Every royal family has its share of buried secrets. This list provides 100 intriguing secrets a royal family might be hiding from your players.
| d100 | Entry |
|---|---|
| 1 | The princess' new boyfriend looks suspiciously like the son of an enemy ruler. |
| 2 | A family friend was seen fraternising with the prince and is now pregnant. The king wants her executed, but the queen wants the prince to marry her before she has the child. |
| 3 | A special flower used in the anniversary of the Queen has not been growing lately and the date is quickly approaching. The court has not told the king yet, because they fear how he will react if there aren't any of these flowers at the celebration. |
| 4 | One of the royal family's servants is a spy for a neighboring kingdom, trying to get as much intel on them as she can. |
| 5 | There is a rumor circulating that the royal family's pet peacocks are actually people who have been polymorphed that made the family angry. |
| 6 | A green hag has been whispering to the prince through a small hole in the wall. He tells everyone about his 'friend in the wall', but everyone chalks it up to an imaginary friend. The green hag starts telling the kid to do increasingly worse things, ultimately leading to pushing his father down the castle stairs. |
| 7 | Everyone in the royal family except one person has become ill with a fatal illness. |
| 8 | The king and queen have decided to become vegetarians and have banned the consumption and selling of meat throughout the entire city. This has made a LOT of people very angry. |
| 9 | Every month, the king dresses in commoner's clothing and visits his favorite bar in the seedier parts of town. There, he finds out what people TRULY think of the king. The next day, he has anyone that talked ill of him executed. |
| 10 | There is a rumor circulating that the prince has gone insane. Word has spread that he calls every flower in the courtyard his 'princess', and is inconsolable when one of them dies. If anyone in the kingdom picks one of the flowers from the royal courtyard, it is an offense punishable by death. |
| 11 | Once it was revealed that a string of corruption led straight back to the king, the entire Royal Guard quit at the exact same time. This leaves the palace open to all sorts of attacks! |
| 12 | Someone has escaped the royal torture chamber and is spreading word about the inhumane methods of torture that are being commited on even the smallest of criminals throughout the city. |
| 13 | The king and queen have two sons who are both equally qualified to take over the throne. One of them would use the throne for good and just purposes, but he wishes to become a traveling bard. The other wants to send the country into war. |
| 14 | There has been an increasing number of rebellions rising up lately. Secretly, the king is funding these uprisings because he doesn't want to be king anymore. |
| 15 | The royal family owns a chicken that they believe is oracular. Every single royal decision that is made must first be answered by the chicken. |
| 16 | The Queen has a soft spot for small, yappy dogs. She has dozens of them and the Royal household is overflowing with the beasts. They bark at all hours, bite everyone who isn't the Queen, and the maids are nearly ready to quit due to all the extra cleaning necessary. In addition, the whole royal palace seems to smell like urine. |
| 17 | The queen has found herself pregnant, which should be impossible because the king has been away for a few months. The birth of the baby was traumatic, but the mother and baby are reported to be in good health. The queen is very quick to take offense to any hint of slander related to the baby's... demonic appearance. |
| 18 | The prince's beloved cat has passed away and he demands that everyone in the city attend the funeral. |
| 19 | Rumors have been circulating around the city that the royal family partakes in cannibalistic acts after one of the maids told her friends that she heard the prince say to his friend 'I can't wait to have you for dinner!'. |
| 20 | The king cannot have children, and is searching the city for a new heir. |
| 21 | The king was cursed by a witch and physically cannot refuse any request starting with 'Would you kindly..?' |
| 22 | There are still a few worshippers of the Old Faith within the royal court, the queen being one of them. She is instructing the heir prince in the old ways, unbeknownst to the king. Meanwhile, the youngest prince is studying to become a priest of the New Faith with the king's brother, the bishop. |
| 23 | Having suffered a terrible accident in battle, the king is left mutilated beyond recognition. Somehow, he survived. He threatens anyone who dares mention his appearance with execution. |
