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ariel-seagull-wings · 1 year

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MELISANDE: OR, LONG AND SHORT DIVISION

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(In this comedic literary fairy tale written by Edith Nesbit, takings inspiration from Rapunzel, Gulliver's Travels and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a young princess who was cursed to be bald as a baby wishes for long golden hair to appease her Queen Mother, only her hair never stops growing fast, wich is an even messier situation than being bald).

When the Princess Melisande was born, her mother, the Queen, wished to have a christening party, but the King put his foot down and said he would not have it.

“I’ve seen too much trouble come of christening parties,” said he. “However carefully you keep your visiting-book, some fairy or other is sure to get left out, and you know what that leads to. Why, even in my own family, the most shocking things have occurred. The Fairy Malevola was not asked to my great-grandmother’s christening—and you know all about the spindle and the hundred years’ sleep.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said the Queen. “My own cousin by marriage forgot some stuffy old fairy or other when she was sending out the cards for her daughter’s christening, and the old wretch turned up at the last moment, and the girl drops toads out of her mouth to this day.”

“Just so. And then there was that business of the mouse and the kitchen-maids,” said the King; “we’ll have no nonsense about it. I’ll be her godfather, and you shall be her godmother, and we won’t ask a single fairy; then none of them can be offended.”

“Unless they all are,” said the Queen.

And that was exactly what happened. When the King and the Queen and the baby got back from the christening the parlourmaid met them at the door, and said—

“Please, your Majesty, several ladies have called. I told them you were not at home, but they all said they’d wait.”

“Are they in the parlour?” asked the Queen.

“I’ve shown them into the Throne Room, your Majesty,” said the parlourmaid. “You see, there are several of them.”

There were about seven hundred. The great Throne Room was crammed with fairies, of all ages and of all degrees of beauty and ugliness—good fairies and bad fairies, flower fairies and moon fairies, fairies like spiders and fairies like butterflies—and as the Queen opened the door and began to say how sorry she was to have kept them waiting, they all cried, with one voice, “Why didn’t you ask me to your christening party?”

“I haven’t had a party,” said the Queen, and she turned to the King and whispered, “I told you so.” This was her only consolation.

“You’ve had a christening,” said the fairies, all together.

“I’m very sorry,” said the poor Queen, but Malevola pushed forward and said, “Hold your tongue,” most rudely.

Malevola is the oldest, as well as the most wicked, of the fairies. She is deservedly unpopular, and has been left out of more christening parties than all the rest of the fairies put together.

“Don’t begin to make excuses,” she said, shaking her finger at the Queen. “That only makes your conduct worse. You know well enough what happens if a fairy is left out of a christening party. We are all going to give our christening presents now. As the fairy of highest social position, I shall begin. The Princess shall be bald.”

The Queen nearly fainted as Malevola drew back, and another fairy, in a smart bonnet with snakes in it, stepped forward with a rustle of bats’ wings. But the King stepped forward too.

“No you don’t!” said he. “I wonder at you, ladies, I do indeed. How can you be so unfairylike? Have none of you been to school—have none of you studied the history of your own race? Surely you don’t need a poor, ignorant King like me to tell you that this is no go?”

“How dare you?” cried the fairy in the bonnet, and the snakes in it quivered as she tossed her head. “It is my turn, and I say the Princess shall be——”

The King actually put his hand over her mouth.

“Look here,” he said; “I won’t have it. Listen to reason—or you’ll be sorry afterwards. A fairy who breaks the traditions of fairy history goes out—you know she does—like the flame of a candle. And all tradition shows that only one bad fairy is ever forgotten at a christening party and the good ones are always invited; so either this is not a christening party, or else you were all invited except one, and, by her own showing, that was Malevola. It nearly always is. Do I make myself clear?”

Several of the better-class fairies who had been led away by Malevola’s influence murmured that there was something in what His Majesty said.

“Try it, if you don’t believe me,” said the King; “give your nasty gifts to my innocent child—but as sure as you do, out you go, like a candle-flame. Now, then, will you risk it?”

No one answered, and presently several fairies came up to the Queen and said what a pleasant party it had been, but they really must be going. This example decided the rest. One by one all the fairies said goodbye and thanked the Queen for the delightful afternoon they had spent with her.

“It’s been quite too lovely,” said the lady with the snake-bonnet; “do ask us again soon, dear Queen. I shall be so longing to see you again, and the dear baby,” and off she went, with the snake-trimming quivering more than ever.

When the very last fairy was gone the Queen ran to look at the baby—she tore off its Honiton lace cap and burst into tears. For all the baby’s downy golden hair came off with the cap, and the Princess Melisande was as bald as an egg.

“Don’t cry, my love,” said the King. “I have a wish lying by, which I’ve never had occasion to use. My fairy godmother gave it me for a wedding present, but since then I’ve had nothing to wish for!”

“Thank you, dear,” said the Queen, smiling through her tears.

“I’ll keep the wish till baby grows up,” the King went on. “And then I’ll give it to her, and if she likes to wish for hair she can.”

“Oh, won’t you wish for it now?” said the Queen, dropping mixed tears and kisses on the baby’s round, smooth head.

“No, dearest. She may want something else more when she grows up. And besides, her hair may grow by itself.”

But it never did. Princess Melisande grew up as beautiful as the sun and as good as gold, but never a hair grew on that little head of hers. The Queen sewed her little caps of green silk, and the Princess’s pink and white face looked out of these like a flower peeping out of its bud. And every day as she grew older she grew dearer, and as she grew dearer she grew better, and as she grew more good she grew more beautiful.

Now, when she was grown up the Queen said to the King—

“My love, our dear daughter is old enough to know what she wants. Let her have the wish.”

So the King wrote to his fairy godmother and sent the letter by a butterfly. He asked if he might hand on to his daughter the wish the fairy had given him for a wedding present.

“I have never had occasion to use it,” said he, “though it has always made me happy to remember that I had such a thing in the house. The wish is as good as new, and my daughter is now of an age to appreciate so valuable a present.”

To which the fairy replied by return of butterfly:—

“Dear King,—Pray do whatever you like with my poor little present. I had quite forgotten it, but I am pleased to think that you have treasured my humble keepsake all these years.

“Your affectionate godmother,

“Fortuna F.”

So the King unlocked his gold safe with the seven diamond-handled keys that hung at his girdle, and took out the wish and gave it to his daughter.

[168]

And Melisande said: “Father, I will wish that all your subjects should be quite happy.”

But they were that already, because the King and Queen were so good. So the wish did not go off.

So then she said: “Then I wish them all to be good.”

But they were that already, because they were happy. So again the wish hung fire.

Then the Queen said: “Dearest, for my sake, wish what I tell you.”

“Why, of course I will,” said Melisande. The Queen whispered in her ear, and Melisande nodded. Then she said, aloud—

“I wish I had golden hair a yard long, and that it would grow an inch every day, and grow twice as fast every time it was cut, and——”

“Stop,” cried the King. And the wish went off, and the next moment the Princess stood smiling at him through a shower of golden hair.

“Oh, how lovely,” said the Queen. “What a pity you interrupted her, dear; she hadn’t finished.”

“What was the end?” asked the King.

“Oh,” said Melisande, “I was only going to say, ‘and twice as thick.’”

“It’s a very good thing you didn’t,” said the King. “You’ve done about enough.” For he had a mathematical mind, and could do the sums about the grains of wheat on the chess-board, and the nails in the horse’s shoes, in his Royal head without any trouble at all.

“Why, what’s the matter?” asked the Queen.

“You’ll know soon enough,” said the King. “Come, let’s be happy while we may. Give me a kiss, little Melisande, and then go to nurse and ask her to teach you how to comb your hair.”

“I know,” said Melisande, “I’ve often combed mother’s.”

“Your mother has beautiful hair,” said the King; “but I fancy you will find your own less easy to manage.”

And, indeed, it was so. The Princess’s hair began by being a yard long, and it grew an inch every night. If you know anything at all about the simplest sums you will see that in about five weeks her hair was about two yards long. This is a very inconvenient length. It trails on the floor and sweeps up all the dust, and though in palaces, of course, it is all gold-dust, still it is not nice to have it in your hair. And the Princess’s hair was growing an inch every night. When it was three yards long the Princess could not bear it any longer—it was so heavy and so hot—so she borrowed nurse’s cutting-out scissors and cut it all off, and then for a few hours she was comfortable. But the hair went on growing, and now it grew twice as fast as before; so that in thirty-six days it was as long as ever. The poor Princess cried with tiredness; when she couldn’t bear it any more she cut her hair and was comfortable for a very little time. For the hair now grew four times as fast as at first, and in eighteen days it was as long as before, and she had to have it cut. Then it grew eight inches a day, and the next time it was cut it grew sixteen inches a day, and then thirty-two inches and sixty-four inches and a hundred and twenty-eight inches a day, and so on, growing twice as fast after each cutting, till the Princess would go to bed at night with her hair clipped short, and wake up in the morning with yards and yards and yards of golden hair flowing all about the room, so that she could not move without pulling her own hair, and nurse had to come and cut the hair off before she could get out of bed.

“I wish I was bald again,” sighed poor Melisande, looking at the little green caps she used to wear, and she cried herself to sleep o’ nights between the golden billows of the golden hair. But she never let her mother see her cry, because it was the Queen’s fault, and Melisande did not want to seem to reproach her.

When first the Princess’s hair grew her mother sent locks of it to all her Royal relations, who had them set in rings and brooches. Later, the Queen was able to send enough for bracelets and girdles. But presently so much hair was cut off that they had to burn it. Then when autumn came all the crops failed; it seemed as though all the gold of harvest had gone into the Princess’s hair. And there was a famine. Then Melisande said—

“It seems a pity to waste all my hair; it does grow so very fast. Couldn’t we stuff things with it, or something, and sell them, to feed the people?”

So the King called a council of merchants, and they sent out samples of the Princess’s hair, and soon orders came pouring in; and the Princess’s hair became the staple export of that country. They stuffed pillows with it, and they stuffed beds with it. They made ropes of it for sailors to use, and curtains for hanging in Kings’ palaces. They made haircloth of it, for hermits, and other people who wished to be uncomfy. But it was so soft and silky that it only made them happy and warm, which they did not wish to be. So the hermits gave up wearing it, and, instead, mothers bought it for their little babies, and all well-born infants wore little shirts of Princess-haircloth.

And still the hair grew and grew. And the people were fed and the famine came to an end.

Then the King said: “It was all very well while the famine lasted—but now I shall write to my fairy godmother and see if something cannot be done.”

So he wrote and sent the letter by a skylark, and by return of bird came this answer—

“Why not advertise for a competent Prince? Offer the usual reward.”

So the King sent out his heralds all over the world to proclaim that any respectable Prince with proper references should marry the Princess Melisande if he could stop her hair growing.

Then from far and near came trains of Princes anxious to try their luck, and they brought all sorts of nasty things with them in bottles and round wooden boxes. The Princess tried all the remedies, but she did not like any of them, and she did not like any of the Princes, so in her heart she was rather glad that none of the nasty things in bottles and boxes made the least difference to her hair.

