The Princess Blog

There are nearly as many "Cinderella" retellings as there are stars in the sky , but only a select few explore the hardships this abused peasant girl would have inevitably faced after her rags were turned to riches overnight. Disney attempted to do this with Cinderella II: Dreams Come True  and failed miserably. Just Ella  by Margaret Peterson Haddix portrays a much more engaging depiction of Ella's difficult adjustment to palace life, which spawned two excellent sequels . More recently, Lissa Sloan  took on this harrowing task with Glass and Feathers , a dark take on what happened after "happily ever after" that is heavily rooted in the Brothers Grimm adaptation of the tale. Glass and Feathers  is a darker take on "Cinderella" that isn't suitable for all readers. Although the book contains no spice, there is some body horror reminiscent of the ending of the Brothers Grimm adaptation , in which the stepsisters cut off pieces of their feet to fit...

The Seven Years Princess  by Brittany Fichter is one that had been on my reading list for a while. After reading several of Brittany's other books , I knew to expect a dark fantasy romance with religious undertones. In this case, however, I was not very familiar with the fairy tale it was based on. So I pulled out my fancy Brothers Grimm anthology and took a few minutes to learn the story of  "Maid Maleen."  It is about a girl who was imprisoned for seven years after falling in love with a prince and left her tower to find that everything she knew had been destroyed. As soon as I finished it, I said to myself "Yup, that sounds like a Brittany Fichter story." Her adaptations tend to be darker than most, so this seemed like the perfect fairy tale for her to expand upon. Ever since she was a little girl, Princess Maleen took a liking to Prince Roburts, who belonged to an enemy kingdom. The one person who she could never tell about this forbidden romance was her u...

Though it feels like fairy tales have been around forever, the popular versions that we know today have actually only been circulating in English-speaking countries for a little over a hundred years. Much of this is thanks to a name that we rarely hear associated with fairy tales, Andrew Lang . Lang didn't write any fairy tales himself, but he was one of the first people to translate stories from the Brothers Grimm , Hans Christian Andersen , Charles Perrault , Madame d"Aulnoy , and others into English to introduce them to a wider audience of fantasy lovers with the Fairy Books of Many Colors , a 12-volume encyclopedia of fairy tales from all over the world. Lang was a scholar who published a number of periodicals, poems, and fiction, but he was most famous for annotating these stories that were translated by his wife and illustrated with beautiful ink drawings by H.J. Ford . Thanks to the magic of the internet, I was able to acquire a full set of the Fairy Books at a relative...

One of my readers informed me about Rolf Kauka's Once Upon a Time , an obscure German animated adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale "Frau Holle."  After a quick search, I was pleased to discover that someone had uploaded a nostalgic VHS recording of the entire film on YouTube. The animation reminded me of the old Disney knock-off tapes I used to watch when I was a child, but the storytelling and music were several notches higher in quality. Since there are no other famous adaptations of this fairy tale, I can see that the filmmakers worked very hard to do it justice. They did a terrific job for the time period and what I can only assume was a humble budget. The story has a lot of heart and a unique presentation. What sets Once Upon a Time  apart from other animated fairy tales is that it completely excludes the protagonist from the first ten minutes of the movie. "Frau Holle," the story it is based on, is similar to  "Cinderella"  in the regard...

"The Goose Girl" by the Brothers Grimm  seems to be one of the hottest fairy tales to adapt right now. It is one of the only fairy tales featuring a princess that has not been turned into a Disney movie . Thorn  by Intisar Khanani  is the fourth adaptation  I've read of this identity-swapping fable , but I can't say that it's one of my favorites. It is the most loyal adaptation I have read, incorporating darker elements that had been graciously removed from other versions, such as the slaughter of the princess's prized horse. Though I appreciate Intisar's attempts to stay true to the tale as well as her incorporation of her culture within the language of the story, the book seems to drag on for ages before anything interesting happens. The climax of Thorn  has a big payoff that conveys a strong anti-violence message , which implies that it may have been more enjoyable if it were a little shorter. For the most part, Thorn  is a faithful retelling of ...

