@Greenletta There's two possibilities, it depends of how we're seeing the concept of time :
-First possibility, we're seeing time as a line, with a start and an end, each moment being followed by the next on that line, then the next, then the next, etc... In that case, in the very first timeline, the prince is obviously the only one with the chest (since he didn't do the time travel yet), meaning that Cordelia and him doesn't communicate. Meaning that they met each other in another way (if they didn't we wouldn't have this loop). Maybe Cordelia remembered things from her past with her mother that made her aware of that other world existing, she discovered a way to travel there, went there, met the prince and after many adventures they end up married. But in that case why starting that loop since they didn't need it to meet ? Maybe because they met to late, maybe by meeting sooner they could have avoid some bad things to happen, and they ended up coming with this plan where the prince come back in time to give Cordelia the chest, and that's how the loop started ? It could be an interesting alternate story
-Second possibility, we're seeing time as a dot, there is no start, no end, every moments are layers superimposed on each other, meaning that the loop has no start and no end, it is infinite. This is more difficult to apprehend.
That's the thing with time travel stories, it can easily become very complicated and full of plot holes ^^