The Princess had to sleep in the great Throne Room now, because no other room was big enough to hold her and her hair. When she woke in the morning the long high room would be quite full of her golden hair, packed tight and thick like wool in a barn. And every night when she had had the hair cut close to her head she would sit in her green silk gown by the window and cry, and kiss the little green caps she used to wear, and wish herself bald again.

It was as she sat crying there on Midsummer Eve that she first saw Prince Florizel.

He had come to the palace that evening, but he would not appear in her presence with the dust of travel on him, and she had retired with her hair borne by twenty pages before he had bathed and changed his garments and entered the reception-room.

Now he was walking in the garden in the moonlight, and he looked up and she looked down, and for the first time Melisande, looking on a Prince, wished that he might have the power to stop her hair from growing. As for the Prince, he wished many things, and the first was granted him. For he said—

“You are Melisande?”

“And you are Florizel?”

“There are many roses round your window,” said he to her, “and none down here.”

She threw him one of three white roses she held in her hand. Then he said—

“White rose trees are strong. May I climb up to you?”

“Surely,” said the Princess.

So he climbed up to the window.

“Now,” said he, “if I can do what your father asks, will you marry me?”

“My father has promised that I shall,” said Melisande, playing with the white roses in her hand.

“Dear Princess,” said he, “your father’s promise is nothing to me. I want yours. Will you give it to me?”

“Yes,” said she, and gave him the second rose.

“I want your hand.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And your heart with it.”

“Yes,” said the Princess, and she gave him the third rose.

“And a kiss to seal the promise.”

“Yes,” said she.

“And a kiss to go with the hand.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And a kiss to bring the heart.”

“Yes,” said the Princess, and she gave him the three kisses.

“Now,” said he, when he had given them back to her, “to-night do not go to bed. Stay by your window, and I will stay down here in the garden and watch. And when your hair has grown to the filling of your room call to me, and then do as I tell you.”

“I will,” said the Princess.

So at dewy sunrise the Prince, lying on the turf beside the sun-dial, heard her voice—

“Florizel! Florizel! My hair has grown so long that it is pushing me out of the window.”

“Get out on to the window-sill,” said he, “and twist your hair three times round the great iron hook that is there.”

And she did.

Then the Prince climbed up the rose bush with his naked sword in his teeth, and he took the Princess’s hair in his hand about a yard from her head and said—

“Jump!”

The Princess jumped, and screamed, for there she was hanging from the hook by a yard and a half of her bright hair; the Prince tightened his grasp of the hair and drew his sword across it.

Then he let her down gently by her hair till her feet were on the grass, and jumped down after her.

They stayed talking in the garden till all the shadows had crept under their proper trees and the sun-dial said it was breakfast time.

Then they went in to breakfast, and all the Court crowded round to wonder and admire. For the Princess’s hair had not grown.

“How did you do it?” asked the King, shaking Florizel warmly by the hand.

“The simplest thing in the world,” said Florizel, modestly. “You have always cut the hair off the Princess. I just cut the Princess off the hair.”

“Humph!” said the King, who had a logical mind. And during breakfast he more than once looked anxiously at his daughter. When they got up from breakfast the Princess rose with the rest, but she rose and rose and rose, till it seemed as though there would never be an end of it. The Princess was nine feet high.

“I feared as much,” said the King, sadly. “I wonder what will be the rate of progression. You see,” he said to poor Florizel, “when we cut the hair off it grows—when we cut the Princess off she grows. I wish you had happened to think of that!”

The Princess went on growing. By dinner-time she was so large that she had to have her dinner brought out into the garden because she was too large to get indoors. But she was too unhappy to be able to eat anything. And she cried so much that there was quite a pool in the garden, and several pages were nearly drowned. So she remembered her “Alice in Wonderland,” and stopped crying at once. But she did not stop growing. She grew bigger and bigger and bigger, till she had to go outside the palace gardens and sit on the common, and even that was too small to hold her comfortably, for every hour she grew twice as much as she had done the hour before. And nobody knew what to do, nor where the Princess was to sleep. Fortunately, her clothes had grown with her, or she would have been very cold indeed, and now she sat on the common in her green gown, embroidered with gold, looking like a great hill covered with gorse in flower.

You cannot possibly imagine how large the Princess was growing, and her mother stood wringing her hands on the castle tower, and the Prince Florizel looked on broken-hearted to see his Princess snatched from his arms and turned into a lady as big as a mountain.

The King did not weep or look on. He sat down at once and wrote to his fairy godmother, asking her advice. He sent a weasel with the letter, and by return of weasel he got his own letter back again, marked “Gone away. Left no address.”

It was now, when the kingdom was plunged into gloom, that a neighbouring King took it into his head to send an invading army against the island where Melisande lived. They came in ships and they landed in great numbers, and Melisande looking down from her height saw alien soldiers marching on the sacred soil of her country.

“I don’t mind so much now,” said she, “if I can really be of some use this size.”

And she picked up the army of the enemy in handfuls and double-handfuls, and put them back into their ships, and gave a little flip to each transport ship with her finger and thumb, which sent the ships off so fast that they never stopped till they reached their own country, and when they arrived there the whole army to a man said it would rather be courtmartialled a hundred times over than go near the place again.

Meantime Melisande, sitting on the highest hill on the island, felt the land trembling and shivering under her giant feet.

“I do believe I’m getting too heavy,” she said, and jumped off the island into the sea, which was just up to her ankles. Just then a great fleet of warships and gunboats and torpedo boats came in sight, on their way to attack the island.

Melisande could easily have sunk them all with one kick, but she did not like to do this because it might have drowned the sailors, and besides, it might have swamped the island.

So she simply stooped and picked the island as you would pick a mushroom—for, of course, all islands are supported by a stalk underneath—and carried it away to another part of the world. So that when the warships got to where the island was marked on the map they found nothing but sea, and a very rough sea it was, because the Princess had churned it all up with her ankles as she walked away through it with the island.

When Melisande reached a suitable place, very sunny and warm, and with no sharks in the water, she set down the island; and the people made it fast with anchors, and then every one went to bed, thanking the kind fate which had sent them so great a Princess to help them in their need, and calling her the saviour of her country and the bulwark of the nation.

But it is poor work being the nation’s bulwark and your country’s saviour when you are miles high, and have no one to talk to, and when all you want is to be your humble right size again and to marry your sweetheart. And when it was dark the Princess came close to the island, and looked down, from far up, at her palace and her tower and cried, and cried, and cried. It does not matter how much you cry into the sea, it hardly makes any difference, however large you may be. Then when everything was quite dark the Princess looked up at the stars.

“I wonder how soon I shall be big enough to knock my head against them,” said she.

And as she stood star-gazing she heard a whisper right in her ear. A very little whisper, but quite plain.

“Cut off your hair!” it said.

Now, everything the Princess was wearing had grown big along with her, so that now there dangled from her golden girdle a pair of scissors as big as the Malay Peninsula, together with a pin-cushion the size of the Isle of Wight, and a yard measure that would have gone round Australia.

And when she heard the little, little voice, she knew it, small as it was, for the dear voice of Prince Florizel, and she whipped out the scissors from her gold case and snip, snip, snipped all her hair off, and it fell into the sea. The coral insects got hold of it at once and set to work on it, and now they have made it into the biggest coral reef in the world; but that has nothing to do with the story.

Then the voice said, “Get close to the island,” and the Princess did, but she could not get very close because she was so large, and she looked up again at the stars and they seemed to be much farther off.

Then the voice said, “Be ready to swim,” and she felt something climb out of her ear and clamber down her arm. The stars got farther and farther away, and next moment the Princess found herself swimming in the sea, and Prince Florizel swimming beside her.

“I crept on to your hand when you were carrying the island,” he explained, when their feet touched the sand and they walked in through the shallow water, “and I got into your ear with an ear-trumpet. You never noticed me because you were so great then.”

“Oh, my dear Prince,” cried Melisande, falling into his arms, “you have saved me. I am my proper size again.”

So they went home and told the King and Queen. Both were very, very happy, but the King rubbed his chin with his hand, and said—

“You’ve certainly had some fun for your money, young man, but don’t you see that we’re just where we were before? Why, the child’s hair is growing already.”

And indeed it was.

Then once more the King sent a letter to his godmother. He sent it by a flying-fish, and by return of fish come the answer—

“Just back from my holidays. Sorry for your troubles. Why not try scales?”

And on this message the whole Court pondered for weeks.

But the Prince caused a pair of gold scales to be made, and hung them up in the palace gardens under a big oak tree. And one morning he said to the Princess—

“My darling Melisande, I must really speak seriously to you. We are getting on in life. I am nearly twenty: it is time that we thought of being settled. Will you trust me entirely and get into one of those gold scales?”

So he took her down into the garden, and helped her into the scale, and she curled up in it in her green and gold gown, like a little grass mound with buttercups on it.

“And what is going into the other scale?” asked Melisande.

“Your hair,” said Florizel. “You see, when your hair is cut off you it grows, and when you are cut off your hair you grow—oh, my heart’s delight, I can never forget how you grew, never! But if, when your hair is no more than you, and you are no more than your hair, I snip the scissors between you and it, then neither you nor your hair can possibly decide which ought to go on growing.”

“Suppose both did,” said the poor Princess, humbly.

“Impossible,” said the Prince, with a shudder; “there are limits even to Malevola’s malevolence. And, besides, Fortuna said ‘Scales.’ Will you try it?”

“I will do whatever you wish,” said the poor Princess, “but let me kiss my father and mother once, and Nurse, and you, too, my dear, in case I grow large again and can kiss nobody any more.”

So they came one by one and kissed the Princess.

Then the nurse cut off the Princess’s hair, and at once it began to grow at a frightful rate.

The King and Queen and nurse busily packed it, as it grew, into the other scale, and gradually the scale went down a little. The Prince stood waiting between the scales with his drawn sword, and just before the two were equal he struck. But during the time his sword took to flash through the air the Princess’s hair grew a yard or two, so that at the instant when he struck the balance was true.

“You are a young man of sound judgment,” said the King, embracing him, while the Queen and the nurse ran to help the Princess out of the gold scale.

The scale full of golden hair bumped down on to the ground as the Princess stepped out of the other one, and stood there before those who loved her, laughing and crying with happiness, because she remained her proper size, and her hair was not growing any more.

She kissed her Prince a hundred times, and the very next day they were married. Every one remarked on the beauty of the bride, and it was noticed that her hair was quite short—only five feet five and a quarter inches long—just down to her pretty ankles. Because the scales had been ten feet ten and a half inches apart, and the Prince, having a straight eye, had cut the golden hair exactly in the middle!

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#fairy tales #literature #literary fairy tale #nine unlikely tales #edith nesbit #fantasy #genre fiction

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futurebird · 2 years

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Fairy Tales (but it’s ants)

Cinderella A Formica alate has a polyergus wicked stepmother, and evil polyergus alate step-sisters. The prince is searching for a bride and holds a great nuptial ball. Everyone at the ball is polyergus … except for the prince who was born from an unfertilized egg before his step mom killed his mother. He searches for the one with the “dainty mandibles” (all the polyergus have gaping mandibles)

Snow White and the Seven Rove Beetles Snow White is a bull ant (Myrmecia) her mother the queen can no longer lay fertilized eggs and is hiding it from the colony. The queen commands a woodlouse to take Snow White into the woods and kill her because of a prophecy that a younger ant will take her throne. The woodlouse can’t bear to murder her and leaves her to be found by seven rove beetles who raise her in a little nest deep in the forest. The queen finds out she’s still alive and tries to poison her with Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, a fungus that will drive an ant mad and make her climb to the highest branch and die there. This backfires and the queen poisons herself, Snow White becomes a gamergate and queen of the kingdom.

