Today we’re continuing with our magic theme by taking a look at the way the price of magic has changed from the Snow Queen books to the Timeless Fairy Tales.
As you might recall from my previous post, I mentioned that magic users who pay a price to use their magic usually are a lot more powerful, like the Snow Queen. So why haven’t you seen anybody with a price in the modern timeless fairy tales?
There’s three reasons for that. First of all, the only magic users who have that kind of power are the enchanters and enchantresses. Thus far you’ve only seen Angelique, an enchantress-in-training. You haven’t seen Angelique’s price because she actually hasn’t used her core magic in front of anyone yet. As you may have pieced together between Cinderella and the Wild Swans, Angelique is extremely reluctant to use her core magic, and as a result mostly uses her auxiliary powers–which are much less powerful and would never activate her price.
Another reason why you haven’t seen it, is because the stakes and the situations are entirely different. Rakel and her people faced enslavement and war. Currently, Angelique and the other magic users are more focused on putting out fires so to speak than an actual war. They haven’t had to use the same amount of power that Rakel has, so their prices haven’t kicked in yet either.
The final reason, is that the magic users have gotten a lot better at working around their price. They’ve had time to research, experiment, and explore. Not to mention Rakel founded the first Academy for magic users, and it’s been centuries since then. The most obvious way you can see that magic usage has progressed and improved, is the use of actual spells.
In Snow Queen, magic users channel their magic in a raw format. In the Timeless Fairy Tales, magic users often have to say magic words, or follow a spell, but the trade-off is that they can do more complex things. For enchanters and enchantresses, when they use their core magic they use it in the same raw format that Rakel used her magic. When they use their auxiliary powers, they have to use tools in order to make it possible. I’ll soon be doing a post that focuses on enchanters and enchantresses and how Rakel was the start of their line, but for now we’re focusing on price.
So if you haven’t seen any enchanters or enchantresses use their magic and activate a price, how do you know it still exists in the Timeless Fairy Tale world? The answer, is to look at the villains. In The Little Selkie, a sea witch uses the blood of innocent marine animals to raise chaotic storms that cut off Ringsted. She didn’t have the power to do that using her own magic, she had to supplement her magic with the blood of the sea creatures. The witch who nearly takes over Arcainia–Clotilde–is similar. She uses dark tools to supplement her powers–without them she wouldn’t be a match for Puss, much less Angelique.
Those who are good also have ways of supplementing their power. Their methods, however, still keep checks and balance. For instance, Angelique is unable to entirely break off curses because she lacks the schooling. She is able, however, to modify the curses. Unfortunately, she only knows two modifiers; true love’s first kiss, or true love itself. Even if she was fully schooled, the modifiers would still be relatively slim pickings. Angelique explains it in Wild Swans, when she tells Elise that an act of love is what can destroy the curse Clotilde has put on the princes of Arcainia. This means Angelique would never be able to break off a curse without an equally strong but good counter.
If you are anxious to see an actual “price”–like Rakel’s unconsciousness–in Timeless Fairy Tales, fear not! Angelique and Master Evariste both have prices that will be revealed in that series.
That’s probably all I should say for today, otherwise this is going to turn into an essay. Until next time, thanks for reading, Champions!
