Rambling about BATB and TBL

My favorite story to write is always the story I'm currently writing. But my favorite story to read and to watch and to think about is always Beauty and the Beast, which means that this particular story I’ve written will always be a little special.

When I was a toddler I used to watch the Disney movie every day. So I've been obsessed with Beauty and the Beast for about thirty years now. 

At some point in high school I found out that the original novel existed, and after several months of searching was technically able to find it. A PDF scan of the original book in French, printed over 200 years ago. Which meant that not only was it in a language I didn't know, but it was in a slightly older version of a language I didn't know, with a font type that was almost completely unreadable. I spent several months trying and failing to translate.

A couple years later I finally managed to track down an English translation. And it was absolutely worth the wait.

I wrote my first novel length retelling of Beauty and the Beast in high school. It had some elements I remain very proud of. It incorporated a lot of the forgotten elements of the original novel, like the fairy backstories, cultures, and war. It drew a lot on Swiss and French folklore from the Alps, since that was my setting. I had some interesting things going on, and some things I think I handled well. But ultimately it was 60,000 words I wrote over the course of 30 days as a 17 year old, and the majority of it does not seem salvageable. Maybe someday I'll try.

In college I wrote a novella retelling, which I remain pretty happy with, and which you may have encountered if you know my pen name. I also wrote Windows, which may not count as a retelling since it doesn't involve a curse, the breaking of a curse, a romance, or a love interest leaving and coming back, but it's certainly heavily inspired by Beauty and the Beast.

I've planned or started probably half a dozen other BATB retellings, and that's not counting other enchanted bridegroom stories—Lindworm, my planned retelling of East of the Sun West of the Moon, my planned retelling of Snow White and Rose Red, various short stories, etc.

Somehow, no matter where I go, I always land back at Beauty and the Beast.

To Be Loved is exactly the Beauty and the Beast story I wanted to tell, right now. But so were all the others, and I'm sure in the future there'll be more. I always find more things to say, and new ways to say them, when it comes to Beauty and the Beast. I look forward to finding out how the story is going to come out of me the next time. But for now, I'm exceedingly happy with To Be Loved.

I don't want to give a bunch of spoilers (though if you were on Patreon last year you know the majority of the story. But I have added and changed and rearranges several things, too), but I do want to talk a lot about this book that I'm super excited about. So I will try to be careful in my enthusiastic rambling?

I abandoned the complex fairy and family backstories, because they don't have much to do with the main plot and I didn't want to pull my focus from the main plot for a complicated tangent, and because I've already done the complex backstories in my high school novel. I abandoned the complicated relationship with the queen because I wanted to instead have a complicated relationship with a sibling, and because I've already done the queen in my pen name novella.

I abandoned the dream prince because it's complicated and confusing and Mira isn't the sort of person who would fall in love with a dream, or the sort of person who would dream of handsome men loving her, or the sort of person who would even be comfortable with a handsome man loving her. And also because Bram isn't the sort of person who would try to reach out to Mira in a dream to reveal his true self, because he doesn't really think of the handsome prince as his true self.

I abandoned the rose because, as we either have discussed recently or will discuss shortly (I've lost track of where I am on my schedule), the rose is all about getting a young woman on the premises who can break the spell. And—this is the most fundamental part of To Be Loved—Bram doesn't really want the spell to break.

Bram is traumatized and terrified, and the spell may be a curse, but it's also a safety net. As long as he's a monster, not one is going to want him (don't tell Bram about the internet), which means no one is going to try to force themselves on him. And if they do, a Beast can fight back much better than a prince.

To Be Loved is about half basic Beauty and the Beast, and half aftermath, because I love the aftermath of a transformation spell. It's about identity and recovery, and it's just exactly the story I wanted to tell, which feels so good after so many tries at Beauty and the Beast. And I'm so excited for you to read it.

 

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Sexual Abuse in the Folk Tradition: Beauty and the Beast

 

(In preparation for the release of my Beauty and the Beast retelling, To Be Loved, I will be re-sharing old Beauty and the Beast posts. So if this post seems familiar to you, you've probably read it before.)