Little Red Riding Hood A young worker ant (wood ant) is sent to help out at one of the other nests of her polydomus colony. When she gets to the satellite nest, which is supposed to have a queen in need of assistance with too many brood… there is a spider mimic pretending to be her aunt! Her older sister a brave major kills the spider and they take the orphaned brood back to the main nest.

Hanna and Gretel Two worker ants are foraging far from the nest for the first time when they encounter the mysterious house of a phorid fly. The fly tempts them with honeydew and candy, all along planning on laying eggs in their heads. But the workers are so exhausted she decides to fatten them up first.

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fairytale-poll · 4 months

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i am here to show a few reasons why cinders ouatis does, in fact, qualify as a cinerella.

(btw htis is not to pcik a fight or to be rude to that anon, i would sjut like to show that there are several thigns the propaganda did not speak of that qualified her for the position, if she's meant to follow all the cinerellea tropes.)

first, her story, then how it falls into line with what makes a cinderella.

so, her mom died. that's. that's kidna a big stapple in msot cinderallas. her dad (the king btw, i promise it's kinda important) remarried to her "wicked stepmother" and then had new stepsisters as well (wicked in quotes. they're- ok. there's a lot)

in the era of a war against king Cole, cole ended up taking over her kingdom/planet, with the help of her stepsisters and step mother, and they kinda turned her in ("wicked" part). she was then thrown into jail.

(also her love interest was, at least in popular theories since it wasn't explicetly stated, one of the commanding officers in the raid.)

rose, her love interest ("Prince Charming" but yk princess bc lesbians yippee!), got to know her a bit while she was still in prison, and there was like a lot of unresolved everything.

then a "godmother in white" (snow, rose's sister, or at least that's how i interpreted it, however it could very well be general white or whatever her title was that snow ended up adopting) broke her out the day that rose was resasigned and leaving planet. the godmother told her that if she and rose were married by midnight, then they woul be able to be together bc idk laws ig? (i mean, i've nevre heard of laws that allow that but yk ok why not)

then at the wedding cole ended up kidnapping rose and cinders fled (she also feels really guilty about this, but if you read the fiction for it, im pretty sure it said that rose had told her to run) and was one fo the few survivers of the everything that happened there.

then she spends the rest of her years hunting down rose wiht this like... mood ring? at least it kinda works like one i think.

then when she finally finds rose agin.... um.

well, i'll let you listen to the album.

(it's sad.)

NOW HERE'S WHERE THINGS OVERLAP

again, the remarriage of her father.

then the way her stepmother and sisters treated her. now, again. never explicitly stated how they treated her before cole came and stuff, but after that, she was in the position of being in rags when she deserved so mcuh more than that, but her stepfamily took it from her (in a few other ersion it's the stepmother making her the family servant/slave, in other version it's... something else idk i don''t read a lot of cinderella stuff tbh i preffer other fairy tales).

then we have the godmother saving her. that part speaks for itself. i think.

then for the ball (or in this case, a wedding to her "true love"), it IS explicitly stated that the rings, that turn red when its other is with it, are made of glass. in the fiction, it said that as cinders was putting the ring on rose's finger, the bmombs went off, and she dropped it. rose caught it, stuffed it in her wedding dress pocket (fuck yeah, i would love to have that on my wedding dress), told cinders to run. leaving the glass slipper (ring, ig, but yk it slipped so) behind, right around midnight.

also, her name isn't even cinders officially! i don't know what it was before, but durring the whole revolution and such and her looking for rose, she edned up taking a new name/persona, much like snow, and was dubbed cinders, "after the her ashen world" (or whatevr it was, idk, i haven't listened to the album in a bit). again, this plays into the whole thing with the name that many other version and adaptations liek to play off of.

tbh this is all i can think of rn bc im kinda tired, so feel free to expand on this. wanted to give as mcuh details as i could abotu her story and how it is fairly similar to every other cinderella story.

however to me, a lot of these cinderellas also jsut. aren't too close to a certain story of cinderella. there's a lot of creative liberaty taken in every version. now, the album in it of itself, (once upon a time (in space)) takes a bucnh of stories, this and many other fary tales, and twists them and makes it their own. it's an adaptation. and when it comes to things like folk lore, ledgends, myths, and fairy tales (especially those), there's always gonna be some inconsistancies than with other version derived of the same media. hell, even jsut the stories themselves almsot never stay consistent.

a cinderella is a cinderella if they are said to be based off of the story of cinderella. (im looking at you carrie, and how no one said she was any less of a cinderella than any other competitor)

-A

If this propaganda has convinced you, click here to vote for Cinders (Once Upon a Time in Space)!

#im going to be honest i didnt read all of this bc i cant focus on it rn #but ofc like everyone is allowed to send in info on their cinderella! :)#i do want to say i dont think prev anon wanted to say cinders shouldnt count for the tourney #i just think they found them less cinderella y than other contestants #but maybe reading this would change their mind !!#long post #ask #propaganda #not a poll

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fika-drw · 4 months

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Snarry Fairy Tale AU Rec List [ 2 ]

So I have decided to split the rec list into multiple parts so it easier to navigate (at least that was the idea). The list will naturally grew as I read and find more and more Fairytale AU fics. So keep an eye fairytale lovers! There might be a new rec list waiting on the corner 👀

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Pepperup Magic by Goddess47

Rating: General Audiences || Words: 11,851

Summary: Severus needed to escape from his step-mother. It took the most unlikely set of fairy godmothers witches to help him do it.

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Enchanted by GenesisCrisis

Rating: Explicit || Words: 16,640 || TW: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse

Summary: Prompt: Prince Severus is holding a ball at the castle and Harry really wants to go, but his stepbrother Dudley and his stepmother Petunia won't let him.

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Twas a dark and stormy night by angeleledhwen (kallistei), eledhwen (kallistei)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences || Words: 5,058

Summary: Once upon a time, in a land not very far away, there lived an orphan boy whose name was Harry.

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All for Nothing by Slytherinroses

Rating: Mature || Words: 20,304 || TW: Minor Character Death

Summary: Ginny curses Harry into a slumber using a medieval fairytale as inspiration, when she fails to get his attention by more conventional means. Little does she realise that no matter what she does Harry's heart will never belong to her. Things take a nasty turn when the redhead finds out just who has the unattainable Harry Potter's heart.

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Snowblind by Likelightinglass

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences|| Words: 7,713

Summary: A retelling of the fairy tale "East of the Sun and West of the Moon". Harry Potter has found himself in an enchanted castle with a talking bear. There's a curse, and a journey, and a Troll Queen. Harry Potter is getting really tired of all this magic nonsense and just wants to bring his husband home.

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The Beast Series by RagwortPrincess

Rating: Explicit || Words: 53,046 || TW: Blood Drinking, Bestiality

Summary: [Summary taken from the first instalment of the series] There's a curse plaguing Harry's village, and the only one who can stop it is a vicious beast who lives in the forest and feeds on the village sacrifices. Harry volunteers in the place of one of his friends, but the beast isn't anything he'd ever imagined him to be.

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Ophelia Enchanted by lyraonyx

Rating: Explicit || Words: 19,114

Summary: Short and sweet oneshot, Cinderella style. Severus has a secret. At the first Yule Ball after the war, he decides he wants to appear as someone... different. He glamours himself into the shape and features of a beautiful woman, but when the glamours are off, will Harry still want him as he is? (The second chapter is for a painting.)

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The Wicked Fairy and his Sweet Prince by TessaVance

Rating: Explicit || Words: 8,957

Summary: Fairy tale AU Prince Harry tells Potion Master Severus that he is worried the courtiers will take advantage of his virginity, and does he know of anything that could help? Severus, well Severus knows quite a few things that could help now that you mention it.

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King Severus by emeraldlove

Rating: General Audiences || Words: 2,919

Summary: Discord Chat Coconutice22: Snarry bedtime story for Coco??? Scarlet: Once there was a prince. His name was Severus. --- And there's art! Soltituss' King and his precious

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A Prince Among Men by emynn

Rating: Explicit || Words: 18,424

Summary: It was really all semantics...what difference does it make if you're a prince or a Prince? In some regards, it's an awful lot. In others...not at all.

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[≪ Previous] [Next ≫]

#rec list #snarry #severusxharry #harry x snape #harry x severus #snape x harry #harry potter #severus snape

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adarkrainbow · 1 year

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Another short cartoon: Poor Cinderella

Everybody knows “Silly Symphonies”. Not as much people know “Color Classics”, often called a “cheap knock-off” or “weaker cousin/imitation” of Disney’s Silly Symphonies. And yet, Color Cartoons was a product of the Fleischer Studios... which means it was part of the cartoons featuring the cartoon iconic Betty Boop herself.

In fact the very first cartoon of this line was a Betty Boop-centered one. A retelling of “Cinderella” called... “Poor Cinderella”. 1934. To this day it is the only animated appearance of a colorized Betty Boop.

I will mention it beforehand: the fact the shoe used here is made of glass means I will compare this short to the French version of the tale, as told by Perrault. I’ll repeat that when dealing with Disney’s Cinderella, but I want to already mention it here: the Cinderella story everyone knows nowadays is the FRENCH one. Yes the Brothers Grimm wrote their own German version, but it is not the one adapted by cartoons and it is not the one everybody knows. The easiest difference to stop is that German Cinderella has gold shoes, not glass shoes.

# So already from the start: here the King organized a “public ball” to which he invites all the “good people” of his kingdom. A great over-exaggeration of the original tale, in which it was the Prince that organized the ball, and only for people of “quality” (aka, upper-class). Mind you, later we only see the Prince at the ball and no trace of a King, so maybe in this short the two are one and the same?

# Betty Boop plays a red-haired Cinderella who surprisingly isn’t covered in ashes despite her name. She is just in a ragged dress holding a broom - but they did keep an important element of the original story. The idea that Cinderella, even dirty and in rags, is much more beautiful than her step-sisters, no matter how well-dressed and jeweled they are. Here it is shown by Betty Boop’s natural “cute-and-sexy” figure, compared with (who I assume to be) her stepsisters being just big-nosed, tall, flat-chested, masculine, the very opposite of Betty’s curvy pin-up figure.

# The short, for the sake of simplicity, greatly simplifies Cinderella’s family: it is now just her, and her wicked stepsisters, who are visibly twin (well I guess they are stepsisters, it is never actually said). There’s no step-mother, no father. We do see however Betty Boop/Cinderella preparing the clothes of her “sisters” for the ball (just like in the original tale), but there is a major difference in characterization. In the original story Cinderella just wants to go to the ball : but here, this is coupled by a bit more “in depth” look at her spirit. Cinderella keeps repeating her song through the short, which explains that 1- She feels like nobody loves her 2- She dreams of romance 3- She hopes to meet a Prince Charming (and in fact she dreams about meeting one) 4- She wants to be a princess. There is already a whole quest and desire for love and royalty that drives her to go to the ball in the first place, when in the original tale she just wanted to have fun, go out of the house and be restored to a more dignified lifestyle.