| 24 | The royal family is in debt beyond comprehension, and the king is beginning to sell off his own staff as slaves to a neighboring kingdom. The news is discovered when the slaves overtake one of the slave ships and return to the city. |
| 25 | The king is depressed and desperately wants to retire, but he has no heirs to the throne. |
| 26 | The noble families of the city are trying to pressure the king into passing a law that will be devastating to commoners. The only person holding the king back from moving forward with it is his mistress, who is a commoner herself. |
| 27 | One of the king's daughters turned to stone in the middle of the night, to the shock of the royal family. Upon closer examination, it was revealed in her journal that she met a man in a long brown robe in the forest just a day earlier. |
| 28 | The royal family has in their possession a magical book that automatically writes out the name of every future great king and queen when they are born. The book hasn't written a name in a few decades, and the king is on his deathbed. |
| 29 | The ancient tapestries in the royal courthouse that depict the original rules of the city are forgeries. One of the previous kings pawned them all off and the originals are nowhere to be found. |
| 30 | The court is baffled when the massive iron throne turns up missing one morning. How could anyone have got the throne past guards, let alone moved the thing? |
| 31 | During court, one of the members of the royal family is revealed to be a grotesque extra-planar creature when their magical disguise fails. Unbeknownst to the public, the entire royal family is actually an alien race that has been ruling the land for decades. |
| 32 | The entire royal family is actually a family of lizardfolk who came into contact with a powerful magical object that can disguise you as any form you wish. |
| 33 | The king believes in the justice of chance above all else. All crimes are effectively boiled down to a single coin toss - are they innocent and let free, or are they guilt and sentenced to death? |
| 34 | The king was suddenly assassinated in his sleep one night. Local wizards are communing with him through 'Speak With Dead' spells, but he won't reveal who killed him, in fear that his family will be held accountable for his shady past. |
| 35 | The king makes every decision by pulling a random card out from a deck of cards. If he pulls an even card, the answer is 'Yes', and if he pulls an odd card, the answer is 'No'. Amazingly, the city has been doing amazingly since he adopted this policy. |
| 36 | The royal family accountant has secretly been embezzling small amounts of money from the kingdom for the last decade. They have amassed a small fortune and no one is any wiser. |
| 37 | The queen has been captured by the ruler of a neighboring kingdom.. for the seventh time this year. |
| 38 | The royal family's 'cat' is actually the king's first wife, who was the victim of a wizard's spell gone wrong. The rest of the family has no idea, and the king eventually remarried after his wife was never found. People wonder why the cat doesn't like his new wife! |
| 39 | The king's mother passed away last night and while going through her things, they found her journal. In it, she confesses to adopting the king when he was an infant, because she could not have children. |
| 40 | The royal family seems like a hot mess from the outside, but they’re all faking it to hide the true extent of their power and influence. |
| 41 | Two royal siblings are incestuous and everyone in the city knows it. Plot twist: they aren't, and it's all a vicious rumor. |
| 42 | Someone has been vandalizing all of the Royal statues throughout the city! Secretly, the prince has been doing this, to shake things up a little bit in his boring life. |
| 43 | The king has gone mad after opening an arcane tome from the royal library that had been forgotten about. The queen is running the kingdom until he has been cured. |
| 44 | The queen has publicly announced that she wants a divorce from the king, but did not realize that royal divorce is illegal. |
| 45 | The king puts on a yearly festival to celebrate his birthday. After a few drinks, one of the commoners at the festival drunkenly shot a bow and it hit the king right in the chest. |
| 46 | The princess was born under a red comet and did not cry during her birth. Everyone in the kingdom thinks she doesn't have a soul. |
| 47 | The queen writes smutty stories in their spare time. Their pseudonym name is actually really famous, but the royal family wouldn't be taken seriously if anyone found out. |
| 48 | The prince killed a man on a whim near the docks last week, in front of everyone. The citizens are terrified of him and his cruelty, and fear the day he becomes king. |