We all talk a lot about Beauty and the Beast—especially me. Of all the fairy tales I’m obsessed with, this has always been my favorite. And right now, I think the Beast is an excellent way to continue this discussion on rape.

What do you know about him, you who grew up on Disney?

The Beast was a jerk, right? He was mean to some fairy, so she turned him into a monster as a well-deserved punishment.

My favorite version of this story is La Belle et le Bete, a novella by a Madame Villeneuve. It’s the version of this story type that our current version is most directly descended from. And it doesn’t focus a lot on this aspect of things, but here is what I have always taken away from this story: The Beast is the victim.

He’s young. Young enough that he can’t be left home alone when his mother the queen goes off to war. So they leave him with a fairy woman.

The fairy falls in love. The Beast—future Beast—doesn’t feel the same way. That—not wanting a romantic relationship with his guardian—that is what he’s being punished for.

So we’ve got a young man, sexually harassed, at the very least, by a woman he trusted to take care of him. He gets tossed into some new body, monstrous and unfamiliar. But wait!

There’s more. Part of the spell is that he must seem as stupid as he is hideous. You’ve got this child, abused, tortured, transformed, and not even able to properly express himself—able to think just as he normally does, but unable to express those thoughts, unable to communicate effectively, unable to even let the Beauty get to know him as he really is.

I’ve read a lot of weird, intense, depressing fairy tales, but I’ve never encountered a character I felt more sympathy for than the Beast.

Now, let’s talk about what we’ve done to this story over the years, and what it says about us as a society.

This awful thing that happened to the Beast was his own fault, naturally. A very young man is sexually abused, essentially, by an older woman who is supposed to be taking care of him, and we change this into the story of an unpleasant young man being justly punished by a good woman. And then—then we do the exact same thing Beauty spent the entire story learning not to do. We immediately assume that ugliness of body must signify ugliness of spirit, and we adjust the story accordingly.

This is meant to be a story about a girl learning to see past appearances—about Beauty becoming a better person. Instead it’s become the exact opposite—Beauty helping the Beast to become better. It’s a redemption story now. The Beast never needed to be redeemed. He needed to be rescued.
I love Beauty and the Beast, in all its versions. I’m not saying that there’s something wrong with the version we tell now. It’s a good story, if a different one. What I am saying is that the way the story has changed over the years can be connected in interesting ways to how we handle the issues it contains in real life.

How many times have you heard the words “Men can’t be raped?” We have this bizarre inability to accept the idea of the guy as the victim in any situation. And in the meantime, we’ve got all these people suffering the way the poor Beast does.

Imagine how traumatized he must have been. Imagine going through that, and having everyone siding with the evil fairy, everyone saying you deserved it, everyone assuming that because you’re big and ugly, you couldn’t possibly have been a victim here, and in fact, you were probably the perpetrator.

Let’s think less about magic flowers, and more about the incredible abuses of power at play here. The Beast is magnificent. And so many people are going through the real-life equivalent of his problems. We need more Beauties to see the worth in the people we push off to the side. No one real should ever have to suffer like the Beast.

 

 

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To Be Loved: Chapter 1

 

In the dappled light of the forest, nestled between the roots of her favorite tree, Mira wept.

She had not, these last few days. She had not allowed herself to, not sure how she could explain it to her family, who would surely see. But now her work was done for a moment, and she was alone, in her private hollow in the woods, where no one would search for a quarter hour or more.

A twig snapped.

Mira looked up. Standing before her was a great beast, seven feet tall at least, perhaps ten if one counted the antlers. He had glossy dark fur, and a snout that looked somehow like both a bear’s and a deer’s. Horrifying and majestic, like a forest god of old.

“Hello,” he said.

She stared at him for a moment before recovering her manners; she had not expected him to speak. “Oh! Hello.”

“You’re upset,” he said.

“Um. Yes.” She did not want to explain the situation to a monster in the woods. And given the typical result of encountering monsters in the woods, her current problems were likely over.

Though not, admittedly, in the way she’d have chosen.

