Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Grimm Reviews – “The Princess in Disguise”



(Sorry this is a day late.  I’ve been working on another project and I’ve been sick.  I completely forgot about this until about 1:00 AM Tuesday.)


“The Princess in Disguise”

There once was a king with a lovely wife with golden hair. She feel ill, and made him promise that he would not remarry unless she was as lovely as she with golden hair. He promised and she died.

It took a long time, but the king finally went to take another wife. But while there were other lovely women in the world, none matched his dead wife with her golden hair. Then one day the king noticed that his daughter had grown up to look just like her mother. So he decided to marry her. The king’s counselors were shocked, but the king was determined.

The princess decided to throw a wrench into things by asking for three dresses. The first as golden as the sun, the second as silvery as the moon, and the third as glittering as the stars. She also asked for a mantle with the fur of every animal in the kingdom.

But the king was determined and hired women to sew the dresses and hunters to gather all the fur. When all was done he gave them to his daughter and said they would marry the next day.

So the princess ran away. But she took all three dresses and folded them up so they all fit inside a walnut shell. She also took several golden trinkets. She put on the mantle and stained her face and hands with walnut juice and left the castle.

She traveled until she came to a forest. She was tired, so she crawled into a hollow tree and fell asleep. The next day a hunt went on in that forest, and the hounds found the princess in the tree.

She asked for pity, and they took her to work in the kitchens, and called her Roughskins.

Sometime later, there was a festival at the castle. The princess begged the cook to let her see the guests. So she took off the mantle, cleaned her face and hands, and put on the golden dress. The king danced with her and thought her lovely.

After the dance, she slipped away, folded the dress up into the walnut shell, stained her face and hands, and became Roughskins again.

The cook asked her to make some soup for the king. She made it and set one of her golden trinkets in his bowl.

When the king found the trinket, he sent for the cook to ask who had made his soup. When he finds out it was Roughskins, he has her sent for. She arrives but doesn’t admit to anything.

The same thing happens at the next festival. But at the third festival, the king had the dance go on longer than before, and he slipped a ring onto the princess’s finger. Because they danced for so long, she didn’t have time to change and just threw the mantle over the dress. She made the king his soup and dropped the last trinket in.

This time, when the king called her in to explain the trinket, he saw the ring and pulled her mantle off revealing her true self. So they were married.

#

So the king decides to marry his daughter. Ew.

How do you fold up three – I presume rather bulky – dresses so they fit in a walnut shell?

What was the point of leaving the trinkets in the king’s bowl?

Was it common to just dance with the King without some sort of introduction?

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