Many people like to talk about how much darker the Brothers Grimm stories were than their movie counterparts. Yes, we all know Cinderella's stepsisters had their eyes pecked out by birds, and Snow White's stepmother was forced to dance in burning hot iron shoes until she died. However, I find medieval punishments for wicked deeds far less disturbing than glorifying or rewarding characters for malicious actions. Did you know that in the story of "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,"  Aladdin wins the princess's hand in marriage by teleporting her into his bed on her wedding night and teleporting her new husband outside to sleep in the cold? Author A.G. Marshall  wrote a fantastic short story about this aspect of the fairy tale called "The Princess and the Lamp."  Women being treated as property is quite disturbing by today's standards, but here are three examples of even more disturbing stories where princesses are rewarded for downright wicked behavior ....

Picture a maiden with impossibly long hair trapped in a tower. What story comes to mind? Rapunzel has been a memorable icon among princess tales long before Disney  got their hands on it  in 2010. She is the quintessential fairy tale damsel in distress. That's not to say she was always helpless. In fact, in the Brothers Grimm adaptation , Rapunzel asks the prince to bring her silken skeins that she sews together to create a ladder so she can escape the tower herself, so she was actually more active in solving her own problems than  Cinderella  and  Snow White . Let's get real, though. It's that amazing hair that's held our interest for all those centuries. Who hasn't dreamed of growing their hair insanely long, despite all the upkeep it would inevitably require? Though Rapunzel became a princess through marriage, she did not start out that way. Her family's social status was unmentioned, but it was likely that they were peasants because her father n...

We all know the story of a spoiled princess who rewarded a frog for returning her golden ball by then throwing him against the wall in a fit of rage. Or do we? The Brothers Grimm tale known as  "The Frog King"  has gone through so many iterations over the years that while many are familiar with the story, few are aware of its roots. It is commonly believed that the frog's curse was broken with a kiss from a beautiful princess, but the Grimm version is a great deal darker. The princess was so disgusted by the frog that she threw him across the room, when he transformed into something more appealing to her. The version of the story with the kiss is believed to be a later  development inspired by Edgar Taylor's translation , which made the princess begin to care for the frog over the course of the story. The best adaptation of this was the one by Jim Henson in 1971, featuring Kermit the Frog and his nephew Robin. In the Muppet version of "The Frog Prince,...

It's time to talk about  everyone's favorite makeover story . Cinderella has been done and redone so many times that she's turned into more of a trope than an actual character. Every time I have dressed up as a princess for Halloween that I thought was at least fairly recognizable someone has asked me if I was supposed to be Cinderella. It never fails. I've been asked it as Belle, Ariel, Princess Peach, and more. She is by far the most common character to pop into anyone's head when they think of the word "princess." With  Disney's 2015 remake  and the  the recent Broadway revival , that is unlikely to stop any time soon. What is it, exactly, that makes Cinderella such a timeless character? The story goes so far back through so many cultures that no one actually knows where or when it began. The most famous version is  the one by Charles Perrault , which incorporates the fairy godmother, pumpkin, mice, and glass slippers that have become so...

This week, I will be breaking down individual fairy tales, beginning with the fairest of them all. The story of "Snow White" has a  complex history , rooted in both reality and mythology. It has become even more complex over the past decade or so, in which the character has been revived as something entirely different in an attempt to make her less of a passive victim and more of a warrior princess . It is believed that Snow White was inspired by  two real women . The first, Margaret von Waldreck, had a stepmother who sent her away to Brussels because she hated her. The princess was later discovered to have been poisoned after an illicit love affair with a prince that neither kingdom approved of. The second, Maria Sophia Margarethe Catharina von Erthal, who was also disliked by her stepmother, lived in a kingdom that produced "talking mirrors," which were essentially very expensive 18th-century novelty items. It is believed that her stepmother owned one of them...