned-frog. "Ow, ow, ow! Unhand me, you brute!"

"D-do we really have to do this, Ludwig?"

"King's orders. He'll cut you off, too, if you try to help."

Francis gasped upon hearing the voice of the other man conversing with Ludwig. It was Feliciano! He squirmed to face his cousin.

"Feliciano, please talk some sense into him! You can't turn your back on me, Feli, sweet Feli~! I'm your cousin! We're like brothers, aren't we? You wouldn't do this to your loving big brother Francis, would you?"

But plead as he might, Feliciano could not be swayed. "Ve~ I'm so sorry! I wish I could help, but... Oh, no, I've heard that the food there is terrible! I... I'll bring you pasta~! Waaah!" He wrung his hands and burst into tears as Ludwig manhandled Francis.

To his credit, Ludwig only flinched a tiny bit at Feliciano's wailing. He took in a deep breath and grit his teeth, fully resolved to follow his boss' orders. Without further ado, the brute drop-kicked the frog, punting the poor little amphibian all the way across the sea and onto a backwards island full of barbarians, by which I mean Englishmen. No, wait! I mean barbarians.

By the way, this story is in no way related to that nonsense that your Uncle Feli's stupid boyfriend Ludwig might try to tell you when you get older. I was not arrested for indecent exposure, and I did not meet your father in jail where he had been arrested for drunken disorderly conduct. That is a lie. Just because Ludwig is the sheriff does not mean the potato bastard doesn't have some sort of vendetta against me. He lies.