# Here the Fairy Godmother appears out of the flame of a candle, manifesting as a tall, slender, beautiful lady with small insect wings, a diadem in her high white hair, and a princess-like dress. An ornate, royal kind of fairy who explains her appearance to Cinderella for two reasons. 1) She came because she sensed that Cinderella was in a great state of distress, crying and depressed. 2) As a reward for her being a kind and gentle soul, she will allow her to go to the ball. Which is actually kind of sticking to the original tale, as the godmother first interacts with Cinderella upon seeing her cry, asking her what is wrong, and upon hearing she wants to go the ball she decides to make it come true because she is “such a good girl”.

# In the short, just like in the tale, the Godmother asks for a pumpkin, mice and lizards - though unlike in the original story where the pumpkin and lizards were found in the garden, here Cinderella-Boop fetches the pumpkin and the mice in their cage/trap from the basement, while the lizards just... arrive at some point, all on their own.

# Cinderella’s magical dress is of course a pin-up version of a fairytale dress, with bare arms and shoulders, and a skirt showing off the glass-shoes and the naked ankles above. In fact, to fully play on the “pin-up” act of Betty Boop, the Fairy Godmother starts by removing Cinderella’s rags, and then shrinking her underwears, BEFORE putting the dress on her. It is also interesting to see that the dress is also the polar opposite of her wicked stepsister’s outfits. Her dress is simple, short, revealing her curves, in white with just a few touches of color, and she has her hair bare with just a feather as a discreet ornament ; where her wicked stepsisters wear heavy, colorful dresses with a lot of padding and largeness to replace the curves they lack, and their hair is covered by big white wigs.

# For the shortness of the story, there is only one ball organized (unlike the several ones in both Perrault and Grimm versions), and... and I have to pause a bit on the Prince here because... was he made that effeminate on purpose? Is it part of the Fleischer cartoons typical style? If someone knows better about this, please enlighten me. Because on one side he has the deep masculine voice and the typial broad-chested tiny-waisted silhouette ; and on the other yes he has tight clothes with lots of frills on the chest and small high-heels, but that’s part of historical fashion, so it can be excused. HOWEVER... these small, delicate, feminine lips under a thin-pencil mustache, plus the long, feminine eyelashes and the fact he wears EYESHADOW makes him look like very effeminate if not... a little... queer. Now there are two ways I can see that. Either they dared to do an effeminate Prince Charming for their tale despite it being the 30s, so kudos for progress (and after all Betty Boop herself was a scandalous pin-up cartoon, so why not?) ; either it is part of some sort of Fleischer joke and then it is not really cool anymore. I don’t know, this design just... intrigues me.

# Several interesting choices here. 1) Cinderella is the first person the Prince sees... because she arrives at the same time HE in turns is announced at the ball, so that they basically cross path with each other. 2) I also think it an interesting choice to have Cinderella actually have hard time escaping the ball... because of the castle itself. I love this depiction of the castle beyond the ballroom as a maze of grand staircases, mirrors, courtyards and halls - to the point that from the first strike of midnight in the ballroom to the last one, even as she runs really hard, she can only reach the main gate of the castle before de-transforming. 3) If you look carefully, despite their limited use of colors, the makers of the cartoon made sure to play with them to show the fusion between the couple: Betty is in pure white, the Prince is in the same shade of green as his castle, but both are united by little touches of red (his belt and cape lining, her ribbons...). A green color for the prince that seems to answer the green of the fairy godmother’s dress, to show the “positive” side characters, against the brownish-red/ocre colors of the wicked stepsisters. 4) We have a “dreaming” sequence as Cinderella and the Prince dance during the ball - a sequence where the ballroom disappears and the two of them dance in the night sky under the moon... Which (correct me if i’m wrong) seems to have been made BEFORE Disney itself created any of its iconic “dreaming dances” sequences.

# You know the rest of the story: the Prince declares he will have the shoe fitted on every girl’s feet to find out who owns it, and make her his queen (here the briefness of their encounter at the ball is balanced by the fact we literaly see Cupid abandon his bow and arrows to HIT THE PRINCE ON THE HEAD WITH A HAMMER, clearly showing a VERY intense love). Unlike in the original tale, where the shoe is brought to Cinderella’s home, here it is a public display - and it is explicitely shown here that the reason no other girl fits the shoe is because all of their feet are too big. Only Cinderella-Boop has feet small enough to match the shoe.

# However, unlike in Perrault’s tale where Cinderella forgives her stepsisters and allows her in the palace with her, here the two harpies are left locked out of the castle - and they promptly blame each other for their current situation before fighting each other physically. The end.

I unfortunately don’t have much more to say about this cartoon for now... There isn’t really some grand reimagining or message carried there - and while it is a landmark of cartoons, it isn’t like with Disney’s Three Little Pigs, who truly redefined the tale in the American mindset. This is here just a simplified, cute little pin-up Cinderella.

Except for the mystery of the effeminate prince... a breaker of gender-norms before his time, or just an unusually queer design? (We all know about Disney’s queer villains, but who knew about Fleischer’s queer princes, huh?)

#betty boop #cinderella #perrault fairytales #cartoon #short cartoon #color classics #poor cinderella #queerness in fairytales #disney #fleischer studios

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justanotherparent · 2 months

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Hello everyone,

You can call me Hilda! I was an early childhood educator for a decade and a half prior to branching out into other feilds (customer service, water filtration and sanitization, general management) then back again. If you read my TLDR above, you'll see that I go by she/her, am older, and call myself a "Manwa Mom". I decided to utilize this term literally just because I read otome isekai manga and manwa in my spare time.

I'll be regularly posting as well as reblogging things related to early childhood, SAHP things, children's rights, youth liberation, education, as well as any stereotypical "momblr" things you might think a mom would post.

I tend to ramble, so I'll try to finish this up quick with:

I have a queue which posts once a day (untagged)

Feel free to send me an ask about anything as I may not respond to DMs at this moment in time.

[IMAGE IS FROM A WICKED TALE OF CINDERELLAS STEP MOTHER]

#About Me #personal #text

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cathygeha · 8 months

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REVIEW

The Royal by Susan Stoker

Game of Chance #2

Cinderella met her fella and left the wicked steps in her dust…or…was it the prince who found his princess so they could live happily forever together? Great modern retelling of a favorite fairy tale with twists and turns aplenty.

What I liked:

* Juniper “June” Rose: Cinderella of the story, lost her father in her teens, lived with her wicked stepmother and stepsister for almost two decades, never lost her kindness, loved her father, ready to escape when the prince arrived, willing to take a leap of faith

* Callum “Cal” Redmon: prince of obscure country, retired Delta Force, survived brutal torture with his team, in the tree business with his ex-military buddies, lives in Maine, sent by his family to DC where he meets his princess, aware, listens to his gut, insightful, rather taken with Juniper

* That I could absolutely detest and despise the wicked steps Elaine & Carla AND their henchman, Tim

* The way the relationship developed between June and Cal and the way they managed to communicate and grow together

* Finding out how Riggs, JJ, and Bob were doing along with Carlise and April

* Attending the fun wedding of Riggs/Chappy and Carlise and seeing Baxter again

* The way the Hill’s House community came together when a life was on the line

* The genuine niceness of June and Cal and feeling they belonged together

* Thinking about if/when JJ and April will end up together

* The lead into the next book that will be Bob/Kendrick’s story

* The plot, pacing, setting, conclusion, and writing

What I didn’t lie: * Who and what I was meant not to like

* Thinking about how self-centric and evil some people can be and the impact they have on others

* Thinking about what Cal and his teammates endured and the horrible years June spent with her steps

Did I enjoy this book? Yes

Would I read more in this series? Yes

Thank you to NetGalley and Montlake for the ARC – This is my honest review.

4-5 Stars

BLURB

In this modern Cinderella story, New York Times bestselling author Susan Stoker weaves a tale of stepfamilies, stalkers, and a suspenseful, sweeping romance that proves true love can conquer all. Former military man and member of a royal family Callum Redmon can’t deny his sense of responsibility. So when his cousin’s latest love interest claims to have a stalker, Cal reluctantly meets with the young woman and her mother. He wants to write off the situation as a complete farce—if only his feelings for another member of the household could be as easily dismissed. Since her father’s death seventeen years ago, Juniper Rose has been at the cruel beck and call of her stepmother and stepsister. Her fantasies of escape mean leaving behind her father’s beloved home, but enough is enough: when Cal offers her a way out sooner rather than later, June takes the leap. Cal’s home in Maine with his military brothers seems like the safest place to start fresh. But as Cal and June’s fairy-tale romance blossoms into something real, they find that the dangers stalking them may have been real all along.

#Susan Stoker #Game of Chance 2 #NetGalley #Montlake Romance #Romantic Suspense #Maine Romance #Royal Romance #Ex-Military Delta Force Romance #Contemporary Cinderella Retelling #Fiction #Survivors

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princesssarisa · 19 days

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The next section of Cinderella Tales from Around the World is devoted to a lesser-known Cinderella subtype: One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes.

*The most famous tale of this type is the German version from the Brothers Grimm. To summarize:

**A woman has three daughters, each with a different number of eyes: One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes. The middle sister, Two-Eyes, is hated and abused by her mother and sisters because she's beautiful and normal-looking. (There's no mention of how many eyes the mother has.) Every day she's sent out to pasture the goat, starving because her family only feeds her scraps. But one day she meets a "wise woman" (i.e. a fairy) who instructs her to recite a rhyme, and then her goat will bring her a table covered with food. She does this every day, until her mother notices that she's not eating her scraps anymore. One-Eye goes out to spy on her, but Two-Eyes sings her to sleep. Then Three-Eyes goes out, and again Two-Eyes sings, but in her lullaby she mistakenly sings "Two-Eyes" instead of "Three-Eyes," so only two of her sisters' eyes fall asleep while the third stays awake and sees how she feeds herself. She reports it to the mother, who kills the goat. But the wise woman instructs Two-Eyes to bury the goat's entrails, and when she does, a tree with silver leaves and golden apples grows from the spot. Whenever the mother or sisters try to pick the apples, the branches move out of their reach, but Two-Eyes is allowed to pick them. One day, a handsome young knight rides by, and the mother and sisters hide Two-Eyes under a barrel. But the knight admires the tree and asks for a branch from it, yet neither One-Eye nor Three-Eyes can break one off. Then Two-Eyes rolls some golden apples out from under the barrel, revealing her presence, and gives the knight his branch. The knight wants to reward her, so she asks him to take her away from her cruel family. He takes her to his castle, where the tree magically follows them, and soon afterward they marry. Some time later, One-Eye and Three-Eyes appear at the castle door, now reduced to beggars. Two-Eyes forgives them and takes them in, and her kindness makes them repent their former treatment of her.

*The other tales of this type that Heiner's book features come from France, Scotland, Denmark, Russia, the Czech Republic, India, and the United States.

**There are three French versions: Little Annette, The Golden Pear-Tree, and The Golden Bells.

*** All three include the heroine's ineffectual father, in contrast to the all-female household in the Grimms' version, and in the first and third tales, the wicked women are the heroine's stepmother and stepsisters instead of her birth family.

