the princess with the birds and beasts

[marycatelli]

My prince and princess in a fairy tale novel were gibing at the notion of a princess who attracts birds and harmless creatures like fawns and rabbits.

Then I paused to think of whether I could remember any such fairy tale princesses.

I couldn't remember any where the princess had, on her journey, helped three animals and gotten aid from them.  Princes tend to luck on those one, and they're not generally the most cuddle-some.    (Wolves, anyone?  Or salmons?  Even foxes would be iffy in a Disney style.)

Most of the time, a heroine associated with animals is getting specific magical help, or tests.  The birds that fly down from Aschenputtel's tree on her mother's grave, or a heroine's gently shooing birds from her father's ax in the kind and unkind girls tale type.

So they will continue to gibe.

Comments

[nodrog]

Recall Forbidden Planet, where Altaira is friends with a Bengal tiger who later turns feral and gets blastered.  “Why would he do that?!” she cries, and CMDR Adams looks down at her in his arms.  “Do you really not know?” he says.  Ruh-roh…  Her career as unicorn lure is over for good!

(No one in the screenplay ever wonders where those Terrestrial zoo animals came from.  The Bellerophon wouldn’t have brought them…  We’re left with the impression that Dr Morbius conjured them into existence with Krell techno-magic, but it’s never addressed.)

[marycatelli]

and it's based on one of Shakespeare's more fairy tale like plays -- BUT -- not actually a fairy tale.

[nodrog]

Well, now that depends on how liberal is your definition of the term.  Some would argue that the Julia Roberts vehicle Pretty Woman (1990) is a fairy tale, while other such as myself would say that the Drew Barrymore vanity project Ever After is not, despite appearances (it’s make-believe, but it’s self-conscious propaganda - an important difference).  Fairy tales can include rocket ships and robots and ray guns - some would say that’s all those have ever been!

[marycatelli]

Nope. Not a fairy tale at all. As it happens at a definite time and place and not Once Upon A Time being the most conspicuous sign.

[nodrog]

That's an interesting litmus test.  I've been thinking what side would fall this or that science fiction or fantasy work.

[marycatelli]

Those are literary. The tales that take place at a definite place and time are legends.

Re: Terrestrial life forms

[nodrog]

It would have got weird to the point of squicky if Dr Morbius had conjured up Altaira herself - say, cloned from the remains of his deceased wife.  But it would have made more sense for him to do as the superbeing did in an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation, where only he and his human wife survived the Big Wipeout… but at the end she is revealed to be an illusion, a re-creation, for only he had survived after all.  As in R Bradbury's “The Long Years,” they'd meet an anomalously young Mrs Morbius instead, who, like Rachael in Blade Runner, might not know…

Ah, well, so it goes.

Re: Terrestrial life forms

[marycatelli]

The machines created them because they wanted them.