Cinderella Fun

The last thing I want to address re: Cinderella is Cinderella’s step family. I’ve been thrilled with the feedback I’ve gotten about my change of taking them from antagonists to reserved and somewhat reluctant family members. No one has complained about the change, in fact most people seem to enjoy it. But why did I make that particular change?

Mostly, I made the change because I feel step parents (and step siblings) have a bad rap in fairy tales. In Wild Swans (both the original and my version) it’s the step mom who transforms the sons into swans. Snow White’s step mom orders her to be killed, Hansel and Gretal’s step mom makes their Dad lead them into the forest to die. I know a few step mothers and step dad’s, and I get miffed on their behalf that fairy tales make them all out to be monsters. Cinderella was my chance to change that. Thanks to the Erlauf/Trieux tensions, it wouldn’t take much for Cinderella to see her step family as even a partial antagonist. It also wouldn’t take much for them to reveal that they do care for her.

So thank you, step parents, for loving your step kids. And thank you, step siblings, for loving your fellow step siblings and step parents!

Now that I’ve got that over with, there was a little extra I wanted to share with you. Before C&C was titled Cinderella and the Colonel, it was just plain Cinderella. It was always the plan to make it just plain Cinderella. But Myrhlynn designed the cover and said it looked pretty empty with just the word “Cinderella” on it, so she asked if I could expand the title. We went back and forth, suggesting Cinderella and the Prince, Cinderella and Friedrich, Cinderella and the Colonel, but nothing seemed to fit the cover perfectly. (You can tell Myrrhlynn is a true cover artist. It never occurred to her that the title shouldn’t be designed specifically for the cover. The mark of a creative genius, I’m telling you!)

While discussing the possibilities I lamented that we couldn’t do a title that pitched Cinderella and the villain together–you know, in St. George and the Dragon style. Myrrhlynn asked why not, and I said a title of Cinderella verses the taxes was pretty ridiculous. As we still hadn’t come up with a respectable title (Myrrhlynn hadn’t changed fonts–which is what sold us on C&C) Myrrhlynn went back to the drawing bored. In a twist of humor she pitched this as a possible cover:

Pretty fitting, don’t you think?

That’s all for this week. Next week we’ll take a look at the various fairy tales I’ve alluded to in the first three Timeless Fairy Tale books. I’m curious to know how many you Champions have caught. Until Then!

Cinderella Differences & Similarities

As you may recall, I said I based my Cinderella off Charles Perrault’s Cendrillon, which was written in 1697. Cinderella and the Colonel strays fairly far from the details of Cendrillon. (Note: SPOILERS AHEAD!) In example: 1) My Cinderella’s father is dead, Cendrillon’s is still alive 2) my Cinderella attends one ball, Cendrillon attends two 3) My fairy godmother uses goats for a coachman and a footman, Cendrillon’s used lizards and rats. 4) Cinderella knows the prince for a full season before she admits she loves him, Cendrillon met her prince twice 5) Friedrich targets Cinderella from the get-go, and knows perfectly well who she is at the ball, Cendrillon’s prince had a super poor memory, and uses a shoe to identify her.

I knew I was going to change the romance aspect of Cinderella because I disliked so greatly how stupid Cinderella’s prince was. (Please, who falls in love with a girl and then can’t remember what she looks like?! Even Romeo wasn’t that bad!) I also knew I wanted to get closer to the bones of the Cendrillon story. Perrault was vocal in explaining that the moral of Cendrillion is that beauty is to be treasured, but graciousness is priceless. (Remember, Cinderella forgave her step siblings, who both married lords and also lived happily ever after.) I felt like Perrault’s moral was great, but the graciousness bit of the story doesn’t show up until the last few lines of the story.

Keeping that in mind, I threw out the romance of Cinderella and rehashed it to reflect my more personal tastes (more of getting to know a person and less of love at first sight) and took the story back to Perrault’s moral. I needed to make a world where Cinderella would be loved and adored because she was gracious and able to forgive. Thus, the conflict of Erlauf and Trieux was born. Cinderella’s personality was embedded with a forgiving nature, which is the only reason why she is able to be Queen of Erlauf, and why both counties will follow her. Cinderella’s forgiving personality is why she saw the logic in Fredrich’s reasoning for keeping his royal position secret and accepted it instead of throwing a hissy fit. (COUGH Severin, Beauty and the Beast, COUGH)

I killed Cinderella’s father off because I wanted to push Cinderella to the brink of extreme hatred, which would make her relationship with Friedrich more dynamic. I knew I didn’t want Cinderella’s step-family to be the cause of her unusual position. (more on that in later posts) However, I needed an emotionally charged reason for Cinderella’s selfless acts. Her desire to keep her servants gainfully employed was what I came up with–once again giving Cinderella the opportunity to be hateful and spiteful over the taxes and fines.

I’ve received messages from Champions and readers who are awed, and perhaps a little disbelieving, of Cinderella’s ability to forgive. They don’t question that it’s in character–Cinderella’s graciousness lies deep in her bones–but they do wonder if someone could actually do that. This takes me back to the Perrault’s moral: graciousness is priceless. There’s no way I could do what the original Cendrillon did. She served her step sisters–who did everything possible to make her miserable–and then forgave them and welcomed them into her courts. That’s unfathomable to me. But I know Cendrillon would do it because that’s the kind of person she is. My Cinderella almost has an easier time forgiving because Erlauf had decent reasons for just about everything they did. Cendrillon’s step sisters had no such excuses. So if you too are wowed by Cinderella’s ability to forgive, I’m thrilled. That means I was able to bring a little bit of the graciousness of Perrault’s Cendrillion into my Cinderella.

