fairy tales and war

[marycatelli]

The authority of kings and lack of nobles, and the size of the kingdoms, are not the only bit of unreality about fairy tales.  There is also the matter of war.

It's not that fairy tales lack war.  When the heroine needs to be separated from her husband post-marriage, well, sometimes there's hunting, but that's not long; certainly not long enough that someone would send the king a message and get back one.  And there's the kidnapping options, but that tends to be limited in plots.  For one thing, you need a culprit, like her envious sisters or mother-in-law.

So war you have.  Its sole impact on the plot is to demand that the king leave his wife.

There's other wars with a little more impact.  What better way for the golden-haired prince working as a gardener to rise again than to win the war for the princess's father?  True, sometimes he gets his magical helper to give him men-at-arms as well as armor, but sometimes it's just him.  Which doesn't argue for a large scale war.  Indeed, plots of this type often have a tourney instead.

Perhaps that explains why the nobles are so lacking in influence.  No wars for them to fight in.

Comments

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Well, bear in mind that our early fairy tales, which set the precedent, tended to be set in medieval times, when there were an awful lot of these postage-stamp kingdoms that you couldn't throw a rock in without hitting the king.

(Hmm. Could be a story in that.)

[marycatelli]

Well, actually, they aren't. Notice that the kings are all absolute and untroubled by the problem of resistive lords, whereas in the medieval times, in the times and places where they had postage-stamp kingdoms, that was a perpetual problem.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I dunno; maybe you're right, but that just leaves me with a mystery in that case.

I always had the feeling that those stories were composed by the common folk, who (then as now) had little awareness of, or care for, the troubles of the rich and powerful.

[marycatelli]

Or fidelity in depicting their courts. . . but that does mean it's not a realistic depiction.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Of course it isn't.

It suddenly occurs to me we may not be having the same conversation. I'm speculating about why they're unrealistic.

[marycatelli]

because realism loses out in the oral tradition.

More specific than that is difficult, because the history of fairy tales is basically the study of those outcroppings with evidence of fairy tales that occurred prior to the Brothers Grimm -- many of which are clearly literary in form and so far removed from the oral tradition.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Now which one did I read recently where, after a plotline of the heroine questing until she finds her true-love about to make a political marriage to someone else and the three nights waiting by his bed and all, after recognition the prince takes her home and asks everyone there which one he should marry?

...I should really be able to find this. The prince was a bird and their courtship started because a merchant's daughter asked for a flower (much as in Beauty and the Beast) and the prince's father turned out to be wandering around with this unique flower in a box, and explained his son's love would go with it. Somewhat bafflingly, despite the approval of both fathers, the bird-prince chose to conduct his courtship by coming through her window secretly at night.

[marycatelli]

The Feather of Finist the Falcon

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[marycatelli]

Glad I could help!