| 49 | An evil usurper took the throne and killed all of the heirs, except a baby who was valiantly rescued by a handful of the servants. Now, the heir is gathering an army to take back the throne. Plot twist: the baby WAS killed, and a random child was substituted to give the resistance legitimacy. |
| 50 | Someone wrote a derogatory phrase on the royal palace door in red paint and the king is personally seeking revenge for this act. |
| 51 | A mystical Fey creature has cursed the children of the royal family to only speak the truth and they’ve all been mute for weeks to guard a horrible secret. |
| 52 | The body of a recently deceased king begins walking around the crypts in the dead of night. He doesn't say anything, and after a few hours, returns to his crypt until the next night. |
| 53 | An elf driving a cart accidently injured the boy prince as he was walking down the city street with his friends and accompanying guards. In a fit of blind rage over the situation, the king has banned all elves from entering the city. |
| 54 | The royal family is trying to get their portrait painted, but no artist wants to paint them in fear that they won't like it. |
| 55 | The string of fires that have been plaguing the city libraries are no accident or loose arsonist. The royal family is having these buildings burned to the ground in secret to cover up the shady history their family has. |
| 56 | One day, the king decided he needed a break from his everyday life, so he switched places with one of his body doubles and went off to live as a commoner for a few days. He was never heard from again. |
| 57 | To build his way to the throne, the current king had his older brother killed many years ago. He would have gotten away with it, but he has recently been sleep talking and one of the night servants heard him confess. |
| 58 | The heir to the throne is a serial killer who tortures his victims. The city is on high alert for this killer and no one suspects a thing. |
| 59 | The prince, in a fit of anger, leaves the royal palace for a few weeks in his private boat. When he returns, he is shocked to find an exact clone of him is in his room that has already integrated into his life. |
| 60 | A clan of dwarves saved the king's life after a mudslide buried the royal family's cart during travel. The king made them honorary members of the royal staff. The truth is that the dwarves caused the mudslide by accident. |
| 61 | The heir to the kingdom has chosen to abandon his inheritance and live a life as an adventurer. The rest of the family has convinced him to take a year to reconsider and make the correct decision. |
| 62 | In a night of drunken commoner-style revelry, the prince gambled away the king's golden crown at a village tavern. All he can remember about the crowns’ new owner is that they were merely traveling through the kingdom and would be gone by daybreak. With each passing day, the chance of recovering the crown lessens… |
| 63 | The king was recently widowed and is taking it very hard. He has isolated himself off in his palace and has lost any interest in the kingdom. His counselor is taking full advantage of this situation and is making the king pass any ruling he wishes, under the excuse of 'honoring' the dead queen. |
| 64 | The prince, against his family's wishes, marries a peasant girl who he met while walking the city streets. In reality, the peasant girl is very manipulative and wants to rule everything through him. |
| 65 | Rumor has it that the queen has sprung a few gray hairs, and keeps dying her hair so others won't know. |
| 66 | The city's true purpose is to be an incredible sacrifice in a world altering ritual. All of the noble families are in on it and are counting down the days. |
| 67 | The captain of the guard has no idea what they're doing. He conned his way into a job and now he comes to work every day and does whatever he can to avoid being found out. |
| 68 | The Royal family has been getting incredibly sick over the past two weeks. Each one of them has contracted a different illness. |
| 69 | The king, known for his acts of cruelty, has suddenly turned a new leaf. Everyone is very weary of him because of his sudden personality change. |
| 70 | One of the king's sons has developed a horrible drug habit, and the family is trying to keep it quiet until they can get him help. Unfortunately for them, he was just busted by the royal guards taking an incredibly illegal substance in a local tavern. |
| 71 | The king's body double has been gaining weight, and now looks nothing like the king. |
| 72 | There is talk of sorcery within the current royal family. Rumor is that they bath in fresh blood every night to keep up their youth. How else would you explain their three century ruling? |
| 73 | When the king's two sons are killed in battle, the royal family begins a city-wide search of the bastard son they abandoned years ago. |