***In The Golden Bells, the heroine, Florine, is a princess, and her father and wicked stepmother are the king and queen. In Little Annette, the girl's eventual husband is a prince, while in the other two, he's a king.

***None of these versions include the "one-eye, two-eyes, three-eyes" motif either: in Little Annette, the stepmother magically adds an eye to the back of her youngest daughter's head, which stays open while her own eyes sleep, while in the other two the (step)sister just pretends to sleep.

***In all three, the heroine receives her food by tapping a sheep with a magic wand. In Little Annette, the wand is given to her by the Virgin Mary, in The Golden Pear-Tree by a man, and in The Golden Bells by her dying mother at the beginning. Also, rather than personally killing the sheep, the (step)mother pretends to be sick and insists that only eating the sheep's meat will cure her, so the father kills it.

***In Little Annette, the magic tree that grows from the sheep's remains just bears "the most tempting fruit," while in the other two tales, as their titles imply, it respectively bears golden pears and constantly-ringing golden bells.

***The Golden Pear-Tree and The Golden Bells both continue after the heroine's marriage with a plot against her while her husband is away at war. In The Golden Pear-Tree, the heroine gives birth to twins, and her wicked mother-in-law replaces them with two puppies, which causes the king to order his wife executed. Unfortunately, this story only survives as a fragment with no ending, but presumably the heroine escapes somehow and reunites with her husband and children after the truth is revealed. In The Golden Bells, the stepmother throws Florine into a river. But when she does so, the bells on the tree stop ringing, and the king hears this, realizes something is wrong, hurries home, and rescues Florine.

**In the odd Scottish tale of The Sheep's Daughter, the heroine is the king's secret illegitimate daughter, whose mother is a sheep. (Apparently an anthropomorphic one who lives in a house, although the queen is able to order her slaughtered like any other sheep.) The wicked women are the king's wife and legitimate daughters. The king secretly pays regular visits to the sheep and her child, bringing them gifts, until the queen has her two daughters spy on him. The sheep magically sings the first princess to sleep, but accidentally leaves one of the second princess's eyes awake, so the queen learn's what's happening, and has the sheep killed. The heroine buries her mother's bones, then lives alone in their cottage for five years, at which point a prince gives a three-day feast. The heroine's mother rises from her grave, transformed from a sheep into a beautiful princess: she dresses her daughter in finery, and from there on the story becomes Cinderella, with the heroine attending the festival and losing a slipper on the third night, which the prince uses to find her.

**In the Danish Mette Wooden-Hood, the wicked women are again the heroine's stepmother and stepsisters: the stepmother starts out as Mette's seemingly-kind schoolteacher, who of course manipulates her into convincing her father to marry her. Mette's helper is her mother's spirit, who comforts her at her gravesite and summons doves to feed her. But eventually the younger stepsister, who has an extra eye in her neck, learns this, and Mette is locked up so she can't visit the grave anymore. Mette finally manages to run away, however, and her mother's spirit gives her a wooden dress to wear and a box that will grant her wishes when she taps it. From this point on, the story becomes like Donkeyskin or All-Kinds-of-Fur, as Mette becomes a scullery maid at a palace, attends church in magic finery three times, and on the third Sunday loses a shoe.

**In one of the two Russian versions, Little Havroshecka, the heroine is an orphan while the wicked mother and daughters are her foster family, and in other, Burenushka, they're her stepmother and stepsisters: they're also a queen and princesses in the latter. In both of these versions, "One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes" are the heroine's three wicked stepsisters, in contrast to the Grimms' version where Two-Eyes is the heroine. The animal helper is a cow, who magically spins flax for the heroine in Little Havroshecka, magically feeds her in Burenushka. In the former story, after the cow is killed, a silver tree grows from her remains with golden leaves and crystal apples, which only Havroshecka can pick, while in the latter tale, a berry bush grows on which birds sing, and the birds chase away anyone who tries to pick the berries except for the heroine. Little Havroshecka ends with Havroshecka's marriage, while Burenushka continues with the heroine giving birth to a son, her stepmother turning her into a goose, and her coming back each day to briefly resume human form and suckle her baby, until her husband finds out and breaks the spell by burning the goose skin.

**In the Czech tale of The Girl Who Had a Witch for a Stepmother, "One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes" are again the heroine's three wicked stepsisters, and the animal helper is again a cow, who spins the heroine's flax for her, as promised by her mother's spirit. After the cow is killed, her remains produce an apple tree and a well full of wine, both of which only the heroine can access. A prince proposes marriage to her as a result, but on their wedding day the stepmother locks her up and sends one of her own daughters disguised in the bridal clothes, cutting her feet to make the shoes fit. But the heroine turns herself into a bird and flies after her prince and stepsister, calling out the truth. Thus she gets her happy ending.

**The Iranian tale of The Story of How Fatima Killed Her Mother and What Came of It, is obviously related closely to the Iranian Cinderella tale shared earlier in the book, The Story of Little Fatima. Once again, we have a heroine named Fatima whom a wicked woman persuades to kill her own mother, and then persuade her father to marry the woman who urged it. But after the stepmother turns abusive and starves her, the mother's forgiving spirit instructs Fatima in a dream to buy a yellow calf, which produces food from its ears. Meanwhile, the stepmother gives birth to two daughters of her own, Four-Eyes and Four-Stumps, who spy on their half-sister when they're old enough and discover her secret. After the calf is killed, the story has various twists and turns that include a "kind and unkind girls" episode, a Cinderella-style lost shoe leading a prince to Fatima, and Four-Stumps murdering and replacing Fatima after she gives birth to a son, only for Fatima to miraculously come back in the end.

**The Indian tale of Lal Badshah, the Red King, or The Two Little Princesses revolves around two sister princesses who are abused by their stepmother. They secretly find food each day on their mother's grave, until their stepmother's cat spies on them and reports it, and the wicked queen manipulates the king first into desecrating the grave, and then into abandoning his daughters in the forest, Hansel and Gretel-style. After many more twists and turns, the two finally live happily ever after, with one princess married to a king and the mother of a son, and her devoted sister by her side.

**Last of all is a Latin American tale called One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes, where as in the Grimms' tale, Two-Eyes is the heroine abused by her cruel mother and sisters. But otherwise, this is a Cinderella story. A prince gives three balls, and Two-Eyes is forbidden to go; but before the first ball, the prince meets and falls in love with Two-Eyes, so he secretly sends her a coach and finery each night. On the night of the third ball, the mother has Three-Eyes stay home to spy on Two-Eyes, and though two of her eyes fall asleep, her third eye discovers Two-Eyes' secret. The next day, when the prince comes to the house to ask for Two-Eyes' hand in marriage, the mother locks her away and tries to offer him first One-Eye, then Three-Eyes. But of course he rejects them both and finds Two-Eyes in the end.

*It's strange that the Grimms, who normally bowdlerized wicked mothers into stepmothers in their tales, offer one of the very few versions of this tale where the heroine's abusers are her own mother and sisters instead of a stepmother and stepsisters. That said, in their footnotes they do allude to other variants where the heroine is a stepdaughter and her helper is her mother's spirit.

I'm almost finished reading this enormous anthology. After this brief section comes the last set of tales: Cinderella tales that don't fit into any of the usual categories.

@ariel-seagull-wings, @adarkrainbow, @themousefromfantasyland

#cinderella #one-eye two-eyes three-eyes #fairy tale #variations #cinderella tales from around the world #heidi ann heiner #the brothers grimm #tw: animal death #tw: violence #tw: murder #germany #france #scotland #denmark #russia #czech republic #iran #india #the united states

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the-king-andthe-lionheart · 3 years

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A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes - Arya Stark and her Cinderella Motifs

In A Song of Ice and Fire, GRRM often uses fairy tale motifs to help tell a character’s story. Sometimes this motif spans all throughout the characters arc while other times it will only be used for one or two scenes, or anywhere in between. And often one character can have several fairy tale motifs at different times in their arcs or even running concurrently. For Arya, she has quite a few fairy tale motifs in her arc, but for now I’m going to focus on her Cinderella motifs that are mainly prevalent in A Clash of Kings but do show up at other times all throughout her arc as well. I’m going to focus primarily on Arya’s A Clash of Kings arc, but we will be stopping by A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows a few times too. And I am going to use several versions of the retellings of Cinderella, including the Disney version, but only the 1950 original and none of its sequels. I also want to note that not all the parallels are obvious due to things being more metaphorical or symbolic, while other times being whatever subversion that tickled GRRM’s fancy at the time.

There are many common aspects across the board when it comes to Cinderella retellings. Often it entails the heroine losing one or both of her parents, being oppressed by her abusive stepmother and stepsisters and being forced into menial, backbreaking labor that leaves the heroine dirty and often covered in ashes. It usually entails a magical guardian who helps the heroine, magical transformations, ballgowns and a ball where she falls in love with either a Prince or a King. An identifying item is also involved, usually a slipper made of gold or glass, where one of the pair is lost when the heroine is running from her beloved. And the Prince/King almost always searches the realm for the woman that identifying item belongs to, and when he finds the heroine they usually marry.

Written out like that it’s hard to believe that this is a motif used for Arya. After all she’s not in the position to be going to balls and she’s just a child so it seems unlikely at the time she’s at Harrenhal she’s going to fall in love. However, this motif appears all throughout her arc in various and creative and subversive and repetitive ways, and motifs don’t have to be all or none and they don’t have to be in the order the original stories were laid out. A lot of people also don’t like the idea that Arya has an actual Disney Princess motif in her story because she’s a “tomboy”, but the fact is that Arya is a Princess at the time she’s at Harrenhal, it’s even explicitly stated in Arya X ACOK, whether people acknowledge it or not, where a lot of these motifs take place. I know some people will be dismissive of this and think I’m reaching, but I hope upon reading this I’ll have convinced you of this motif being present. :)

Step-Mother and Step-Sisters

Some of the two most common features in any variant of Cinderella is the “Persecuted Heroine” and the “Female Persecutor”. Often this manifests as the wicked stepmother and the evil step-sisters, but in some versions a stepmother does not appear, and it’s the heroine’s older sisters who confine her to the kitchens instead. In the opera, La Cenerentola, Gioachino Rossini inverted the gender roles where the heroine Cenerentola is oppressed by her stepfather. And in some retellings at least one of the step siblings is somewhat kind to the heroine even. We symbolically see these archetypes many times in Arya’s narrative with various types of inversions.

When we enter ACOK, we find a dirty and disguised Arya traveling with Yoren and the Night’s Watch recruits, having just lost her father (a subversion of the prevalent theme of Cinderella losing her mother very young). She is also being bullied by two older boys, Lommy and Hot Pie:

At Winterfell they [Sansa and Jeyne] had called her “Arya Horseface” and she’d thought nothing could be worse, but that was before the orphan boy Lommy Greenhands had named her “Lumpyhead.” - Arya I ACOK

That wasn’t the hardest part at all; Lommy Greenhands and Hot Pie were the hardest part. - Arya I ACOK

“Look at that sword Lumpyhead’s got there,” Lommy said one morning […] “Where’s a gutter rat like Lumpyhead get him a sword?”

[. . .]

“Maybe he’s a little squire,” Hot Pie put in. […] “Some lordy lord’s little squire boy, that’s it.”