“Before—before you eat me, or take me away to serve you forever in fairyland, or whatever it is you’re planning to do, could we—could we have some witnesses, please? I don’t mind what you do to me, as long as someone sees it.”

If she was taken by fairies, or something convincingly like them, the crown would make restitutions to her parents. And fairies could do horrible, horrible things, but at least it wouldn’t—wouldn’t be—

The creature stared at her for what felt like a very long time. She considered and discarded the possibility of running; he was terrifying, but so was Ralph, and the future that awaited her.

“You want to get away,” he said at last, half a question. It sounded like an offer.

“Oh, yes,” Mira said, her need for escape overwhelming fear and reason both. But any escape he offered her could only be a trap. “But I can’t. My family is depending on my marriage. We need the bride price desperately.” Or, failing that, the crown’s restitution.

“And do you want to be married?”

She thought of Ralph, of his bright smile and soft hands. She thought of Ralph three days ago, when he—

“No,” she admitted.

The creature nodded. “What is your bride price? I will pay it double, and take you away, and you needn’t be my bride.”

She studied the monster, his deep black eyes and soft snout, his large paws. He had no reason to help her, and she had no reason to trust him. He couldn’t lie, if he was a fairy, but she thought that he was not—they usually looked lovely and human—and other magical creatures could, as far as she knew, tell as many lies as they liked. He likely wasn’t lying when he said she wouldn’t be his bride, but only because she was more likely to be his dinner or his slave.

She could not stay here. Not like this, not with Ralph. And a fairy restitution would not be nearly as much money as double her bride price.

It was a foolish choice.  But she couldn’t stay here. And his face, for all it was monstrous, looked kind.

“You’ll have to speak with my father,” she said.

He nodded.

“I am Mira. What shall I call you?”

He didn’t answer for a long moment. “I don’t have a name,” he said at last. “You may call me Beast; it is what I am.”

~

The Beast spoke with her father in the doorway; his antlers prevented him from fitting inside. Not, Mira thought, that her father would have been inclined to let him in regardless. He closed the door on him, rudely, to discuss the offer.

“You can’t mean to marry a monster.”

“You can’t mean to turn down the bride price he offers, not with Mama sickly, and your only son still in diapers.” It would be a decade before Henry could truly contribute to the household, and the doubled bride price was far more than her own contributions were worth. She and Anna tried, but they had not the strength to do any of the things that would truly bring in money.

“Young Ralph has—”

“Ralph will offer you half what the Beast has. We’ve made him no promises. Take the better offer.”

“I am not so desperate for gold that I would—”

“I’ll not marry Ralph, Father. Accept the Beast’s offer, or I’ll go with him anyway, and bring shame on the family.”

She loved her family. She hated Ralph more.

“He has bewitched you. Mira, child. He’s a monster. He’s—”

“He’s bigger and stronger than us. And perhaps he has bewitched me; I don’t know if he has magic, but certainly he’s made of it. If he wants me he will have me, willing or no. Accept the bride price, and make it as right as you can.”

She walked past him to open the door. “If you will bring the bride price tomorrow, my father will send me with you then,” she told the Beast. “May I walk you out?”

She looped an arm through his—the angle was awkward, with his height—and led him back toward her hollow.

“I’ve no intention of forcing you,” he said, the clear anxiety in his voice at odds with his monstrous appearance.

“I know,” Mira said, mostly honest. “It was only to make my father agree.”

His voice was as kind as his face, and it could be a trap, but why bother to set one? He could have taken her easily enough without all this.

“You needn’t come with me,” he said. “You can have the bride price, and stay here—I’ve no need for the money.”

It was a very kind offer. She would never have thought to expect such kindness from a monster, never would have thought she could feel so irrationally safe with an enormous, alarming creature who by all rights ought not to exist.

She had to go with him. The money was not enough. No money would ever be enough. It would buy her time, but Ralph would persist.

“I will go with you,” she said, “if you will have me.”

“Of course.”

They had reached the hollow. She released his arm, and rolled her shoulder to calm the strain of the angle. “I’ll see you in the morning, then?”

“In the morning,” he agreed. He turned, and stepped through the trees, and was gone, as suddenly as he had appeared.