| 74 | The king's mother has passed away. Her will is incredibly bizarre. |
| 75 | The queen is a budding horticulturist and spends much of her time tending her garden. As her plants begin to grow much bigger than anyone expected, she begins to become very secretive about her gardening methods. |
| 76 | The princess is becoming a renowned fashion trendsetter! This is partly due to her having anyone that opposes her fashion secretly killed. |
| 77 | The queen has recently given birth to a healthy baby girl. During the night, one of the servants kidnapped the child and is taking it to a cult lair outside of town for a bizarre ritual. |
| 78 | The queen disguises herself as a commoner when her husband is away and plays cards down at one of the local bars in the city. She has developed an elaborate backstory and no one suspects a thing. |
| 79 | A shapeshifter has infiltrated the royal castle. He dumps his victims into the sewer system beneath the castle and takes the form of the recently deceased servants. |
| 80 | The king's exotic pet has become too much to take care of, but he refuses to part with it. |
| 81 | The original members of the family have achieved immortality by possessing their descendants once they come of suitable age. There have been generations of descendants that are all possessed by the same handful of spirits. |
| 82 | An ancient eldritch altar was found in a forgotten cave underneath the royal palace and brings new light on just how the royal family got their power. |
| 83 | The king’s son is in love with a peasant girl. The king is furious! (The peasant girl is actually a Doppelganger trying to assassinate the prince.) |
| 84 | The daughter of the king has completed the rites of passage to earn the throne before any of her brothers. |
| 85 | Someone in the royal castle has been secretly stealing food from the larder. The Head of Royal Staff has launched a full investigation into the matter, but has found no evidence. The princess has been giving the food to the poor late at night hoping no one would notice. |
| 86 | The youngest child of the royal family has a magical ability that has laid dormant in them for years. This morning, it has finally awakened. |
| 87 | The human king and queen are about to have a child. On the day of the baby's birth, everyone is shocked when she gives birth to a half-elf. |
| 88 | The patriarch of the royal family is a lich and has been living for over 700 years. He is kept in a crypt underneath the royal palace and is consulted in every decision made for the city. |
| 89 | The queen is secretly madly in love with one of the guards. They meet in secret during his nightly duties, until one of the maids caught them exchanging a kiss in the courtyard. |
| 90 | The king and queen are incredibly corrupt, and the prince is trying to stop them by forming a secret rebellion. |
| 91 | The queen has undergone a sudden and dramatic personality shift, to the shock of the entire royal family. She has ordered the execution of her youngest daughter, and the King seems to suddenly be too scared of her to interfere. |
| 92 | To the people of the city, it is clear that the king has no true power and has been puppeteered by his council. These council members are regularly found guilty of corruption and tried by the people—sometimes even executed. In reality, the council holds no true power, and the king rules through his close relation to the captain of the guard. He purposefully blames the council so the people do not suspect or overthrow him. |
| 93 | The court chef sold his soul to an archdevil long ago, and the fiend has finally come to collect what is owed. The chef strikes a deal with him, and must poison the royal family so that he can delay his doom. |
| 94 | Every year, the queen selects a new child from among the townsfolk to live a prince's life, in place of her long lost son. |
| 95 | The royal children have snuck out of the castle without their guards. In the morning, the king receives an anonymous kidnapping threat. |
| 96 | An ancestor in the royal family made a bargain with a Devil hundreds of years ago, and the Devil has shown up to collect what is owed, to everyone's surprise. |
| 97 | The princess has been captured by a band of bloodthirsty barbarians during travel! Plot twist: she has fallen in love with the barbarian leader. |
| 98 | It was revealed that due to a mistake in the royal records, the king's twin brother is actually a few minutes OLDER than the king. |
| 99 | The court wizard has been teaching the prince how to conduct necromancy magics, and the king is absolutely furious. |
| 100 | The king, in an effort to spend time away from his 'droll family', starts wars with neighboring countries just so he won't have to be around them very often. |