“He ain’t no squire, look at him. I bet that’s not even a real sword. I bet it’s just some play sword made of tin.”

Arya hated them making fun of Needle. “It’s castle-forged steel, you stupid,” she snapped, turning in the saddle to glare at them, “and you better shut your mouth.”

The orphan boys hooted. “Where’d you get a blade like that, Lumpyface?” Hot Pie wanted to know.

“Lumpyhead,” corrected Lommy. He prob’ly stole it.”

“I did not!” she shouted. Jon Snow had given her Needle. Maybe she had to let them call her Lumpyhead, but she wasn’t going to let them call Jon a thief.

“If he stole it, we could take it off him,” said Hot Pie. “It’s not his anyhow. I could use me a sword like that.”

Lommy egged him on. “Go on, take it off him, I dare you.”

Hot Pie kicked his donkey, riding closer. “Hey, Lumpyface, you gimme that sword.” […] “You don’t know how to use it.”

[. . .]

“Look at him,” brayed Lommy Greenhands. “I bet he’s going to cry now. You want to cry, Lumpyhead?” – Arya I ACOK

In the first two quotes we have Arya likening the behavior of Hot Pie and Lommy to that of Jeyne Poole and Sansa. In AGOT, Sansa and Jeyne took on the “evil step-sister” archetype (and before anybody attacks me, I don’t think these two are actually “evil”, just children who think it’s okay to bully someone who is different from them), but now we are shown that this archetype has temporarily shifted onto Lommy and Hot Pie, with some subversions. These two are now male and they aren’t related to Arya in any way. Some variants of the Cinderella story do portray male siblings mistreating the younger “Cinderella” sibling though. One of the stories in One Thousand and One Nights depict a story called “Judar and his Brethren”, in which the main character is poisoned by his biological brothers in the end, depicting a rare tragic ending for this retelling. However, these subversions are completely fine because either way, they took on the role of the “bully” to Arya’s Cinderella archetype currently in the narrative.

Furthermore, while Septa Mordane was the obvious “wicked stepmother” archetype to Arya’s Cinderella archetype in AGOT, I think arguably this has fallen to Cersei now (and the Lannister’s as a whole). Cersei may not be present, but she is the reason why Arya is in the situation she is in right now. After all, Cersei takes on the role of “Evil Queen” for Sansa and Jon (they both share Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs motifs) so I do think she is the metaphorical “wicked stepmother” in this equation regardless of the fact that Cersei isn’t anything remotely close to a stepmother to Arya in the narrative, but she fits the general archetype of “female persecutor” the most in the current situation. For the case about Septa Mordane being a “wicked stepmother” archetype, I want to point to Cenerentola by Basile, in which the “wicked stepmother” started out as being the heroine’s governess, and Septa’s are the closest substitute to a governess in the universe of ASOIAF.

This isn’t the end to these archetypes being in play. As the early chapters of ACOK go on we see the animosity between Lommy, Hot Pie, and Arya disappear to the point where they become allies and then friends. With this shift in dynamic we see the archetypes disappearing with some of these same characters taking on entirely new Cinderella archetypes, while the “wicked stepmother” and “evil step-sibling” archetypes move onto other characters as well.

At Harrenhal we are introduced to two wicked women who next take on the “evil step-sibling” archetype, Goodwife Harra and Goodwife Amabel. These two even comment on Arya’s feet:

When Arya's turn came round, Goodwife Amabel clucked in dismay at the sight of her feet, while Goodwife Harra felt the callus on her fingers that long hours of practice with Needle had earned her. "Got those churning butter, I'll wager," she said. "Some farmer's whelp, are you? Well, never you mind, girl, you have a chance to win a higher place in this world if you work hard. If you won't work hard, you'll be beaten. And what do they call you?"

Arya dared not say her true name, but Arry was no good either, it was a boy’s name and they could see she was no boy. “Weasel,” she said, naming the first girl she could think of. “Lommy called me Weasel.”

“I can see why,” sniffed Goodwife Amabel. “That hair is a fright and a nest for lice as well. We’ll have it off, and then you’re for the kitchens.”

“I’d sooner tend the horses.” Arya liked horses, and maybe if she was in the stables she’d be able to steal one and escape.

Goodwife Harra slapped her so hard that her swollen lip broke open all over again. “And keep that tongue to yourself or you’ll get worse. No one asked your views.”

The blood in her mouth had a salty metal tang to it. Arya dropped her gaze and said nothing. If I still had Needle, she wouldn’t dare hit me, she thought sullenly.

“Lord Tywin and his knights have grooms and squires to tend their horses, they don’t need the likes of you,” Goodwife Amabel said. “The kitchens are snug and clean, and there’s always a warm fire to sleep by and plenty to eat. You might have done well there, but I can see you’re not a clever girl. Harra, I believe we should give this one to Weese.”

“If you think so, Amabel.” They gave her a shift of grey roughspun wool and a pair of ill-fitting shoes and sent her off. – Arya VI ACOK

Later Goodwife Amabel even threatens to rape Arya:

Three Frey men-at-arms were using them that morning as Arya went to the well. She tried not to look, but she could hear the men laughing. The pail was very heavy once full. She was turning to bring it back to Kingspyre when Goodwife Amabel seized her arm. The water went sloshing over the side onto Amabel's legs. "You did that on purpose," the woman screeched.

"What do you want?" Arya squirmed in her grasp. Amabel had been half-crazed since they'd cut Harra's head off.

"See there?" Amabel pointed across the yard at Pia. "When this northman falls you'll be where she is."

"Let me go." She tried to wrench free, but Amabel only tightened her fingers.

"He will fall too, Harrenhal pulls them all down in the end. Lord Tywin's won now, he'll be marching back with all his power, and then it will be his turn to punish the disloyal. And don't think he won't know what you did!" The old woman laughed. "I may have a turn at you myself. Harra had an old broom, I'll save it for you. The handle's cracked and splintery—" - Arya X ACOK

Menial, Backbreaking Labor

When Arya is enslaved and forced into the oppressive walls of Harrenhal, she is forced to scrub floors and do other menial, backbreaking work from sunrise to sunset, just like Cinderella:

Weese used Arya to run messages, draw water, and fetch food, and sometimes to serve at table in the Barracks Hall above the armory, where the men-at-arms took their meals. But most of her work was cleaning. The ground floor of the Wailing Tower was given over to storerooms and granaries, and two floors above housed part of the garrison, but the upper stories had not been occupied for eighty years. Now Lord Tywin had commanded that they be made fit for habitation again. There were floors to be scrubbed, grime to be washed off windows, broken chairs and rotted beds to be carried off. The topmost story was infested with nests of the huge black bats that House Whent had used for its sigil, and there were rats in the cellars as well . . . and ghosts, some said, the spirits of Harren the Black and his sons. – Arya VII ACOK

She spent the rest of that day scrubbing steps inside the Wailing Tower. By evenfall her hands were raw and bleeding and her arms so sore they trembled when she lugged the pail back to the cellar. Too tired even for food, Arya begged Weese's pardons and crawled into her straw to sleep. – Arya VII ACOK

Magical Transformations and Mice

In Disney’s Cinderella, the fairy godmother transforms mice into different creatures. On the road to Harrenhal, Arya not only likens herself to a sheep, but a mouse and continues her time at Harrenhal referring to herself as a “mouse”. This is also a subversion, while Cinderella in the Disney incarnation befriends mice, in our story Arya becomes the meek mouse:

On the road Arya had felt like a sheep, but Harrenhal turned her into a mouse. She was grey as a mouse in her scratchy wool shift, and like a mouse she kept to the crannies and crevices and dark holes of the castle, scurrying out of the way of the mighty. – Arya VII ACOK

He does not know me, she thought. Arry was a fierce little boy with a sword, and I’m just a grey mouse girl with a pail. – Arya VII ACOK

She was very small and Harrenhal was very large, full of places where a mouse could hide. – Arya VII ACOK

Even Jaqen calls Arya a mouse:

She crept up quiet as a shadow, but he opened his eyes all the same. “She steals in on little mice feet, but a man hears,” he said. How could he hear me? She wondered, and it seemed as if he heard that as well. “The scuff of leather on stone sings loud as warhorns to a man with open ears. Clever girls go barefoot.” – Arya VIII ACOK

However, through Jaqen, Arya begins to feel more in control of her situation, stronger and is transformed, if only for a short time.

“…Some are saying it was Harren’s ghost flung him down.” He snorted to show what he thought of such notions.

It wasn’t Harren, Arya wanted to say, it was me. She has killed Chiswyck with a whisper, and she would kill two more before she was through. I’m the ghost in Harrenhal, she thought. And that night, there was one less name to hate. – Arya VII ACOK

I was a sheep, and then I was a mouse, I couldn’t do anything but hide. Arya chewed her lip and tried to think when her courage had come back. Jaqen made me brave again. He made me a ghost instead of a mouse. – Arya IX ACOK

Lucifer the Cat

In Disney’s Cinderella, Lucifer is Lady Tremaine’s cat who is described as being a sly, wicked, and manipulative mouse consumer. He spends the whole film trying to torment and catch the mice. I feel that Weese takes on aspects of this feline character, and I think this because of certain descriptors that are given to Weese to make him appear almost catlike:

“Weasel,” Weese purred, “next time I see that mouth droop open, I’ll pull out your tongue and feed it to my bitch.” – Arya VII ACOK

In his own small strutting way, Weese was nearly as scary as Ser Gregor. The Mountain swatted men like flies, but most of the time he did not even seem to know the fly was there. Weese always knew you were there, and what you were doing, and sometimes what you were thinking. He would hit at the slightest provocation, and he had a dog who was near as bad as he was, an ugly spotted bitch that smelled worse than any dog Arya had ever known. Once she saw him set the dog on a latrine boy who’d annoyed him. She tore a big chunk out of the boy’s calf while Weese laughed. – Arya VII ACOK

So here we have Weese purring, strutting, being compared to the Mountain who swats at peoples, and being watchful and observant, very much like a cat. And like in the movie, a dog attacks him. Now Weese didn’t fall from a tower window, but Chiswyck fell/was pushed. Considering these two are the two people Arya had Jaqen kill, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are meant to make up two halves of a whole in this regard. After all, they are both wicked creatures who prey upon the weak, just like Lucifer and they both got their just desserts for it.

Jaq the Mouse

In Disney’s Cinderella, Cinderella rescues mice from traps, as well as from Lucifer, and dresses and feeds them. They perform favors in return. At the beginning of the film, a mouse named Gus is trapped in a cage, and the leader of the mice finds him and retrieves Cinderella to free him. The leader of the mice is a mouse named Jaq, and he was also a mouse that was saved by Cinderella from a cage. This sounds awfully familiar…

Rushing through the barn doors was like running into a furnace. The air was swirling with smoke, the back wall a sheet of fire ground to roof. Their horses and donkeys were kicking and rearing and screaming. The poor animals, Arya thought. Then she saw the wagon, and the three men manacled to its bed. Biter was flinging himself against the chains, blood running down his arms from where the iron clasped his wrists. Rorge screamed curses, kicking at the wood. “Boy!” called Jaqen H’ghar. “Sweet boy!”

[. . .]

“Good boys, kind boys,” called Jaqen H’ghar, coughing.

“Get these fucking chains off!” Rorge screamed.

[. . .]