~

He couldn’t remember his name. He thought it was part of the curse, though he wasn’t quite sure. He hoped it was part of the curse. He hoped it was something that had been taken from him, rather than something he’d been careless enough to lose.

His memory wasn’t good. Like his body, it made him feel less like a man every day, farther and farther from whoever he used to be. But a name seemed the sort of thing he ought to have hung onto, even as the rest faded away.

He thought he used to be a man, with dark brown hair and a nose that wasn’t quite straight. He thought he used to have a little brother he carried on his shoulders, and a hunting hound who was quite terrible at hunting, and liked to sleep in his bed. He thought he attended balls, and hunts, and history lessons.

He knew he had a name.

Just not what it was.

He knew he used to be shorter, not because he remembered it, but because even now, he forgot to duck, and banged his antlers into things.

He knew something bad had happened, something other than becoming a monster, something worse. He didn’t know what, not because he couldn’t remember but because he refused to, because he spent long hours trying to recall the shape of his maybe-brother’s face, or any other details of his life before, but when the tiniest hints of the bad thing surfaced, he shoved them down, found a distraction, thought of anything else.

The memories came back, he thought, in nightmares, but he woke remembering only dread and sick fear, and not the details.

He knew because the look in Mira’s eyes when she spoke of marriage, when he offered an escape, felt so achingly familiar.

He hadn’t meant to invite a young woman to live with him. He hadn’t meant to be there at all. He’d been in that wild area behind the palace that used to be a garden, and then he had been in front of a crying girl.

The halls of the palace wound and changed without his say, but usually the grounds didn’t wander about without permission.

He decided to blame that on the curse, too.

Some days it felt like a living thing, writhing beneath his skin.

He’d made no attempts to break it. Not, at least, since his memory started going foggy.

The curse, he thought, was growing restless. It mustn’t be any fun, being a curse whose victim lies down and takes it.

If he didn’t try to break the curse, he couldn’t fail. If he didn’t fail, he would suffer only in the same old ways, no fresh entertainment for the one who cursed him.

(He thought it was a woman. He didn’t like thinking any harder about it than that.)

Also, the curse had made him larger and stronger and much more frightening, and that was not entirely a bad thing.

He had been boring. Content, even. So the curse had presented him an opportunity to be broken, since he refused to seek one out.

They needn’t fall in love, just because she was here. It seemed quite unlikely, really.

A woman was going to be living with him. He thought—he thought he used to wear clothes. Maybe he should do that again.

He didn’t look much like a man, and nothing showed through the fur. But still, if one was sharing a space with a young woman, and she was escaping an unwanted marriage, and her father seemed to think this was a marriage, then one ought to wear clothes.

He hoped he could find some. The curse might think it rather funny, forcing him into close proximity with a woman, nude.

Or, more likely, the palace might think it a waste of time to produce for him something so unnecessary.

He was going to be living with a woman.

She had touched him.

He thought of her little brown hand on his large brown arm. He tried to remember the last time another person touched him, and couldn’t.

(A silver white hand, cupping his cheek, his face changing beneath it, her smile like—)

He shook his head. He couldn’t.

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The Dragon of the North

 We’re still in the Yellow Fairy Book, and this is an Estonian story, collected by a Dr. Friedrich Kreutzwald, whose work was then translated to German by F. Löwe; Lang cites the German version as his source, with the German title and the name of the Estonian collector, which would at a glance give the impression that this was a German story. So consider this your periodic reminder not to take Lang citations at face value.

There was once a dragon who laid waste to large tracts of country. Described as having a body like an ox, legs like a frog, and a tail like a serpent, ten fathoms long. Every hop it takes covers half a mile. Worth noting at this point that the translation of the original Estonian title is “The Frog of the North.” It has eyes like lamps, which bewitch anyone who looks in them, compelling them to run into his mouth.

The frog dragon likes to settle in one place for several years at a time, eat absolutely everything, and then move on. Anyone who tries to fight him ends up walking into his mouth to be eaten.

