Snow White: the Russian Version

The fairy tale princess Snow White has multiple properties and movies that retell her story, but how well do you know the original fairy tale(s)?

Today, Snow White is once again the focus of my sarcastic summary of a fairy tale! You can read this previous previous blog post for the more well known, Brothers Grimm version of Snow White. In that post I mentioned I had stumbled on a Russian version of Snow White, and that is our subject for today!

The Russian version of Snow White was published by Aleksandr Pushkin in 1833 under the title “The Dead Princess and the Seven Knights.” This poem version is similar to the Brothers Grimm Snow White, but is said to be based on Russian folklore.

Before we dive into this story, we have to talk about the title. The Russian title is actually “The Tale of the Dead Tsarina and the Seven Bogatyr.” Tsarina, as you can likely guess, means female monarch, but Bogatyr is more of a stock-character term found in East Slavic folklore. Bogatyr are extremely similar to the British/European notion of a knight-errant. They’re warriors who were known for protecting their homelands. Generally, translated literature call them knights but I decided to go for warriors which is how–you likely guessed it–I came up with the idea of the Seven Warriors for my retelling of this story.

Now, let’s begin!

Unlike the Brothers Grim version with the queen and her strange fascination with blood and snow, this story starts by describing a King who leaves his wife and goes on a long voyage. His wife misses him A LOT, but ends up giving birth to their daughter. Immediately after she does, the King returns. The queen dies from happiness and exhaustion the day he returns.

Like Snow White’s father, the King–a year later–remarries a woman who is acknowledged as beautiful and clever…and willful and jealous. This arrogant new stepmother of the little princess also has a magic mirror–one that compliments her beauty.

The young princesses (who is never called Snow White but is said to have dark hair and a fair complexion) grows up and becomes engaged to Prince Yelisei–whom I like a GREAT DEAL MORE than Prince Shallow from the Brothers Grimm version.

The night before the princess and prince are to wed, the mirror tells the vain queen that she is no longer the most beautiful of all, but that the young princess is. (While I still don’t appreciate the mirror’s tattle tale ways, at least this one had the decency to wait until she was a teenager!)

The jealous queen orders a servant girl to take the princess out to the forest and tie her up so wolves would kill her. The servant girl takes the princess deep into the forest, but out of pity leaves the princess untied and returns to the evil queen.

This is where things get interesting. Prince Yelisei hears that his bride has gone missing, and instantly sets out on a quest to find her, making him one of the most honorable and pro-active princes I have come across in fairy tale literature. (You go prince!)

Back in the forest, the princess finds a hut, but no one is home. Like Snow White she breaks in, but unlike Snow White she realizes someone kind is living there and thinks it unlikely they’ll be angry with her for coming inside, so she cleans the place up before falling asleep.

Right on cue the knights (bogatyrs) return home for dinner. They find the home cleaned and are ridiculously happy (I guess house work isn’t their thing) and promise the princess they’ll call and consider her their dearest sister. The princess does not tell them her story, instead the knights figure out based on the way she acts that she must be royalty.

This is a Russian painter’s depiction of Bogatyr.

The princess settles into her new life of cooking and cleaning while the knights each day ride off to battle to fight off invaders and the like. Eventually all seven of the knights come to fall in love with her, and together as a group they ask her to choose one of them to marry and promise the rest will still think of her like a sister. The princess confesses she is engaged to and already in love with Prince Yelisei. The knights accept this–and put the last few pieces of the mystery together, realizing who she is–and they go back to their every day life.

But of course, things can’t be this way forever–the evil queen still has that over-talkative mirror, remember?

So of course one day the queen asks the mirror who is most beautiful, and the mirror who needs to learn to SHUT ITS MOUTH tells the queen that the princess who lives in the house and watches the knights leave every day is the most beautiful. (Basically, he gave the queen her exact location. So despite my greater appreciation for the princess and Prince Yelisei in this tale, the mirror is still on my villain list.)

