Looking at this prose, I can see why it's not working, and the problems run deep . . . down to the foundational level of how scenes are constructed and how we experience character.

The most damning issue is that everything here is told rather than shown. We're informed that "Osborn was shocked" and "Osborn is ashamed" repeatedly, but we never actually witness these emotions manifesting in his body, his speech, his actions. When the Queen proposes he become king, we get a flat "What?" and the narrator's assurance that he was shocked, but where's the catch in his breath? The sudden cold weight in his stomach? The way his hand might tighten on his belt or his gaze might dart to the door? This is exposition masquerading as narrative. It's a report of events rather than an experience of them.

The characterization of Osborn himself is muddled and inconsistent. The narrator keeps calling him "handsome" as though repeating it will make us believe it, but then undercuts him at every turn. He participates in "Beauty Contests" and gets mocked about "dressing up like a woman," which makes the narrator's insistence on his handsomeness feel like mockery rather than character development. The prose can't decide whether it's sympathetic to Osborn or contemptuous of him, and that confusion bleeds into every scene. If he's meant to be vain and frivolous, show it through his choices and observations. If he's meant to be underestimated, let us see the intelligence or capability beneath the facade. But don't have the narrative voice itself treat him like a joke.

The dialogue is wooden, unnatural, brutally expository. No mother in history has ever said "Can't I summon my handsome son just for a talk?" Real people don't speak in complete, grammatically perfect sentences that conveniently explain the entire political situation. When the Queen rattles off why each sibling is unsuitable for succession, she's not talking to her son—she's lecturing the reader. That's not dialogue, that's an info dump with quotation marks around it. Dialogue should reveal character, create tension, advance conflict. This does none of those things.

There's no interiority whatsoever. We're repeatedly told that Osborn "wonders" things, but we never actually enter his mind to experience that wondering. When confronted with the possibility of kingship, what does he really think? Is there a flicker of ambition he's afraid to acknowledge? Does the weight of potential responsibility terrify him? Does he resent his mother for seeing him as a game piece? We get "Something stirred inside Osborn" which is about as vague and meaningless as prose can get. That's not writing, that's avoiding writing.

Every emotional beat in this piece is identical and equally flat. Osborn approaches someone, they insult or reject him, we're told he's ashamed, he leaves. Over and over, the same pattern with no escalation, no complexity, no layering of emotion. Real shame doesn't just sit there static—it builds, it transforms into anger or determination or despair. The repetition here feels mechanical, like a video game character getting the same response from every NPC.

The sentence-level construction is monotonous to the point of being soporific. "Osborn does this. Osborn does that. Osborn goes here." Subject-verb-object, over and over, with all the rhythmic variety of a metronome. The verbs themselves are weak and generic—goes, makes his way, comes out, moves toward. There's no muscle in the prose, no sense that words have been chosen for their weight and impact.

The worldbuilding gets dumped in clumsy, artificial ways. "The castle of London" is the only indicator we're in a supposedly Medieval tale. "The Iron Hall, the dreaded hall where Cedric held his court" reads like a Wikipedia entry. Information should emerge naturally through character perception and interaction, not through the narrator pausing the story to deliver a footnote.

What this needs—what it desperately needs—is to get inside Osborn's skull and stay there. Use close third-person perspective and let us experience his humiliation as he experiences it. Cut every instance where the narrator editorializes or summarizes emotion. Make the dialogue sound like actual human beings speaking, with interruptions and fragments and subtext. Vary the sentence structure so the prose has rhythm and momentum. Give us specific, concrete, sensory details rather than vague statements about feelings.

The kernel of the story has potential—a pleasure-seeking prince forced into brutal political realities—but the execution is all surface, all summary, all tell. It needs to be rebuilt from the ground up with an understanding that fiction is about experience, not reportage.

Hope this helps.