Since it seems that I've done my best thinking on the phone lately, I'll try this. And maybe build some calluses.

So, thinking through the implications of Drosselmeyer's story - fleshing out some things mentioned in passing.

Whether he meant to or not, Drosselmeyer created a separate reality through his actions. His control wasn't perfect over this reality, but once it came to be, it was not so different from reality itself in terms of features. Drosselmeyer would have had to dictate every thought and action for that to happen, and of every person. The story does not even seem like it should have been a reality - in coming out of the story, wouldn't the prince just have become "real," something tangible when before he literally did not exist? Because when one thinks about it, the existence of a true other reality, the story's world now, has vast implications that were difficult for me to accept. I had deliberately cut my own thinking short in this. But the question remains: what else would the prince go back to? Also, while Drosselmeyer may not be able to control every detail of a story, his control of his powers seems to be greater. We've  seen him make reality to various extents, and there's no reason to assume he couldn't make another world. Indeed, all his stories probably have other realities behind them. Not all stories necessarily do, but for people with this power... if the stories are set outside of our "reality" and it's truly such a strong power, then the events are manifested where they are written, and that requires a reality for them to take place in.

On the other hand, maybe not. Maybe he deliberately did not make a reality as he was writing, or at least not until he finished, because again, the prince and the raven need a place to come out of and, in the prince's case, go back to. Or maybe his power is limited to our reality - and in that case, how could he make another? Specifically, it would make sense that reality is real and stories are not, so there would BE nothing for him to manipulate... ultimately, simply due to the oft-mentioned canon that the prince is going back to a physical place of some sort, something has to happen to make it so. Presumably this happens when Drosselmeyer brings the story into contact with our world, thus also bringing it in to territory he can exercise his power over rather than words. Ultimately, though, the end result is the same, because the prince has a reality now. This falls through, though, because the prince obviously didn't know he was a character before, and so must have perceived himself existing in a full kingdom...?

The accuracy of that perception would bring up some potentially frightening questions, dealing with the prince's own reality before hand. Frankly, those questions are harder to write out than the answers I reached, which are either that the prince really did have the created reality around him, or that this is ultimately irrelevant, if he was ever truly just a nonexistent character, not a true being with a personality and actions beyond what he was written with. Obviously he will not be able to perceive this lack of self; he has memories and beliefs.

Really, to me, what would have made more sense is if the prince was revealed to be unable to go home, because his home never existed as such. He became real, but the place he's from did not. The alternate possibilities is a fully fledged reality. And while the "rules" surely differ from what we would think of as reality, it is complete, including details Drosselmeyer neglected, like the prince's name. Maybe I'm the only one who ever tried to think of it as a patchwork, but that just doesn't make sense. Of course I've read some very good fanfiction in which the world is falling apart, and this doesn't discount those, it's just that the world he created happened to be one that COULD fall apart like that.