This makes the queen ticked, and she sends the servant girl to kill the princess–this time under threat of death. So the servant girl disguises herself as a peasant and through a series of events gives the princess a poisoned apple.

The princess bites it, swoons, and dies.

The knights all return and instantly recognize the poisoned apple as the source of the princess’ death. They are heartbroken, but they also notice that even though she doesn’t breathe, her cheeks are rosy and she looks more like she is sleeping. They wait three days before they decide she isn’t going to awake, and they place her in a crystal coffin and put her in a cave.

Back on the ranch, the queen asks the mirror who is the most beautiful, and her snarky little minion tells her she is once again most beautiful.

Meanwhile Prince Yelisei has been searching for the princess. I suspect he must be related to the gal from East of the Sun West of the Moon because he asks the sun, then the moon, and then the wind to help him find the princess. The wind leads him to the cave with the crystal coffin.

Prince Yelisei–in his grief–throws himself on the crystal coffin which breaks and…immediately brings the princess back to life?? (Seriously, no joke here, and no explanation to why this works.)

The two have a good chat as they ride home, and once again the vain queen’s mirror spills the beans that Snow White is alive, the queen is enraged and leaves her room to find Snow White alive. She falls dead of….jealousy? Agony? Perhaps both, and after she is buried the prince and princess are married.

As you can probably tell, this story is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more to my liking as it entirely ditches the icky feeling from child-Snow White and the prince who is creepily into collecting corpses, though there are few things that make me raise my eyebrow (like, didn’t anyone think to tell the poor knights the princess was alive? And what happened to the king?) but all in all this is one of the best fairy tales that actually depicts both the hero and the heroine in love and dedicated to one another. (If you want to read a translated version, you can see it HERE!)

As you can see, the Disney version of Snow White borrows from this version as well. (For starters, Snow White is older, she has seen the prince before and he is sort of looking for her, and Disney skipped the poisoned bodice stays and combs and went straight for the apple.)

Like Disney, I ended up stitching the two stories together as well–though I decided to use knights instead of dwarves because they fit into my story world better. (And, frankly, because I was sick of having my heroines end up with princes, and I thought it would be fun to have one marry a warrior.)

I hope you enjoyed this dressing down of the poem! And if you're interested in reading a sweet fantasy version of the Snow White fairy tale you can get my standalone story in Kindle Unlimited, or on ebook and paperback!

Click here for Amazon.com   Or Click here for other Amazon stores

The Original Snow White

There are multiple movies dedicated to Snow White, but how well do you know the original fairy tale?

Today, the origins of Snow White is the lucky recipient of my sarcastic summary of a fairy tale! I spent a lot of time researching this tale and tracking down the different versions as part of my preparation for my own retelling of this story: Snow White.

When I first started my research, I found some very surprising information! Like most of the fairy tales I’ve written about, Snow White is a German fairy tale published in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm in their first collection of fairy tales. But while researching it, I discovered a Russian man by the name of Aleksandr Pushkin wrote a poem in 1833 titled “the Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights.” The two stories are nearly identical, but Pushkin made a few minor adaptions that made the story at lot less…icky. I’ll sarcastically summarize the Russian version in this separate blog post or else this would become an essay. I did use Pushkin’s tale for inspiration when writing my version but today we’re going to focus on the more well known version by the Brothers Grimm.

Important Disclaimer:

Before I get started, just a gentle reminder that as we go over this fairy tale and I poke fun of it, I really do love the original story, and there’s a lot more complexity to fairy tales than we can comprehend because we don’t have the same experiences and knowledge that the average person back in 1812 would have. But, teasing the original story is so fun, so let’s get started! 😉

In the Brothers Grimm version, a queen with some weird and inexplicable thoughts about blood on snow has a baby and names her Snow White. The queen dies in childbirth, and after a year her husband, the king, marries a beautiful but arrogant woman who somehow came to possess a magic mirror.