Going back into that barn was the hardest thing she ever did. Smoke was pouring out the open door like a writhing black snake, and she could hear the screams of the poor animals inside, donkeys and horses and men. She chewed her lip, and darted through the doors, crouched low where the smoke wasn’t quite so thick.

A donkey was caught in a ring of fire, shrieking in terror and pain. She could smell the stench of burning hair. The roof was gone up too, and things were falling down, pieces of flaming wood and bits of straw and hay. Arya put a hand over her mouth and nose. She couldn’t see the wagon for the smoke, but she could still hear Biter screaming. She crawled toward the sound.

And then a wheel was looming over her. The wagon jumped and moved a half foot when Biter threw himself against his chains again. Jaqen saw her, but it was too hard to breathe, let alone talk. She threw the axe into the wagon. Rorge caught it and lifted it over his head, rivers of sooty sweat pouring down his noseless face. Arya was running, coughing. She heard the steel crash through the old wood, and again, again. An instant later came a crack as loud as thunder, and the bottom of the wagon came ripping loose in an explosion of splinters. – Arya IV ACOK

So here we have Jaq who is leader of the mice, who also helps Cinderella by doing her favors. Then we have Jaqen H’ghar who is the leader of Rorge and Biter (this name seems even more fitting now) and who is performing favors for Arya, which leads me to Jaqen’s dual Cinderella archetype: Fairy Godmother.

Magical Helpers

Some versions of Magical Helpers come from fairy godmothers or talking animals or genies. In other versions this help comes to the heroine through her dead mother, often manifesting through animal aid. In One Thousand and One Nights, in the story of “Judar and his Brethren” Judar is our Cinderella figure, whose own brothers betray and poison him, but before that he was gifted a genie named Al-Ra’ad al-Kasif who granted Judar’s wishes. In the passage below Jaqen grants Arya three “wishes” which is typical for genies to grant in our popular consciousness:

She remembered that she hated him. “You scared me. You’re one of them now, I should have let you burn. What are you doing here? Go away or I’ll yell for Weese.”

“A man pays his debts. A man owes three.”

“Three?”

“The Red God has his due, sweet girl, and only death may pay for life. This girl took three that were his. This girl must give three in their places. Speak the names, and a man will do the rest.”

He wants to help me, Arya realized with a rush of hope that made her dizzy. “Take me to Riverrun, it’s not far, if we stole some horses we could—”

He laid a finger on her lips. “Three lives you shall have of me. No more, no less. Three and we are done. So a girl must ponder.” He kissed her hair softly. “But not too long.” – Arya VII ACOK

Later, we also see that “wishes” have consequences, which is also prevalent when genies are concerned. GRRM himself is a big fan of consequences and unintended side effects.

Jaqen is not Arya’s only form of Magical Help at Harrenhal however. Jaqen may take on the role of Fairy Godmother/Genie, but we also see Arya experiencing the help of not only an animal aid, but from a dead parent. For instance, the heroine in Aschenputtel, by the Brother’s Grimm, is given a hazel twig by her father that she plants over her mother’s grave. She waters it with tears and over the years it grows into a glowing hazel tree. The girl prays under it three times a day, chanting, and a bird emerges from it that grants her wishes. There are two instances of something similar happening in the books:

In the godswood she found her broomstick sword where she had left it, and carried it to the heart tree. There she knelt. Red leaves rustled. Red eyes peered inside her. The eyes of the gods. “Tell me what to do, you gods,” she prayed.

For a long moment there was no sound but the wind and the water and the creak of leaf and limb. And then, far far off, beyond the godswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely howl of a wolf. Gooseprickles rose on Arya’s skin, and for an instant she felt dizzy. Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father’s voice. “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he said.

“But there is no pack,” she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. “I’m not even me now, I’m Nan.”

“You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you.”

“The wolf blood.” Arya remembered now. “I’ll be as strong as Robb. I said I would.” She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth. – Arya X ACOK

Here we see an inversion. Arya’s mother isn’t dead at this time, but her father, Ned is. He is who we hear through the heart tree giving Arya this empowering “Mufasa” moment that gives way to Arya’s true transformation in this arc, she reclaims her identity. And as soon as Arya asks the old gods for aid, a wolf howls in the distance as if in answer. It’s not confirmed but I do truly believe that this howl came from Nymeria, by way of the Old Gods/Greenseers, who somehow helped strengthen their bond. It is after this moment that Arya starts having full on wolf dreams in earnest and it’s through her first wolf dream that we see that Nymeria may have become Arya’s animal aid:

Her dreams were red and savage. The Mummers were in them, four at least, a pale Lyseni and a dark brutal axeman from Ib, the scarred Dothraki horse lord called Iggo and a Dornishman whose name she never knew. On and on they came, riding through the rain in rusting mail and wet leather, swords and axe clanking against their saddles. They thought they were hunting her, she knew with all the strange sharp certainty of dreams, but they were wrong. She was hunting them.

She was no little girl in the dream; she was a wolf, huge and powerful, and when she emerged from beneath the trees in front of them and bared her teeth in a low rumbling growl, she could small the rank stench of fear from horse and man alike. The Lyseni’s mount reared and screamed in terror, and the others shouted at one another in mantalk, but before they could act the other wolves came hurtling from the darkness and the rain, a great pack of them, gaunt and wet and silent.

The fight was short but bloody. The hairy man went down as he unslung his axe, the dark one died stringing an arrow, and the pale man from Lys tried to bolt. Her brothers and sisters ran him down, turning him again and again, coming at him from all sides, snapping at the legs of his horse and tearing the throat from the rider when he came crashing to the earth. – Arya I ASOS

We see here that Nymeria and her pack protected Arya, Gendry, and Hot Pie against their pursuers after their escape from Harrenhal.

Here is another instance of Arya praying under the heart tree:

Arya went to her knees. She wasn’t sure how she should begin. She clasped her hands together. Help me, you old gods, she prayed silently. Help me get those men out of the dungeon so we can kill Ser Amory, and bring me home to Winterfell. Make me a water dancer and a wolf and not afraid again, ever.

Was that enough? Maybe she should pray aloud if she wanted the old gods to hear. Maybe she should pray longer. Sometimes her father had prayed a long time, she remembered. But the old gods had never helped him. Remembering that made her angry. “You should have saved him,” she scolded the tree. “He prayed to you all the time. I don’t care if you help me or not. I don’t think you could even if you wanted to.”

“Gods are not mocked, girl.”

The voice startled her. She leapt to her feet and drew her wooden sword. Jaqen H’ghar stood so still in the darkness that he seemed one of the trees. “A man comes to hear a name. One and two and then comes three. A man would have done.”

Arya lowered the splintery point toward the ground. “How did you know I was here?”

“A man sees. A mean hears. A man knows.”

She regarded him suspiciously. Had the gods sent him? “How’d you make the dog kill Weese? Did you call Rorge and Biter up from hell? Is Jaqen H’ghar your true name?

“Some men have many names. Weasel. Arry. Arya.”

She backed away from him, until she was pressed against the heart tree. “Did Gendry tell?”

“A man knows,” he said again. “My lady of Stark.”

Maybe the gods had sent him in answer to her prayers. – Arya IX ACOK

In Cenerentola, the heroine’s (Zezolla) father is given a date seedling by a fairy and he gives it to his daughter. Zezolla cultivates the tree in which a fairy lives. This fairy gives Zezolla magical aid. When Arya prayed beneath the heart tree in the above quote it almost seems like Jaqen appeared from the trees, leaving Arya to question if the old gods sent him.

And like in Aschenputtel and Disney’s Cinderella, Arya spends time at Harrenhal singing/chanting to herself as well:

Barefoot surefoot lightfoot, she sang under her breath. I am the ghost in Harrenhal. – Arya IX ACOK

This is very strange for a couple of reasons. When we first meet Arya she claims not to like songs and doesn’t sing. She continues this up until she goes to Braavos. There she discovers that she likes the bawdy songs when she is using the name, Cat of the Canals. The only exception to this is when Arya is at Harrenhal. Another reason this is odd is because of where Arya is at physically and mentally. So either Arya was always lying about not liking songs, or Arya singing here is supposed to tell us something.

And while this might not mean anything, I found it interesting that Arya spends a lot of her time in ACOK barefoot. Now Cinderella isn’t really said to be barefoot in the stories, but she did usually lose a shoe when running away from the Prince/King, hence making her barefoot. When Arya decides to escape Harrenhal, she does don a pair of shoes again and from then on out she mostly wears them. This also leads to a fun bit of subversion. In the originals tales it’s always the Prince/King saving Cinderella from further oppression. But in Arya X ACOK, not only did she (a princess) plan the escape, but she saves Gendry, a lost (albeit bastard) prince, along with Hot Pie, from further oppression (and torture and death) by their slavers in their prison camp. (Hot Pie definitely reminds me of Gus Gus as well by the way :D)

From Rags to Riches

In many versions of Cinderella, we also see the heroine become physically transformed. The heroine is usually dirty, covered in ashes, and wearing “rags” before they are made over. In the most popular version, Disney’s Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother magically turns her from dirty household servant to highborn lady, adorning her in a silver ballgown and glass slippers. In Ye Xian, magical fish bones, help the heroine dress appropriately for a local Festival, including a light, golden shoe. And in Aschenputtel, the doves that emerge from her hazel tree, that grant the heroine wishes, drop a gold and silver gown and silk shoes down to her to wear to the ball. Also, noticeably, this is the time the Prince/King notices Cinderella and finally “sees” her.

While we didn’t get anything like that in ACOK, we don’t have to look much farther than ASOS, when Arya goes to Acorn Hall and meets Lady Smallwood, who puts her in two different dresses:

And afterward, they insisted she dress herself in girl’s things, brown woolen stockings and a light linen shift, and over that a light green gown with acorns embroidered all over the bodice in brown thread, and more acorns bordering the hem. – Arya IV ASOS

It was even worse than before; Lady Smallwood insisted that Arya take another bath, and cut and comb her hair besides; the dress she put her in this time was sort of lilac-colored, and decorated with little baby pearls. The only good thing about it was that it was so delicate that no one could expect her to ride in it. – Arya IV ASOS

And while there is no ball, Arya and Gendry spend their time in the forge together. This is the very first time Gendry has seen Arya look like a proper lady. Cinderella and Arya are no longer dirty and in rags and they are now in gowns looking their place in society, despite Arya’s dress not being nearly as grand. However, it’s enough of a change for Gendry to finally realize just who Arya truly is when it comes to her place in the world. And judging by his behavior after this event, he also begins to acknowledge that if he continues to stay by her side he could potentially love her romantically in the future as well:

Gendry reached out with the tongs as if to pinch her face, but Arya swatted them away.

[. . .]

Gendry put the hammer down and looked at her. “You look different now. Like a proper little girl.”

“I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns.”

“Nice, though. A nice oak tree.” He stepped closer, and sniffed at her. “You even smell nice for a change.” – Arya IV ASOS

Runaway Princess

Now we may not have had a ball, but while taking shelter in a stone stable with the Brotherhood Without Banners, Arya does run outside, trying to get away from everyone:

His words beat at her ears like the pounding of a drum, and suddenly it was more than Arya could stand. She wanted Riverrun, not Acorn Hall; she wanted her mother and her brother Robb, not Lady Smallwood or some uncle she never knew. Whirling, she broke for the door, and when Harwin tried to grab her arm she spun away from him quick as a snake.

