Let's go to the Thought Bubble. So there was this prince at Harta Gautama whose father kept him locked away in a palace because a prophecy foretold that the family would lose the kingdom if he ever left. But as house arrests go, this was a good one. Siddhartha had great food, great entertainment, a hot cousin for a wife, etc. But he suspected that there was more to life, so he snuck out of the palace a few times. On these travels, he encountered an old man, a sick man, and finally a corpse. Having realized the ubiquity of suffering, Siddhartha left the palace, renounced the crown, and sought out the holiest men to try to find how it could be possible that life would come to such a terrible end.