This woman–the new queen–is so arrogant that the only thing she uses this magic, sentient mirror for is to tell her how pretty she is every morning. That works out great for the queen until Snow White turns seven and the mirror–which is apparently a snitch–decides to tell the queen “You, my queen, are fair; it is true. But Snow-White is a thousand times fairer than you.” (Stop right here. Mirror, dude, WHY ARE YOU COMPARING A SEVEN-YEAR-OLD TO A WOMAN? You sicko!)

So the queen, who had been pretty apathetic to Snow White before, now looks at her with hatred. (Thanks for that, mirror!) She comes to hate her so much that she tells a huntsman to take this seven-year-old-girl into the woods and kill her, then to bring back her lungs and liver as proof of her death. (Where is the King in all of this? Like, how could he miss this happening??)

The huntsman takes Snow White out to the woods, but Snow White–despite being seven–apparently has the charisma and speaking ability of a empress, and sweetly asks the huntsman to spare her, promising she will never return home. The huntsman lets go her because he thinks she’ll get killed by a wild animal.

Snow White runs through the woods and finds a neat little house where everything is clean and tidy. Apparently her beautiful manners were a show for the huntsman, because she breaks in with no remorse and proceeds to mess everything up. Then she goes to sleep in one of seven little beds. (Because it’s a GREAT IDEA to sleep in a house that you’ve broken into, when there is evidence everywhere that the home owners are soon coming back!)

The seven dwarves, who work as miners, come home and find Snow White sleeping. Since they’re very thoughtful, they don’t wake her, and instead they all go to sleep.

When Snow White wakes up in the morning she explains everything to them. The dwarves very wisely note that her stepmother won’t give up easily, and invite her to stay with them as long as she cooks and cleans. (Based on the fact that she was the one who had messed everything up earlier, I’m pretty sure they just didn’t want her making their cottage a pigpen in their absence when they went to work every day.)

Back on the ranch, the Queen flips her lid because she ate what she thought was Snow White’s lungs and liver, but the mirror tattle-tales that Snow White is still, in fact, alive. (The mirror does this for no particular reason other than that he is a jerk, as he specifically tells the Queen that Snow White is far away, beyond mountains.)

Angry that she comes behind a seven-year-old in terms of beauty, the queen disguises herself as a peddler and sells oblivious Snow White a bodice lace. The queen offers to help Snow White put it on, then yanks it so tight Snow White can’t breathe, and she flees, uttering perhaps the first recorded instance of a villain making snide comments while fleeing, “You used to be the most beautiful!” (I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog too!)

To be fair, as Snow White is seven, the dwarves were basically trying to teach her “don’t take candy from strangers!”

The dwarves come home and find Snow White passed out . They see her tight bodice string and cut it so Snow White can breathe again, then warn her the peddler woman must have been her stepmother, and that she needs to be more careful in the future.

Apparently Snow White didn’t learn her lesson, because the queen tricks her again with a poisoned comb–which the dwarves free her from–and eventually a poisoned apple. (Though in Snow White’s defense, she’s only willing to eat the apple because the queen, disguised as a peasant woman, cuts it in half and gives Snow White the poisoned half.)

After Snow White eats the poisoned half of the apple and “dies,” the seven dwarves come home, but they can’t figure out what’s wrong with her. They try all sorts of tricks before giving up and making a glass coffin for Snow White, because they couldn’t bear burying her in the cold earth. The dwarves and animals mourn Snow White, and “a long time passes.” (It doesn’t give me years, but I hope for the incoming Prince Shallow’s sake, it was upwards of 7 years! Or he’s just as bad as that mirror!) Despite years–hopefully–passing, Snow White does not decay. (Hopefully she grows, too.)

A prince–the aforementioned Prince Shallow for reasons that will soon become apparent–passes through the dwarves’ forest. He sees Snow White in her coffin, and asks the dwarves to SELL HER TO HIM!

The dwarves refuse, but the prince declares he cannot live without her (Why?? You, sir, haven’t even see what color her eyes are because she’s DEAD!) and eventually the dwarves give in.

