researching your research

[marycatelli]

It helps when doing a massive cross-over of many fairy tales if you did a lot of fairy tale reading beforehand as a kind of preliminary research.  It's a bit hard to throw in a foolish deathbed promise if you haven't read the many tales where a queen asks her husband not to marry anyone who wasn't so beautiful as her (bad idea), or can't wear an article of her clothing (bad idea) -- or to always do what their daughter asks (bad idea) -- or to keep her children safe in a tower away from their stepmother (might have worked, but he fluffed it), or to not marry except to a great princess, who won't have her head turned by becoming queen, since she used to court (might also have worked, but he fluffed it).

The downside is that if you want to explain your sources, you have to track down the tale that you read years ago, and so you have to research your research.