- [first lines]
- Merlin: [heard chuckling while someone unseen moves chess pieces until the red king knocks over the white] Man's fate. What a strange riddle it is. How few clues there are to explain the random ways in which men seem to begin and end, to live and love, to succeed and fail. Each individual destiny interweaving invisibly with the next, fashioning the beautiful and terrifying tapestries of our lives, shaping our passions and our destinies. Extractions of such strange and unexpected prices, demanding that in order for one man to flourish, another must perish.
- Prince Valiant: [sitting up in bed] FATHER!
- King William: The man comes without honor. What men we have will fight with hearts full of courage and truth. Those Cynan brings with him come with their souls stripped completely naked by greed.
- Prince Valiant: Come quickly! We're approaching -
- [the ship runs aground]
- Prince Valiant: Land.
- Queen Briana: So I see.
- Queen Briana: Valiant, what manner of place is this?
- Prince Valiant: Just an ordinary sort of place.
- [a creature attacks him; he kills it]
- Prince Valiant: Perhaps I was mistaken. This place, whatever it may be, is far from ordinary.
- Prince Valiant: I am a man now, Father. And now with all my heart I wish to be as good and just a man as you have always been.
- King William: Goodness, truth... these things brought me into exile and ruin.
- Prince Valiant: It doesn't always have to be so, Father.