Wise men say the dragon can be defeated by whoever possesses Solomon’s ring, because there are instructions on an inscription engraved on it. However, no one knows where the ring is, or how to read the language the inscription is written in.

A young man sets out in search of the ring, and after some years meets a famous eastern magician, who advises him to consult with the birds. He gives him a magic potion which makes him able to understand birds, and tells him to come back when he gets the ring, because he happens to be the only person in the world who can read the inscription.

The young man resumes his search, and eventually overhears some birds discussing a witch maiden who either has or knows of the ring, and will be coming to a nearby stream in three nights, for her monthly face-washing, to prevent aging.

He goes to the stream, where the witch maiden catches him spying on her, and invites him over. He goes back to her place, and the birds advise him not to give her any blood, or it’ll cost him his soul.

The witch maiden lives in a beautiful enchanted palace, and she invites him to stay forever, and asks him to marry her.

He asks for some time to think over the marriage, and hangs out with her at the palace in the meantime. One day she shows him the golden ring that powers most of her magic, and says she’ll give it to him as a wedding gift. But in order for their love to last forever, he must give her three drops of blood from the little finger of his left hand.

He asks her about the ring. She tells him she can only half read the engraving on it, but can still perform incredible magic with it. She shows him how she can use it to fly, to turn invisible, to turn invulnerable, to create anything she desires, and to have superstrength. She also confirms his suspicion that it is, indeed, King Solomon’s ring.

He asks for a demonstration. Then he asks to try it himself. And she agrees.

At this point, he’s been here for at least several days, possibly several weeks. It seems like this woman has genuine feelings for him, though the whole blood-soul situation does raise some red flags.

He takes the ring, plays around with its different powers for a while, and then turns himself invisible and leaves. Once he’s far enough away, he flies back to the magician, who takes seven weeks to fully translate the engraving before sending him back to the frog dragon with very specific instructions.

He finds the dragon, who’s moved on since he was last home, and the king of the land it’s currently occupying is offering his daughter’s hand and a large part of the kingdom to anyone who can defeat it.

Our guy rides an iron horse on wheels toward the dragon, using his superstrength to propel it. He gets into the dragon’s open mouth, and drives an iron spear two fathoms long into its jaw, as thick as a large tree and pointed on both sides, positioned so the dragon can’t close its mouth. He chains the spear to iron pegs driven into the ground so the dragon has no chance of dislodging this thing.

 

The dragon struggles for three days before it’s too weak to lash out with its tail, and then our guy approaches again and clubs it over the head with a large stone, killing it. It’s unclear why he couldn’t have done that bit three days ago, when he was already right there by the dragon’s head.

He marries the princess, and everything is going great until the dragon’s rotting body poisons the air and starts killing people. He goes to consult with the magician, but the witch maiden catches him on the way over, takes back the ring, and chains him to a rock in a cave. She promises to bring him food every few days, so that he can live out his natural life chained up, instead of dying quickly of hunger.

The princess and the king are frantically searching for him, consulting all sorts of magicians, and eventually a guy from Finland works out that he’s somewhere in the east. The king sends messengers who encounter our first magician, who rescues him.

Seven years have passed since he was first captured.

He gets home just in time to become king, as his father-in-law died that very morning, and he and his wife live happily ever, though he never gets the ring back.

The whole poisoned air situation is never followed up on. No resolution there.

The story ends with a question: “Now, if you had been the Prince, would you not rather have stayed with the pretty witch-maiden?”

Um, no? His goal was to save his entire region from death by frog-dragon; if he’d stayed, hundreds would have died. She proved herself to be fairly vindictive, which, okay, I do see where she was coming from. But there was the whole thing with his soul being at risk. Like, that’s a major concern. Even if he could talk her out of the originally proposed blood-letting, in an entire lifetime together, surely he’s going to shed some blood. Kitchen accidents. Shaving accidents. Things happen, you know?

But I do think he could have handled the whole situation better. Maybe he could have said, “hey, I made a commitment to slay this dragon, and I bet this ring would be really helpful for that; would you maybe like to go on a dragon-slaying adventure with me?” Maybe he could have said, “hey, I feel a little weird about this bleeding thing. I’ve heard some rumors. Can we maybe talk about that?”