Outside the stables the rain was still falling, and distant lightning flashed in the west. Arya ran as fast as she could. She did not know where she was going, only that she wanted to be alone, away from all the voices, away from their hollow words and broken promises. All I wanted was to go to Riverrun. It was her own fault, for taking Gendry and Hot Pie with her when she left Harrenhal. She would have been better alone. If she had been alone, the outlaws would never have caught her, and she’d be with Robb and her mother by now. They were never my pack. If they had been, they wouldn’t leave me. She splashed through a puddle of muddy water. Someone was shouting her name, Harwin probably, or Gendry, but the thunder drowned them out as it rolled across the hills half a heartbeat behind the lightning. The lightning lord, she thought angrily. Maybe he couldn’t die, but he could lie. – Arya VIII ASOS

Now it’s not explicitly clear that it was Gendry who ran after Arya, calling her name, but due to the possible symbolism in the scene, and also his behavior in AFFC, it makes me think it was him. But whether he was or not I believe just Arya believing it might be him makes this applicable enough as a loose parallel for the Prince chasing after Cinderella, only for Cinderella to disappear like in many of the Cinderella retellings.

Searching the Realm

At the end of ASOS in the epilogue we learn that Lady Stoneheart and the Brotherhood Without Banners, who Gendry is a part of is actively searching for Arya:

The outlaw gave him (Merrett Frey) an encouraging smile. “Well, as it happens, we’re looking for a dog that ran away.”

“A dog?” Merrett was lost. “What kind of dog?”

“He answers to the name Sandor Clegane […] Did you see him at the wedding, perchance?”

[. . .]

“He would have had a child with him,” said the singer. “A skinny girl, about ten. Or perhaps a boy the same age.”

“I don’t think so,” said Merrett. “Not that I knew.” – Epilogue ASOS

In many retellings of the Cinderella story, the Prince/King searches the realm looking for the heroine with an identifying item, and typically that item is a shoe of some sort. Once the shoe is placed on the heroine’s foot it symbolically means the heroine is reclaiming her identity. Arya, however, didn’t lose a shoe, and I’d argue that when Ned/the Old Gods/the Greenseers spoke to Arya through the heart tree, empowering Arya, that’s when Arya reclaimed her identity, at least for that time as Arya must reclaim her identity multiple times in her arc. I’d argue that Arya’s connection to the North and her family is her overall identifying item. But I fully believe Gendry himself might be another “identifying item,” along with him still taking on the archetypal role of “prince”.

Why do I say this? Because in AFFC Gendry is stationed at one of the last known places Arya was sighted at with the Hound, the Crossroads Inn, where he is blacksmithing while also helping to look after orphans. He was likely stationed there by Lady Stoneheart and the Brotherhood Without Banners because he knew Arya the best out of everyone (remember LSH would probably have a hard time recognizing Arya after two plus years and a resurrection). So if she returned, he would not only have a better chance at recognizing her, but also possibly a better chance at keeping her there compared to anyone else. If people are doubting that this is Gendry’s role, just remember that the BWB is actively looking for Arya, and also note Gendry’s personality shift post-ASOS. Gendry has always been rude and moody, but in AFFC it has been taken to the extreme. He is absolutely furious and instead of being just plain rude, he’s actually become mean and more violent. He also seems to have something against the Hound now, someone who he previously had nothing against during the Hound’s trial by combat earlier in ASOS:

…The boy came and stood beside her, his hammer in his hand.

Lightning cracked to the south as the riders swung down off their horses. For half a heartbeat darkness turned to day. An axe gleamed silvery blue, light shimmered off mail and plate, and beneath the dark hood of the lead rider Brienne glimpsed an iron snout and rows of steel teeth, snarling.

Gendry saw it too. “Him.”

“Not him. His helm.” Brienne tried to keep the fear from her voice, but her mouth was dry as dust. – Brienne VII AFFC

That “him” was very pointed and because of the symbolism in the scene surrounding that “him” and the overall change in Gendry’s behavior I definitely take it to mean Gendry does have a problem with the Hound now. So what changed? The Hound kidnapped Arya. I think it’s safe to say that Gendry is just as invested as the rest of the BWB, if not more so, to finding Arya again, hence making him the “prince” searching the realm for his lost Cinderella.

A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes

In Disney’s Cinderella, songs like “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”, “So This Is Love”, “Cinderella”, “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes”, “Oh, Sing Sweet Nightingale”, and “The Work Song” are included into the film. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen something like this in the previous retellings however. Like I mentioned earlier the Brother’s Grimm, Aschenputtel, features this as well to some extant. In Aschenputtel, the heroine would “sing a chant” to call upon the white doves that came from her glowing hazel tree. These birds would help her grant wishes and help her complete tasks, and it was most likely the inspiration for why birds were included in the Disney version, although birds have featured in more than just Aschenputtel. I mention this because GRRM wrote Arya a song in the novels:

“My featherbed is deep and soft,

and there I'll lay you down,

I'll dress you all in yellow silk,

and on your head a crown.

For you shall be my lady love,

and I shall be your lord.

I'll always keep you warm and safe,

and guard you with my sword.

“And how she smiled and how she laughed,

the maiden of the tree.

She spun away and said to him,

no featherbed for me.

I'll wear a gown of golden leaves,

and bind my hair with grass,

But you can be my forest love,

and me your forest lass.”

This is very clearly a love song also and we know it’s most likely about Arya and her foreshadowing a possible future relationship with Gendry. And it’s very clearly about them as Gendry is a bastard Baratheon “prince”, hence the mentions of “yellow silk” and a “crown”, and also because Arya quite literally is dressed as an oak tree at this time and almost a maiden and will be a maiden when they reunite later in the series. We also know the song is meant to foreshadow them because of the context. Tom O’Seven’s specifically winked at Arya as he sang this song, and after the song was sung Lady Smallwood, when taking Arya to get changed into a different dress, said to Arya, “I have no gowns of leaves,” which further tells the readers that this song is Arya’s song, her future love song.

A Mother’s Legacy

In the Magical Helpers section above I mentioned that a dead parent may be the one to help the heroine instead of the typical fairy godmother, by either sending an animal to aid the heroine and/or granting wishes, or by the heroine’s mother transforming into an animal. In some Greek versions, in “the Balkan-Slavonic tradition of the tale”, and in some Central Asian variants, the heroine’s mother comes back as a cow who is then killed by the heroine’s sisters. The heroine eventually gathers the bones and from her mother’s grave the heroine is gifted wonderful dresses. In other variants, the heroine’s dead mother comes back as a fish or a female dog. These animals represent the heroine’s mother’s legacy.

Jon chuckled. “Perhaps you should do the same thing, little sister. Wed Tully to Stark in your arms.”

“A wolf with a fish in its mouth?” It made her laugh. “That would look silly…” – Arya I AGOT

That night she went to sleep thinking of her mother, and wondering if she should kill the Hound in his sleep and rescue Lady Catelyn herself. When she closed her eyes she saw her mother’s face against the back of her eyelids. She’s so close I could almost smell her…

…and then she could smell her. The scent was faint beneath the other smells, beneath moss and mud and water, and the stench of rotting reeds and rotting men. She padded slowly through the soft ground to the river’s edge, lapped up a drink, then lifted her head to sniff. The sky was grey and thick with cloud, the river green and full of floating things. Dead men clogged the shallows, some still moving as the water pushed them, others washed up on the banks. Her brothers and sisters swarmed around them, tearing at the rich ripe flesh.

[. . .]

The scent was stronger now [. . .] Only the scent mattered. She sniffed the air again. There it was, and now she saw it too, something pale and white drifting down the river, turning where it brushed against a snag. The reeds bowed down before it.

She splashed noisily through the shallows and threw herself into the deeper water, her legs churning. The current was strong but she was stronger. She swam, following her nose. The river smells were rich and wet, but those were not the smells that pulled her. She paddled after the sharp red whisper of cold blood, the sweet cloying stench of death. She chased them as she had often chased a red deer through the trees, and in the end she ran them down, and her jaw closed around a pale white arm. She shook it to make it move, but there was only death and blood in her mouth. By now she was tiring, and it was all she could do to pull the body back to shore. As she dragged it up the muddy bank, one of her little brothers came prowling, his tongue lolling from his mouth. She had to snarl to drive him off, or else he would have fed. Only then did she stop to shake the water from her fur. The white thing lay facedown in the mud, her dead flesh wrinkled and pale, cold blood trickling from her throat. Rise, she thought. Rise and eat and run with us. – Arya XII ASOS

“So you sewed his head on Robb Stark’s neck after both o’ them were dead,” said yellow cloak.

“My [Merrett Frey] father did that [. . .] I only drank some wine…you have no witness.”

“As it happens, you’re wrong there.” The singer turned to the hooded woman. “Milady?”

The outlaws parted as she came forward, saying no word. When she lowered her hood, something tightened inside Merrett’s chest, and for a moment he could not breathe. No. No, I saw her die. She was dead for a day and night before they stripped her naked and threw her body in the river. Raymund opened her throat from ear to ear. She was dead.

Her cloak and collar hid the gash his brother’s blade had made, but her face was even worse than he remembered. The flesh had gone pudding soft in the water and turned the color of curdled milk. Half her hair was gone and the rest had turned as white and brittle as a crone’s. Beneath her ravaged scalp, her face was shredded skin and black blood where she had raked herself with her nails. But her eyes were the most terrible thing. Her eyes saw him, and they hated.

“She don’t speak,” said the big man in the yellow cloak. “You bloody bastards cut her throat too deep for that. But she remembers.” He turned to the dead woman and said, “What do you say, m’lady? Was he part of it?”

Lady Catelyn’s eyes never left him. She nodded. – Epilogue ASOS

In the Chinese retelling of Cinderella, Ye Xian, the heroine befriends a fish, which is the reincarnation of her deceased mother. In The Story of Tam and Cam, a Vietnamese version, the heroine Tam also had a fish which was killed by the stepmother and the half-sister, and its bones also give her clothes. And a typical scene in Kapmalaien tales is the mother becoming a fish, being eaten in fish form, the daughter burying her bones and a tree sprouting from her grave.

So not only is Lady Catelyn a symbolic fish, a daughter of House Tully, but she’s also been resurrected (reincarnated), and is looking specifically for our heroine, Arya, who I believe will be gifted several various things (both good and bad) by this incarnation of her mother, but we shall see if the parallel continues when TWOW and ADOS come out.

Conclusion

I really hope that after you read this monster you were as convinced as I am that Arya indeed has Cinderella motifs, and an extensive amount of them as well. Whatever it may mean I don’t rightly know, but what I do know is that at the end of the day, the many stories of Cinderella are an analogy. An analogy about someone “who unexpectedly achieves recognition or success after a period of obscurity and neglect”. Of someone whose attributes were unrecognized in their society, only for them to be recognized. And I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty hand in hand with one of her other biggest fairy tale motifs as well that runs concurrently with the Cinderella motif, and that is the story of “The Ugly Duckling”, who after years of neglect, finds acceptance within society, as well as self-acceptance within themselves. :)

#arya stark #gendrya #asoiaf

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