Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!
Dec. 1st, 2021 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliWas pondering the girls who help the hero flee. . . .
Often the ogre's daughter. (Or witch's, or wizard's, or Devil's.) Sometimes a kidnapped maiden. Sometimes unspecified. Always runs off the hero -- and does the bulk of the work getting away. (It does help that she is the one that knows the magic.) Indeed in some versions she is careful to extract a promise from him to run off with her.
In the vast majority of societies, this was because running away was simply folly. No one would know you. No one would hire you. You got far from home, and no one spoke your language -- at the time of the French Revolution, most Frenchmen did not speak French, but a patois of some kind, that varied clinally over the nation. You had no connections, and connections were vital to finding any job. You would be suspected of crime, and unable to find justice if you were a victim of it. (Mind you, finding justice was always dicey with their minimal forensics, but you would be especially unlikely.)
World-building needs to fit that if the story is to make sense.
Though you might, of course, find a job as a scullery maid.
Often the ogre's daughter. (Or witch's, or wizard's, or Devil's.) Sometimes a kidnapped maiden. Sometimes unspecified. Always runs off the hero -- and does the bulk of the work getting away. (It does help that she is the one that knows the magic.) Indeed in some versions she is careful to extract a promise from him to run off with her.
In the vast majority of societies, this was because running away was simply folly. No one would know you. No one would hire you. You got far from home, and no one spoke your language -- at the time of the French Revolution, most Frenchmen did not speak French, but a patois of some kind, that varied clinally over the nation. You had no connections, and connections were vital to finding any job. You would be suspected of crime, and unable to find justice if you were a victim of it. (Mind you, finding justice was always dicey with their minimal forensics, but you would be especially unlikely.)
World-building needs to fit that if the story is to make sense.
Though you might, of course, find a job as a scullery maid.