Wild Swans: Origins and the Original Fairy Tales

Just like in my retelling of Beauty and the Beast, my book The Wild Swans is based on a fairy tale. The key difference, though, is that I pulled material and content from several similar/identical fairy tales across different countries instead of basing it off one as I did in Beauty and the Beast.

The fairy tales I used were: The Wild Swans, The Six Swans, and The Seven Ravens. I drew most heavily from The Wild Swans and The Six Swans–which are almost completely identical although the number of brothers the heroine has varies. (In the Wild Swans she has eleven. In the Six Swans she has six.)

In this blog post I'm going to dive into the differences between these different versions! If you're looking for my sarcastic summary of the core Wild Swans fairy tale go read this blog post instead.

The Six Swans was first recorded by the Brothers Grimm, where as The Wild Swans was recorded by Hans Christian Andersen. The Six Swans is considered a German fairy tale, and The Wild Swans is Dutch.

Both stories star a princess who makes shirts out of a nasty, prickly plant to free her brothers from a curse placed on them by their wicked step mother. Both stories also involve a king from another country stumbling on the princess, falling in love with her, and taking her home. 

In both stories the princess marries the king, but the one to accuse her of witch-craft differs. In the Six Swans it is the king’s evil mother, in The Wild Swans it is an archbishop.

Finally, in both stories the climax is when the princess is almost burned at the stake but finishes the shirts in time to free her brothers just as her husband tries to free her. In both stories the youngest brother is left with a swan wing because the princess didn’t have enough time to finish the last sleeve of his shirt. After that everyone lives happily ever after in the kingdom of the Princess’s husband.

(It was to my chagrin that both stories ended there. I didn’t understand why the brothers didn’t head back home and free their country–I can’t imagine a queen who is so jealous that she turns her step-sons into birds would be a benevolent, much less just, ruler.)

The Seven Ravens follows a similar pattern (Girl finishes impossible task to break the curse on her brothers) but the big thing I took from that story was the seven brothers. Eleven brothers was going to be too many characters, but when I first tried for six brothers someone was missing. After I read The Seven Ravens I knew I had to create one more brother: Erick.

When crafting the settings and surroundings, I more closely aligned Elise’s story with The Six Swans since Arcainia’s culture is German based. Just like Elle and Severin’s Loire is French to honor the original Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, Arcainia is German to honor The Six Swans. The character names, the things they eat, even the organization of the army all have medieval German influences.

Take a look this blog post for more information about some of the things I did differently from the original Wild Swan fairy tale.

Here are the links for The Wild Swans (which is book 2 in my fairy tale series) if you're interested in reading it:

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

Two Endings?

So everyone seems to have enjoyed reading Wild Swans, but what’s really got people talking is the two endings bit where you can choose which guy Elise ends up with. I’ve gotten quite a few messages from people who both liked it or didn’t like it, and I have gotten a lot of pleads for me to voice who I was cheering for.

Before I dive into that, I want to explain why I did it. It’s mostly because I hate love triangles. No, seriously. I hate love triangles. Not only do I find that they rarely happen outside of high school (When was the last time you ran into a 26 year-old guy who confided to you that he and one of his buddies love the same girl? Or have you ever run into a woman in her 40’s who has two handsome men pursuing her?) but it also irks me is that I always end up cheering for the losing side! No joke, I don’t know if it’s just bad luck or what, but if there is a book with a love triangle I always end up picking the guy that the girl does not fall in love with.

It drives me CRAZY!! Whhhhhhy? Why is it that the guy I pick never gets the girl!?! Being that I am apparently bad at picking the “proper” hero/romantic interest, I had a very bad feeling about how The Wild Swans was going to go down. Typically I don’t give readers the choice because, as I mentioned, I don’t like love triangles and I am reluctant to put them in a book, so everyone cheers for the obvious love interest.

But I knew The Wild Swans needed the two princes dueling for Elise’s love to make the book more interesting, and I had serious worries that everyone would be upset with me for matching Elise with the “wrong guy.”

I’ll come out and say it: I am a Rune fangirl. As I wrote the book Falk totally grew on me so much so that if I hadn’t been planning the two endings I think I would have had a mid-life crisis and would have quit writing and moved to the hills to become a hermit. But as I was planning out characters and such I knew I wanted Elise to end up with Rune… but I had a feeling most readers would cheer for Falk. Falk tries harder, after all. Being loving comes easily to Rune, not so with Falk. Plus there’s something endearing about his poor communication skills and clumsy compliments.

What was I to do? I adored Rune, but I didn’t want to throw Falk and 3/4 of the readers who probably ship Elise x Falk out the door. The two endings solved this problem. Also, I will admit I wanted to use the brothers to drive home a point: Elise was happy with either man.

A lot of times Fairy Tales portray romance as “You have ONE true love in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD!” To which I would like to say: “If that is true, we’re screwed because if one person marries the wrong person we’re all thrown off track forever.”

What I’m trying to say is that love is a choice. Whoever Elise decided she loved would become the one person she should spend the rest of her life with. I know the thought is a little upsetting considering fairy tales are a genre that center around the true love thing, but some trees are meant to be shaken.

That, and just once I wanted to reward all of the people who, like me, pick the losing side every time. Where’s the losing side of the love triangle now? Buwahahah!

Having said all of this, I doubt I will repeat this experiment in the future. I really want to avoid love triangles. I’m all for making a little tension, but I don’t like breaking the spirit of the poor guy who gets left out. It makes me feel bad. 🙁

The Wild Swans

The Wild Swans is up and available for purchase! I am really excited to hear what you have to say about it, Champions, especially the ending! As usual I’m forcing myself to wait two days to give you a chance to read it before I start spouting off book facts and background info. (So PLEASE READ FAST!!!)

Cinderella is coming along, I daresay I almost have a fourth of it written. Beyond that, the weather is crummy and Perfect Dog has displaced me from my bathroom. She has declared it   her snooze zone and gives me a dirty look whenever I turn on the light in there.

I really hope you enjoy Wild Swans, and I’m anxious to hear what you have to say about it. Until Wednesday, take care, Champions!