Warmain Wielding the Test of Gender

Listen:

I am a Prince.
I refuse to abide by compromise.
I will live with passion and purpose and courage.
I will make noise and meaning even if it burns me away.

Once, I lived in a tall spire of searing light.
The light promised sterility, stasis and the yawning of eternity.
It said:
The way you are is wrong.
Destiny demands that you be something else.
Cut away your loves and your petty failings and become light like me.

I said no, and on that day I became a Prince.

It hurt.
Nothing has ever hurt as badly.
Before I was a Prince I needed the light.
When what you are is loathsome to yourself, the light is a comfort.
The soft silk whisper of:
"Be as I would have you be."
"You can change if you do what I say."
Is balm to the heart that hates itself.

But I wasn't really loathsome.
Nobody is.
At their core, everyone has something true and wonderful.
It might be a Prince.
It might be something else.

Whatever it is, let nothing say that it should not be.

(I use she/her pronouns. "Prince" is a shorthand for many things. "Male" is not among them.)