For those of you who are new to my work, the Fairy Tale Enchantress series–which begins with Apprentice of Magic–is the culmination of my Timeless Fairy Tale series, which basically asks “what if all fairy tales happened in the same 5-10 year period and were interconnected?” Angelique is the enchantress that ties every fairy tale together, and so through out the series you’ll see her trot through many familiar fables and tales.
Most of this fun starts after Evariste is captured, but I wanted this to be a theme in Angelique’s life, so I threw some well known stories/fables in Apprentice of Magic as well!
The big ones were:
The Boy Who Cried Wolf
Pinocchio
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Goldilocks
Diamonds and Toads
You also get to see the start of Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin–and even a hint of Beauty and the Beast if you really squint–but the big two stories you see play out in the book are The Boy Who Cried Wolf and Diamonds and Toads. (I did actually write Angelique’s adventure with The Emperor’s New Clothes as a bonus story/chapter, so if you haven’t seen it, you can check it out here: The Dukes Clothes)
I picked all of the above tales because they struck me as being on the sillier side–or rather they showed the potential for humor. (We’re talking about you, Wybert.) But in order to let that play out, I had to twist them a bit.
I think just about everyone has heard of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, but just in case you haven’t, here is a short summary: A bratty shepherd gets bored with his job and finds great joy in shouting falsely about wolves attacking the sheep so the villagers come rampaging to an unneeded rescue. Because no one bothers to punish the boy (because why would you, I mean, he only disrupted an entire village for a joke) he does it again and gets the same amusing results. Eventually the villagers no longer trust him so when a wolf does emerge from the woods and the morally-questionable shepherd shouts for help, no one comes. As a result, the wolf slaughters multiple sheep.
Now I’m all for showing the consequences of actions, but when I read this story it always struck me as rather unfair that its the sheep who pay for the brat’s actions. (I mean, we can assume the shepherd was punished by the owner of the sheep, but the story never tells us this.)
So when I decided I wanted Angelique to teach this kid a lesson, I knew I wanted her to do it in a way that would directly punish the shepherd, not his animals. Additionally, I needed her to do it in a way that would provide practice for her as new apprentice.
And that launched my idea of creating illusion wolves to scare the lies out of dear little Wybert. 😉 (It also lead to my friends deciding perhaps it would be better if they never asked me to babysit their children.)
On the other end of the spectrum, you have Diamonds and Toads, which will be the discussion of my next post! But until then, Champions, what about Apprentice of Magic would you like to discuss? Leave your idea in the comments below!
Has anyone ever thought that is Angelique sharpened the edge of just about anything, she could manipulate whatever she wanted to? My imagination likes to run wild a lot, so I've also imagined battles between Angelique and the chosen. One of the first things that always happens in that battle is Angelique moving shields into defensive positions in front of the soldiers. If you think about it, by sharpening the edges of shields she would then be able to use her magic for both defensive and offensive purposes if she wated to. And aside from combat applications, there are tons of instances where if she took the time to sharpen things beforehand she could use her power to manipulate objects…