As for the remaining, notable differences, I decided it wasn’t feasible for Cinderella to attend two balls without being caught. Also, I had my fairy godmother use goats instead of lizards because I wanted Cinderella’s help to be ‘homegrown’ so to speak. It seemed fitting that Cinderella, who sacrificed so much for her servants, lands, crops, and so on, would in turn be aided by her duchy’s servants (with the fine) crops (the pumpkin) and animals.  Also, I obviously changed the story in that I had Angelique help Cinderella in addition to Sybilla. Angelique will be involved in every Timeless Fairy Tale I write.

That is all for today, Champions. I will see you on Wednesday!

Cinderella: the Original Fairy Tale

 Cinderella, as you might have noticed with all my trumpeting, has been released. Keeping in my usual Timeless Fairy Tale pattern, today I wanted to take a look at the original Cinderella fairy tale. I will be candid and admit that with this story I deviated farther from the original than I have with B&B or Wild Swans. Mostly because I think Cinderella’s prince is lazy and/or lame.

Unlike The Wild Swans–which is a German and Dutch fairy tale–and Beauty and the Beast–which is a French fairytale, Cinderella is a European fairy tale. There are French, German, and Italian versions of this story–there’s even a Greek/Egyptian version. I chose to base most of my Cinderella off the French version, which is the most widely known version of the story as Disney’s Cinderella closely mirrors it. It was written in 1697 by Charles Perrault and was called Cendrillon.

Cendrillon opens with a widower marrying a haughty widow who has two daughters. The new stepmother is proud, and greedy–as her her daughters. The three force Cendrillon to perform chores and menial labor in her house. To complete her stepmother’s cruelty, the woman makes Cendrillon sleep in a cold, bare room. To keep warm Cendrillon sleeps near the fireplace in the room, and as a result is often covered in cinders. As you can guess, her stepfamily then gives her the name of Cinderella. Cendrillon’s father still lives, but Cendrillon dares not complain because he is under his wife’s thumb.

One day the prince invites all the young ladies in the land to a ball, intending to choose a bride from them. (Because it’s TOTALLY a good idea to pick the person you’ll spend the rest of your life with, after spending a few hours socializing with a couple hundred girls.) Cendrillon’s stepsisters mock her as they leave in their beautiful dresses. When they are gone, Cendrillon weeps, and her fairy godmother appears. As you can probably guess, the fairy godmother transforms Cendrillon’s rags into a beautiful, jeweled dress. Mice are turned into horses, a pumpkin into a coach, a rat becomes the coachmen, and lizards the footmen. The fairy godmother also bestows a pair of glass slippers, and warns Cendrillon that the magic will fade by midnight.

Cendrillon attends the ball, enchants the courts and the prince, and remembers to leave the ball in time. The following day Cendrillon’s stepsisters–who did not recognize her–are furious. There is a second ball the following evening, which Cendrillon attends again with the help of her fairy godmother. The prince grows even more infatuated with her, and Cendrillon loses track of time until the clock strikes midnight and she realizes her mistake. As she flees she loses one of her glass slippers.

Being that the prince apparently cannot remember what she looks like, he resolves to try the slipper on all the girls in the kingdom (because, of course, no one could share Cendrillon’s shoe size) and marry whomever it belongs to. Naturally, he ends up at Cendrillon’s villa where the stepsisters try to win him over. After their failed attempts to try on the slipper, Cendrillon asks if she may try. It fits, and the two are happily married.  In this version, the stepsisters plead for forgiveness, and Cendrillon agrees to let bygones be bygones. In the end the stepsisters both marry lords as well. The moral, according to Perrault, is that beauty is to be treasured, but graciousness is priceless.

The version recorded by the Brothers Grimm is vastly different. Instead of a fairy godmother, Cinderella receives help from…well…birds. She goes out to a hazel tree growing on her mother’s grave (her mother plays a larger role in the story) and a beautiful dress is brought down by birds who prepared it in advance. Also, instead of making amends with her stepsisters, the girls cut off various parts of their feet to make fit into the shoe–which this time is a golden slipper. The prince either is a total idiot and cannot remember what Cinderella looks like, or he’s the biggest dope ever because he believes both sisters, one after another, when they come out with cut up feet fitting in their shoes and rides off, again one after another, intending to make them his bride before Cinderella steps in. To make it even worse, on Cinderella’s wedding day two pigeons pluck the stepsisters’ eyes out. Pretty opposed to “graciousness is priceless,” hmm?

On Monday I’ll talk about how I portrayed Cinderella–and why–but I do want to take this moment to point out something: Beauty, from the original B&B; Elise, from the original Wild Swans; and Cinderella, from Cendrillon were not the first to fall in love with their eventual husbands. In all three fairy tales it is clearly written that their various princes fall madly in love with them first. In fact, Beauty is the only girl to ever actually say she fell in love. Elise and Cinderella never confirm this–who knows, maybe they’re just thrilled their terrible/painful pasts are over and now they’re going to be princesses.

That wraps up today’s discussion. Until Monday, Champions.