I mean, he did very much screw over this girl who opened up her heart and her home to him. And okay, her asking for his blood was a little weird, but we only have the word of some random birds that this was a soul-costing situation. She was nothing but nice to him until after he stole her most important possession.

Like, at the very least, maybe he could have returned it after slaying the dragon?

Again, we have nothing but hearsay from birds to indicate that this woman is evil. The chaining him in a cave thing was…not great, but he did betray her in a big way.

I would not rather have stayed with the witch maiden. But I would have rather he tried being a little nicer to her.

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The Iron Stove

 From the Grimms, although I don’t recognize it, by way of the Yellow Fairy Book.

A prince is cursed to sit in a large iron stove in the woods. After many years, a princess gets lost in the woods, and comes across the stove. The prince inside offers to help her get home and to marry her if she promises to come back and get him out of the stove.

She agrees, he tells her to bring a knife when she comes back, and he summons a guide for her.

Back home, she explains to her father that she’s promised to marry a stove. Understandably, he has concerns. Less understandably, he sends the miller’s daughter back in her place.

The miller’s daughter, as instructed, scrapes at the stove with a knife all night, trying to make a hole in the iron. It doesn’t work, and he figures out she’s not the princess, and sends her away.

They try the same trick with the same results with the swineherd’s daughter, and then the princess has to go back and keep her word.

She works a small hole in the iron almost immediately, which is probably magic, and answers the question of why the guide the prince can apparently summon from inside the stove couldn’t get him out. On the other hand, it might have just been easy because two other girls put several hours into the project already.

The princess frees the prince, falls madly in love with him, and agrees to go home with him, but she needs to say goodbye to her father first.

She’s warned not to say more than three words to her father. Which of course doesn’t work out, because how on earth are you supposed to explain, “there was a handsome prince inside the stove and I freed him and now I’m going to go back to his kingdom and marry him, so please don’t worry if you never see me again,” in only three words?

As soon as she says word number four, the stove is sent away, over a mountain of glass and sharp swords. The prince is not in the stove, but apparently he disappears to somewhere, too.

The princess sets out in search. She winds up in a house full of toads, with a wonderful feast on the table. The toads invite her in, feed her, set her up in a nice bed, and give her instructions in the morning. She has to cross a glass mountain, three cutting swords, and a great lake to reach her prince. The toads give her three large needles, a plough wheel, and three nuts to help.

She uses the needles to climb over the mountain—I’ve never seen a needle I could drive through glass, but I’ve never seen a talking toad, either, so we’ll allow it. She rolls over the swords on her plough wheel, which to be honest is 100% of the reason we’re talking about this story; I wanted you all to see this image:

 

Apparently she doesn’t need any magical aid to cross the lake.

So the prince is here; apparently he travelled with the stove even though he was no longer trapped inside it. He’s set to marry another princess, apparently because he thought our princess was dead?

Dude, she went to talk to her dad. You knew this.

And we go through the usual thing. There are gowns in the nuts. She trades three gowns for three nights in the prince’s bedroom. The prince is drugged, but he doesn’t take the drugs on the third night. They reunite.

Then they steal a carriage, steal all the other princess’ clothes so she can’t follow them, and go back across the lake and the swords and the mountain, to the little toad house, which turns into a beautiful palace. All the toads turn into princes and princesses, and they stay there and live happily ever after.

So, like, is this the prince’s family? Is this the home he was trying to take the princess back to? Or did they just find a free palace and forget all about his family? It’s really not clear.

I always feel so bad for these second brides. Like, not the East of the Sun West of the Moon types who are, like, evil, but these random girls who get engaged not knowing these men had other girlfriends before, and then they just get screwed over. Like, okay, they usually drug the guys, which is not cool. But I think it’s to prevent any funny business, not to hide the first bride from them?

Still, the correct solution is to discuss this, like, hey, there’s this dress I want to wear to our wedding, but the girl who owns it won’t let me buy it unless I let her spend the night in your room. Yeah, I know it’s really weird. But I really like this dress. What are your thoughts on the situation?

