Prince, Bear, Brother?

 So there’s a particular detail of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” that’s always stood out to me, but I’ve never seen anyone address it before. This is the line in question, from right after our girl first sees the prince:

So the evil troll who enchanted him. Is also his evil stepmother? Which. Just. It raises so many questions. Especially as the next few lines go on to clarify that the princess in question is his stepmother’s daughter. Meaning she’s his stepsister.

(Also. Gotta love the fact that he takes the time in the middle of this little panic attack to mention just how long his bride-to-be's nose is. BTW, an ell seems to vary in length from 18 inches to 50+ inches depending on time and location. Anyway, three of them is longer than any nose should be.)

Why did this prince’s father marry a troll? And, if he married the troll, why would she need his son to marry her daughter? She’s already the queen, right?

I guess we can probably assume the prince’s father/the troll queen’s husband is dead by now. I mean, if he’s not, I have some serious doubts about his parenting. Good dads do not let their new wives turn their children into bears—that’s just irresponsible.

So we’ve got a dead king and an enchanted prince. Which would presumably leave the troll queen and her daughter in control of the kingdom. Except they don’t seem to be in that kingdom? They’re hanging out in the land east of the sun west of the moon, which seems to be a troll land, and therefore not the kingdom that the dead king and the enchanted prince are from.

Unless maybe they’re only the king (prince consort?) and prince by virtue of having married into a troll royal family?

But none of this really explains why the troll stepmother wants her stepson to marry her daughter.  It could be to maintain her hold on the kingdom he’d inherit, assuming he has a kingdom of his own. Except she’s not currently even living in that kingdom. And she already turned the dude into a bear, which you’d think would leave her in charge by default, as the regent or something? Unless he has a brother or uncle or someone who would be next in line.

I’m rambling. The point is, I don’t really understand why this troll lady turned her stepson into a bear, or why she wants him to marry his stepsister.

Which. That’s another thing. How old were these two when their parents got married? What kind of relationship do they have? Does this troll girl even want to marry her brother-ish person? Did these kids grow up together? Exactly how weird is this situation?

I have no conclusions today. I only have questions. I’m just kind of surprised that in all of the retellings, essays, blog posts, etc. I’ve read about this story over the past 20-ish years, no one has addressed this potential relationship. I guess I will someday—an “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” retelling is way, way down somewhere on my project list. (If you’re wondering how long it’s been on my to-do list for, it seemed reasonable to name my main character “Siri” when I started.) In the meantime, if you can think of anything that touches on this element, let me know.

Story and Memory

Let’s talk today about fairy tales and their softening over time. 

Now, I mean this, not in the sense that in the Grimm brothers and Perrault people are getting raped and having their limbs chopped off, and in Disney they’re not, but on a more personal level. Maybe a better way to put it is, let’s talk about story and memory.

Human memory is flawed. We frequently remember things as better, or worse, or simply different from how they really were. For fairy tales, I default to remembering them as better. I think it’s because, despite all the research I’ve done and everything I’ve learned about fairy tales over the last 15 years or so, some subconscious part of me still thinks fairy tale=good, sweet, happy.

So the other day I was reading King Thrushbeard. And, like, I’ve always known that King Thrushbeard was, let’s say...questionable. But I’ve also always been a sucker for anything involving secret identities - superheroes, Beasts, The Princess Bride, the Scarlet Pimpernel.

I’m not going to get into the details of King Thrushbeard here, because I just did that over here, which was my whole reason for reading it in the first place. Anyway, I knew it had some not great aspects, but on my reread, this little section here absolutely blew me away with how bad it was.

Kindly. He said it *kindly*. Like, F you, dude.

I’ve experienced this kind of in-memory softening of a fairy tale before, the first time I reread Perrault’s version of Riquet of the Tuft after many years. And again, you can read what I’ve said about this story here. But basically, I remembered it as this beautiful story about beauty being in the eye of the beholder, because I had very clearly remembered this line:

But what I hadn’t remembered was this line:

Where, for some context, the princess is saying “I agreed to marry you, an ugly man, when I was a total idiot. Surely, now that I am no longer a total idiot, you cannot expect me to keep such a promise.” ie, marrying an ugly man is something only a total idiot would do. She only agrees to marry him when he tells her that she has the power to make him hot. Which I feel just really undercuts the meaning of the line I remembered above; in context it seems as worthless as the morals Perrault likes to include at the ends of his stories, which often have nothing to do with the stories themselves. (Either that or they’re outright stupid - often both).

So. All this to say, I don’t think I’ll be reading my kids (if I ever have kids) a lot of fairy tales. I think I’ll be telling them, as I remember them, because I trust my own memory to produce a nicer story that Perrault or the Grimms can. Which, I suppose, is why oral tradition is so important. A fundamental part of folk tales is making them your own.