I have found it: the most pretentiously named product in all of human
history. It's not even something on a Starbucks menu, to my surprise.
It's called the "Alpha Omega Elite." While this sounds like a special
forces team founded by God during the Old Testament and comprised solely
of wrathful archangels brandishing mighty swords wreathed with
unquenchable eternal flames, that's not actually what it is. It's this thing.
Yup, that's a car seat. It costs a little under two hundred bucks and
the idea is that you strap your wailing infant into it so that when you
drive your car into a ditch because you were texting behind the wheel,
they are less likely to go through the windshield. It also has a cup
holder, because your infant knows how to operate one of those, and what
could possibly go wrong with leaving a beverage within reach of a child
in the car, anyway?
With a name like "Alpha Omega Elite" I expect this thing to detect an
impending collision and eject the baby through the sunroof an instant
before impact and parachute them to safety. It should then activate a
radio distress signal that will call a helicopter rescue team like I'm a
fighter pilot who has been shot down deep inside enemy territory, and
my baby/weapons-officer has vital reconnaissance photographs that will
turn this war around.
It is available in the following not-colors: Caroline, Lamont, Triton,
and Nitron. That's a girl's name, a boy's name, a Greek god's name, and a
Canadian professional wrestler's name, who played Sabertooth in X-Men.
Presumably you are supposed to choose the one that is most appropriate
for your baby.
I like to think that the prince
is a master strategist. They had a ball and invited all the girls in the
kingdom. This lets the prince see what all the girls look like when
they're dressed up and how well they conduct
themselves at social functions, but that's not actually all that
important. What he needed, after determining whether a girl could pass
muster as the public face of the monarchy, was an excuse to make a
surprise visit to all of these girls to see what they look like
when they're not doing their best to dress up for him, because he's a
smart enough dude to know that makeup and fancy clothes are how women
lie to you that they're attractive when they really aren't, and a
monarch doesn't stay in power for long without double checking
everybody's lies. The shoe is just an excuse to make these surprise
visits. If that hadn't happened, he'd have found something else.
At this point, he doesn't actually care that much about
Cinderella. She's just some girl he met at a party, one of a few who
managed to not make fools of themselves. The prince is keeping his
options open and checking out all the girls in the kingdom when they
aren't ready for him, to see what they really look like. That's just
gravy for the Prince, but what he's really doing is testing for
initiative and cleverness. The glass slipper is tiny and they aren't
exactly being careful with it, so breaking it isn't hard. A sufficiently
crafty girl could see that they wouldn't be able to fit into the
slipper and "accidentally" kick it off of that poofy pillow they were
carrying it on to guarantee its destruction, and then argue her case
that she was the one. Merely making the attempt to do this would show
initiative (and a willingness to lie, which is an essential trait for a
ruler), but nobody else even thought to try it.
So, Cinderella's evil step-people break the slipper,
and Cinderella presents a replacement which fits. Note that there is no
way for them to check that the slippers are actually the same size, and
nobody cares about that because it's irrelevant whether a girl would
actually fit into the slipper that was left behind. What matters is
whether a girl would be smart enough to break the slipper that was left
behind and then make the case that they were the mystery girl from the
ball. The prince was probably under the assumption that Cinderella had
her family break the slipper on purpose, which displays initiative,
cleverness, leadership, and the willingness and ability to lie
convincingly. At this point, the prince is actually smitten with her and
can hardly wait to take her back to the castle and start ensuring the
royal succession, but he plays it cool to see how she's going to wrap
things up.
Cinderella pulls the other slipper out of her dress.
The Prince figures this is all just going according to plan, because who
carries a single glass slipper around the house? Nobody, unless they
knew they were going to need to present it as evidence, and Cinderella
showed up a little late for the shoe-fitting event; the prince assumed
after the fact that she was going to get the other slipper, to make the
big reveal more dramatic. That's good enough for him. He marries her and
is disappointed when he discovers that she's not actually a master of
deception, but her ability to speak to mice and enlist the
aid of birds makes her an unexpectedly useful asset in running the
kingdom's spy network, so they have their happily ever after anyway.