So the drugging is a bad move. But, like, they stole all her clothes? So she couldn’t follow them? That was seriously unwarranted. And they called her the “false bride,” like give the girl a break, all she did was get engaged to a man who was, as far as she knew, available.

All her clothes. Yikes.

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 Have you recently confessed your undying love to a monstrous figure of some sort? Did he then transform into an attractive human man? Is he severely traumatized? We’re here to help!

Many women, in the immediate aftermath of a curse-breaking, expect to live a romantic life of luxury and ease with their dashing Prince Charming. But your Prince Charming has PTSD. Yes, I’m talking to you. Because they all have PTSD. Coming out of an animal transformation is no joke.

Here are just a few of the issues to be on the lookout for as he adjusts:

• Disassociation

• Dysphoria

• General confusion about identity

• Sensory overload

• Other processing difficulties

• Large gaps in education

• Large gaps in social development

• Large gaps in physical development

• Codependency

• Trust issues

• Fear of intimacy due to previous trauma

• Depression

• Heightened anxiety

• Attachment difficulties

• Trouble setting boundaries

• Trouble understanding boundaries

• Trouble understanding age appropriate behavior

• Trouble understanding species appropriate behavior

• Difficulties with nutritional intake

• Agoraphobia

• Insomnia

• Anger issues

We understand that all of this can be a lot, and it wasn’t what you were expecting. But remember, your Prince is suffering a lot more than you are, and he desperately needs your support.

We are proud to offer several options to support you in supporting him, from talk therapy to basic education modules on a wide range of topics, including but not limited to:

• How to walk

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• How to use a fork

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We will gladly work with you to address any gaps in knowledge or skills lost to prolonged change in form. We also offer customized history and science lessons based on your Prince’s education level at time of curse, and the duration of his curse. Did he spend ninth grade social studies and health class living in a cave? We can help. Did he spend two hundred years isolated in an enchanted palace, missing numerous wars and major scientific advancements? We can help with that, too.

Call 1-800-XXX-XXXX today to speak with a representative about your Prince’s custom-tailored adjustment plan.

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Hermod and Hadvor

 This is an Icelandic story from the Yellow Fairy Book.

We begin with a widowed king, his daughter Hadvor, and his foster son Hermod. Hermod and Hadvor secretly pledged as children to marry each other, so not a sibling relationship.

The king once promised his wife to only ever remarry if he was marrying the Queen of Hetland the Good. Oddly specific, but a lot less problematic than the standard “only someone as beautiful as me,” which has the unfortunate tendency to result in attempted incest.

Anyway, the king meets a woman claiming to be Hetland; he meets her in a secondary location, since she allegedly recently escaped pirate kidnappers. Strangely, she doesn’t have any inclination to return home, let her people know she’s survived, collect her things, set up a plan to either rule remotely or appoint a regent, etc. Just agrees to marry the king, and she, her daughter, and her maid go home with him. 

Dude. This is so shady. You meet a random woman, tell her you’re a king searching for Hetland so you can marry her, and she magically happens to be her? You need some proof of identity.

Hadvor and Hermod aren’t much interested in the alleged queen and princess, but Hadvor becomes good friends with the maid, whose name is Olof.

At some point, the king goes off to war, which is always when trouble starts.

Allegedly-Hetland wants Hermod to marry her daughter. Hermod says no. So she curses him to go to a desert island, be a lion by day and a man by night, and always be thinking of Hadvor. The spell can be broken only by Hadvor burning his lion skin.

Hermod curses her right back, which is the first and last mention of Hermod having any magical powers. He says that as soon as his curse is broken, she’ll become a rat, her daughter will become a mouse, and they’ll fight in the throne room until he kills them with his sword.

So now Hermod is missing, and the king is still gone, but fortunately we have a solution in the form of Olof, who conveniently knows exactly what the queen did to Hermod, exactly how to undo it, and also what the queen is planning to do to Hadvor. She’s going to turn her three headed giant brother from the underworld into a beautiful prince and get Halvor to marry him. (And the brother pretty much confirms my suspicion that this woman is not actually Hetland.)

