Throughout the story we see how the Prince continuously asks the Swallow to take either a jewel or gold from his body, to distribute them to those among the city who may need it to make their lives better. Eventually, the statue of the Prince had only one jewel left to him, his last eye.

“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “do as I command you.”

So he plucked out the Prince’s other eye, and darted down with it. He swooped past the match-girl, and slipped the jewel into the palm of her hand. “What a lovely bit of glass,” cried the little girl; and she ran home, laughing.

Then the Swallow came back to the Prince. “You are blind now,” he said, “so I will stay with you always.”

“No, little Swallow,” said the poor Prince, “you must go away to Egypt.”

“I will stay with you always,” said the Swallow, and he slept at the Prince’s feet.

After all the times that the Prince asked that the Swallow stayed to continue distributing his jewels and gold, the Prince finally allows for the Swallow to leave. We can clearly see here that the Swallow transformed his character from who he was at the start, selfish and careless, to someone who cares not only for the good of those in the city, but particularly for the Prince. Many can see the romance between the Prince and the Swallow bloom, but love is a two way street. So does the Prince truly care for the Swallow just as much as the Swallow does for him?

When I think about how when the Prince was alive he only saw the great things in life and things that made him happy, having him sit at the top of the city and seeing the true ugliness of it is almost like a punishment. So what was his way of coping with this? Masking the ugliness by giving the people in need exactly what made him happy when he was alive; the riches. Eventually the Prince ran out of things to give, and only had one jewel left for an eye. Because after that eye was plucked left him blind, this leaves me to think that he let the Swallow finally fly off to Egypt as he intended only because he did not have to actually see the ugliness anymore. Leaving us with the question of whether or not the Prince truly changed, or whether he was still lowkey selfish.