1. Try entering the dungeon, killing *one* enemy, and leaving; you should hopefully get more HP than you take in damage. Also, you *did* equip what you bought? Ir that's not enough, you can steal from the castle. If your HP is too low to survive, either buy more from the king or (if you're too poor to do that) start over.

2. The command for equipping a weapon and the command for equipping armor are different.

3. No, there's no alternative; you will need to wait until you have more HP and a good weapon. (The kidnapped princesses in the castle are just one of the many bizarre aspects of this game.)

(I am not really sure what's going on with 1 and 2, so I'm sorry I can't give a better answer.)

(Also, I'm not a guy.)

#1 if you spent time fighting on the overworld you could have taken too much damage
to survive fighting in the dungeon

my advice here is to try to spend as little time fighting on the surface as possible until you have decent health weapons and armor
also at 1st maybe spend any leftover money by talking to the king in any castle as dtgreene mentioned

another possibility is running out of food is instadeath though you mentioned buying food
so this may not be relevent. im just including for the sake of covering all the bases


#2 only thing i can think of is you didnt Ready the mace.
(R key then W to select weapon then the weapons letter, for mace its C.( again adding to cover all the bases))



hopefully by our powers combined dtgreene and i have helped you through your problems