In the course of her massive info dump, Olof also lets us know that she was kidnapped by the queen and forced to serve her, but the queen can’t actually hurt her because she has a magic green cloak. Then she says that the giant brother will be coming up through the floor, and should be easily eliminated by some blazing pitch.

This girl really does have all the answers.

Some time passes. The king comes home, and is very distressed to find Hermod missing. (Hadvor, this would have been a great time for you and Olof to share some info with your dad.) Hadvor makes a habit of having blazing pitch always on hand, which I imagine raises a lot of questions among the staff.

Finally she hears the sound of the ground opening and someone coming up through the floor, and she pours her pitch. The queen finds her brother in the morning, burned to a crisp, and proceeds with her plan to turn him into a beautiful prince. She also casts a spell so that Hadvor can’t say anything in her own defense.

Then she accuses Hadvor of murdering her poor innocent brother.

Now, we know Hadvor can’t defend herself, but she doesn’t even get the chance, because despite there being absolutely no evidence that she killed this man, the king, without even trying to speak with her, immediately believes that she did it, and leaves her punishment to his wife.

This king is the biggest idiot I’ve covered in, like, at least two weeks.

The queen plans to put Hadvor into a burial mound with her brother, where presumably she’ll suffocate and die.

But the all-knowing Olof comes through for us again! She tells Hadvor how to escape the giant’s ghost, and how to get more info about Hermod while she’s at it.

Actually, I retract “all-knowing.” She told us the pitch would take care of this guy, which clearly it did not if we now have a ghost to contend with. And apparently she doesn’t know exactly where Hermod is, since Hadvor is supposed to get that information from the ghost.

Hadvor goes into the mound, along with the giant ghost and his two dogs. The ghost wants his body cut up and fed to the dogs, which Hadvor does in exchange for the location of Hermod’s desert island, and the information that she can only reach it by taking the skin off the soles of his feet and using them to make herself shoes, which will be able to walk on both land and sea.

Ew.

She’s already cutting him up for the dogs, so she pockets the soles. The ghost then lets her stand on his shoulders to escape the mound—it is unclear why he’s helping her get out or how she’s able to stand on the shoulders of a ghost.

At the last minute he tries to grab her and pull her back down, but Olof warned her about this; she’s wearing a large cloak, which she unclasps, escaping and leaving him with the cloak.

Hadvor reaches the island with her disgusting shoes, but on the island runs into a cliff she doesn’t know how to get past. She dreams that night of a woman who promises to drop a rope for her. She also promises to leave her a belt that will keep her from being hungry.

She wakes up, puts on the belt, and finds the rope. She reaches the top of the cliff and finds a little cave where she waits. Before long, a lion comes in, sheds his skin, and becomes Hermod. She takes the skin and burns it immediately, and then they have their reunion.

They’re not sure how to get back home, since there’s only one pair of shoes, so they go ask the local witch, who has fifteen sons and sends people helpful dreams and anti-hunger belts.

The witch lends them a boat, but warns them that the ghost giant has now turned into a giant fish—this guy really doesn’t let death slow him down, does he?—and will probably attack them. if he does, they can call her for help.

The fish attacks. They call for help. The witch and all fifteen of her sons turn into whales and take care of that, and then they’re home free.

The king, meanwhile, is worried about his missing wife and stepdaughter, and incredibly frustrated by this rat and mouse that are constantly fighting in his hall, which no one can get rid of.

Hermod and Hadvor come in, Hermod kills them, and their bodies turn into witches. It is unclear whether they returned to the bodies the king was accustomed to seeing them in, or if that was a disguise and they are now in some other, original form.

They tell the king everything, they get married, and Olof marries a nice nobleman. No mention is made of trying to return Olof to her home and family. No mention is made of the queen and her daughter leading active ghost lives like her brother. The text never tells us whether or not she was really Hetland, but I’m going to stick with my original theory of “absolutely not,” since there is literally no evidence, this woman has been proven to be a liar, she has a brother who is not human, and her behavior is not consistent with someone known as “the Good.”

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