fairy tale matrimony

[marycatelli]

One thing I have noticed in the retellings of fairy tales -- particularly in YA -- is that the princes and princesses are always expected to marry others of royal blood.

Perhaps it's just my biased reading sample, but it does seem to be stronger than the fairy tales themselves would warrant.  Sure, they exist in plenty.  Indeed, you have the king being pleased in Iron Hans that the heroic young knight is a prince, and the princess maintaining that she knew he was no mere gardener's boy when she first saw his hair.  You have The King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate and all his fellows trying to avert a mesalliance, with noticable lack of success.  But Rapunzel marries the prince despite a noticable lack of birth (inverted for Disney, but still there).  In Catherine and Her Fate she ends up queen despite being a merchant's daughter who lost her fortune.  There are kings, like the one in The Seven Foals, who faithfully carry out their promises about who shall marry their daughters, and even princesses like the one in The Fire-Bird, the Horse of Power, and the Princess Vasilissa who decide the man who brought them to the king is better than the king.  Or you can end up married to the ogre's, the witch's, even the Devil's child, as in Prunella.

If they were aiming for realism, that would be another thing.  Some kings and queens chose to marry off their children like sound, prosperous freeholding farmers, down to and including wanting their daughters-in-law to be good housewives and hard workers.  A more realistic setting might touch on political implications.  But these happen even in worlds where everyone knows all the tropes, where a princess is in despair because the evil fairy came to her christening but was appeased and went away happy, without cursing her.

Comments

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

A significant part of the audience is looking to be offended with a power imbalance; marry a common woman to a prince, and women can only advance by marrying up. Marry a princess to a common man, and you have to be hugely powerful just to get a regular guy. (Never mind that there's usually a point, like that a clever commoner is better than a royal born pain....)

[marycatelli]

Eh, that type would also be offended by the suggestion that there's something special about royalty. Professional offendees, many of them, and the rest get their moral charge for the day by being arrogant and bullying about such things.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Oh goodness, yes, but it's a lot harder to fight against Princesses with pretty outfits and pink and such.

It's not so much that they're offended that's important, as how likely it is that they'll be able to get anybody else to take their offense seriously. Hard to get much charge when you're insisting that showing a princess in appealing-to-little-girls outfits is a horrible insult to women, easier if you can get some emotional traction. The relative power of men and women has been pretty deeply embedded in the knee-jerk offense part of the brain, though.

[marycatelli]

What? You expect them to be good by being nice to people or reaching into their own pockets? Outrage is so much nicer, and more fun, as long as it makes you think yourself a good egg for it.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Like the Prius that zipped around me and several other cars, half a block from a fresh red light, and nearly picked up the disabled van that was trying to get into Goodwill. (Five lanes, one for turning, I was on the inside lane.) Yes, there was a bit of a gap ahead of me; there was also a good 30 second wait after they got to the red light, but they got there fast, by Gaia!

[marycatelli]

They've reproduced it in the lab. Give a person a chance to buy green goods, and he's more likely to lie and cheat (for money) in the next stage of the experiment.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Hm. I wonder if that might explain the "I have sinned, greatly" type folks being so much nicer than the folks who do the "I'm OK, you're OK" thing, and those being a step more pleasant than the "we've all done wrong... but mine are understandable" folks. It seems almost backwards of how I'd think it'd work... maybe folks grow into the world view they have at the time. That would explain why so many ideologies require that you do a daily devotion of some sort.

[marycatelli]

Pride is the first of the deadly sins for good reason.