The prince has his servants carry Snow White in her gold and glass coffin on their shoulders–which is horribly mean because gold is really heavy. Understandably, the servants stumble and perform the first accidental Heimlich maneuver (impressive given that it wasn’t invented until the 1970s) and the poisoned apple pops out of Snow White’s mouth.

She wakes up, understandably confused, and Prince Shallow declares his love for her (Impressive, given she has only spoken one entire sentence to him) and asks her to marry him. She instantly falls in love with him (because guys who buy dead bodies in pretty coffins are sooooo dreamy) and agrees.

Snow White’s stepmother is invited to the wedding, and while she’s prepping for it she asks her mirror who is the fairest of all, and what does that tattle-tale say? Yes, of course he tells her the young new queen is far more fair. The queen is frightened, but because the mirror for once did not name Snow White, she wants to see this woman who is more beautiful than her, so she goes to the wedding.

She instantly recognizes Snow White and is filled with fear and in a very strange ending, Snow White and her hubby force the queen to dance in iron shoes that had been heated in a fire until she dies. (Yay?)

So that’s the Grimm Brothers’ version! I really recommend your read this blog post where I go over the Russian version next–which, I promise you, Pushkin must have my same sense of sarcasm because of the changes he made. You are going to love it!

And if you're interested in reading a magical fantasy version of the Snow White fairy tale you can get my standalone story in Kindle Unlimited, or ebook / paperback!

Click here for Amazon.com Or Click here for other Amazon stores

The Princess and the Pea: The Moral

The Princess and the Pea was written in 1835 by Hans Christian Andersen. If you aren't familiar with the original story you can read a quick (and sarcastic) summary of it over in this other blog post.

What I did not mention in the other post is that at the time of its publication it was about as popular as a lead balloon.

The critics were hostile and disliked the informal, “chatty” tone of the story–and the other two it was published with.

Over the years the story has also been poked apart by readers who point out the irony in the story. The most glaring irony/plot hole, is that a princess who is so tired she can’t sleep because of a pea and it gives her bruises, arrived at the prince’s castle alone, in a rainstorm, with soaked clothes, and had traveled a long distance. A princess who was sensitive enough to feel a pea would never do something so daring and uncomfortable.

As for the moral, some believe Andersen meant the story to be tongue-in-cheek and poke fun at the ridiculous measures aristocracy went through to preserve their bloodlines, others believe Andersen mostly meant for the story to drive home that “sensitivity” is required to be a true noble, not wealth. This is thought because although Andersen mingled with the “upper-crust” he was never accepted as one of them due to his poor birth, and thus he identified with the princess who had no visible wealth or even great beauty. (As a side note: Andersen was not a rich man, and lived off wealthy patrons, which is also why some think he wanted to believe aristocracy was something besides breeding and wealth.)

Regardless of what others say, Andersen himself said he meant for the described “sensitivity” to be emotionally sensitive. Meaning the princess was compassionate and would be sensitive to the needs of her people, and that’s what made her a true princess. It’s a worthy moral–and one I tried to communicate in my retelling–but Andersen did a pretty poor job in communicating it. (Though that can be attributed to its length. It’s seriously about ten paragraphs long. In fact, this blog post is about the same length as the story.)

It was actually Andersen’s words–that a true princess was one sensitive to her people’s needs–that sparked the idea for my retelling–but I decided to come after it from a slightly different angle. (I was also inspired by the last few lines of Andersen’s tale, in which he notes that the pea that ruined the princess’ sleep was put in a museum, and it is still there if no one has stolen it. It made me ponder why anyone would ever want to steal such a thing, and so the Pea of Primeorder was born!)

And here's the link again if you haven't tried my fantasy retelling of this story: Read The Princess and the Pea. It features a mercenary female lead who is called to the castle to help protect the fabled Pea of Primeorder by Prince Channing.

(Best of all? It's free!).