Sleeping Beauty: Part IV
And in! Welcome back: we're going through Charles Perrault's OG Sleeping Beauty story and giving Chaz some helpful tips, because his writing style and plotting has gone from fantasy to p funky with this story. Read on...
Last time, we left the princess just as she had pricked her finger on the spindle and fallen into a deep, magical beauty sleep...
Once the castle and all of its inhabitants were effectively hibernating, the king and queen kissed the princess’s forehead and left the castle. The King issued another battery of proclamations saying that no-one should go into the castle, but “these warnings were not needed, for within a quarter of an hour there grew up all round the park so vast a quantity of trees big and small, with interlacing brambles and thorns, that neither man nor beast could penetrate them.” Insta-Forest!
And we fast forward 100 years. Question: We paused everyone except for the princess’s parents/only immediate family? Wasn’t the whole point to keep her from being scared and alone when she wakes up? Now she’s going to wake up and immediately be thrust into a queen role, and we don’t know if she’s trained for that. I suppose possibly the king/queen felt a duty to the rest of their kingdom? But why not appoint a successor and just blip forward with your daughter? I mean, that’s your family. You’ve still effectively lost her. This was weird. (And, I think, corrected in the Disney movie?)
Anyway. A century later; there’s another royal family on the throne (presumably a secondary castle has been built). The (new) king’s son was going hunting one day, and – crazy random happenstance! – came across the InstaForest. Again: Parents: tell your kids about these things. If our original king+queen didn’t go to sleep with the rest of the castle, the one pro I can see to that situation is simply that the original king+queen can tell people what happened, and, I don’t know, throw up a police barrier around the InstaForest, or something. As is, of course the prince – sorry, king’s son - is going to be curious about this gigantic ancient castle on what will, one day soon, be his rightful property.
He wonders aloud to his retinue what’s up with the InstaForest. His attendants repeat the myths which had been circulating since their parents’ youth, probably: “Some said there was an old castle haunted by ghosts, others that all the witches of the neighborhood held their revels there.” Sounds sweet. Another guy thinks that there’s a child-eating ogre who holes up in there. That’s significantly less fun!
“While the prince was wondering what to believe” (relatable), a conveniently nearby peasant decides to interject. He remembers hearing – over fifty years ago – a rumor that a beautiful princess, doomed to sleep for one hundred years, was in there. She’s waiting for, wait for it, a king’s son.
I’d love to be able to see the prince’s/king’s son’s thought process in that moment. Wait, he thinks. I’m a prince/king’s son!
I mean, obviously, you believe the peasant, whom you have never met before, with the cheery, non-ogre-including explanation of the creepy InstaForest. Obviously. “This story fired the young prince.” This seems like an odd way to phrase this, Chaz. As a 21st century reader, I see that and think, “Hum. The story got fed up of the young prince as a character and decided to terminate his employment as a plot device.” (Note to CP: Anticipate things getting mixed up in translation!)
Anyway, he decides to go on a quest and find the princess, and definitely not the ogre. (Suddenly I’m seeing where the inspo for Shrek came from.)
It’s the right choice, though. The InstaForest tells him this, and definitely not something more sinister, when it instantly parts for him upon his arrival. He can see the castle now. Once he began to walk toward it, the InstaForest closed up behind him. This is terrifying. I’m getting HP4 Maze vibes, and I did not love that scene in that movie. Some hedge is definitely about to reach out and swallow him whole. Run, prince/king’s son!
Unfortunately for him, he’s been typecast as one who does not run away from danger: “A young and gallant prince is always brave.” Will this be our Perrault Moral™ of the story?
He’s afraid (good; bravery isn’t bravery without fear, etc) – and only more so when he gets into the palace, which is (seemingly) full of well-preserved dead people. This would make an excellent Twilight Zone episode, and for all I know, it has. (I’m not allowed to watch the Twilight Zone until I’m about ninety, for various reasons.) “The silence of the place was dreadful, and death seemed all about him.”
But then he notices that they were sleeping. How does he tell this? By holding a spoon up to their noses, or taking a pulse? Neauxp. “He perceived by the pimply noses and ruddy faces of the porters that they merely slept.” Harsh. Also, not … scientifically… helpful. One can have pimples and be dead (citation needed).
He passes some guards, slumped over while standing at attention, whom Charles cheerfully notes were snoring extremely loudly. Thanks, boi. That somehow seems a bit less eerie and instead more comical, but I’m here for it.
Prince/king’s son keeps walking, eventually finding the princess’s chamber. She’s beautiful in an otherworldly, almost alien kind of way. Now, I’d be primed by several seasons of Doctor Who and the like to think maybe don’t touch her, but the prince/king’s son has neither this benefit nor this handicap.
He kneels at her side, and she wakes up. There are zero kisses of true love.
However, the prince/king’s son decides that he’s in love with her anyway. I mean, I get it. It’s been an adrenaline-filled day, he’s witnessed some very scary things, and it’s easy to confuse feelings of terror and true love. It’s why you’re supposed to watch horror movies on first dates, it really gets things going. (Note: this is a horrible idea, but it’s actually true.)
The princess is being adequately flirtatious, too, which helps. “The princess awoke, and bestowed upon him a look more tender than a first glance might seem to warrant.” Right. Coming to mind is that WHOA NELLY lewk from Nala in the middle of Can You Feel The Love Tonight wherein the audience (if not Simba) is suddenly aware that it is on.
They exchange about three words, and they’re an item. Which is fast, but CP’s okay with that: “The less there is of eloquence, the more there is of love.” Which: sure. Lizzy Bennet’s quip about poetry killing love seems like it would fit in quite well here.
Charles tells us that “although the story says nothing about it,” it would seem that the Extremely Rad Fairy had made sure that she had good dreams while she slept. Dude, I get that you’re adapting a pre-existing fairy tale, but you’re taking liberties elsewhere (see also: Puff, the princess’s puppy who isn’t being mentioned right now, but is probably yapping and wagging his little tail off after a century-long snoozle). You can just tell us that she had good dreams.
They talk for four hours, and at the end of those four hours, they’re not done talking. But there are things to be done! Like, making sure that the princess’s legs haven’t atrophied. Let’s get to it.
But that’s where we’ll leave it for now. With just this thought: CP says that whereas the prince/king’s son is stumbling over his words because he’s been in love for sixteen minutes, the princess “has had time to think of what she would say to him.” In short, it seems like she went to sleep knowing that the next face she’d see would be her one true love? But she wasn’t acting, one hundred years prior when her parents were sort of out of town, like she knew she was cursed…so…anyone? Anyone? Perrault?
We out.