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Royalty Is A Bitch

Old-school fairy tales tend to be brutal, sexist, and humorless. In other words, they have high entertainment value.

Isn't this why we tell them? To kill those last few minutes before lights out, when we are exhausted and desperate for a little more juicy material? Certainly it isn't for their exemplary plotting, dialogue, and character development.

Could it be for the valuable moral and ethical lessons to be learned from them? I don't think so. Consider the central themes at the core of some of the all-time classics:

Little Red Riding Hood: Do not wear provocative clothing when walking through a tough neighborhood.
Snow White: When receiving an apple from an unfamiliar hag, wash it carefully to remove all residue of pesticide, fungicide, and magic spells.
Cinderella: Strict curfew must always be obeyed, no matter how harebrained the explanation.
Rapunzel: Really, really long hair can be useful.
Sleeping Beauty: Magic spells only work on people with no children. If she were a mother, she wouldn't get any sleep, spell or no spell.

The main reason I like to read fairy tales to Emma is to prove to her that I am not the only one in the world who is utterly full of bovine waste. Really, some of these stories are so ridiculous that even a three-year-old has trouble suspending disbelief. The biggest loser so far in our house has been the tale of The Princess and the Pea.

In this story, a prince wants to wed but insists that he marry only a "real" princess. These are apparently in short supply, and his search throughout the kingdom is fruitless. Not even a poison apple.

So, does the guy move on to Plan B and marry the damsel next door? No, he mopes about the castle, refusing to eat or sleep, until one night, during a thunderstorm (Why a thunderstorm? This plot detail is never paid off), a medieval hottie shows up on the doorstep. Her claim to princess-hood is shaky at best, but the prince and his folks cross their fingers and let her stay the night.

Although they require incontrovertible evidence that she is the genuine article, they inexplicably forego all standard procedure of a routine background check, including asking who is her father and over which kingdom does he rule? They do not ask to see her union card, nor do they look her up in the Directory of Royalty.

No, that would be too easy; instead they undertake the Queen's crackpot scheme of placing a dried pea under twenty mattresses to see if she can feel it. Twenty mattresses! Oh, she'll never suspect a thing!

You know the rest; she sleeps poorly, she's bitchy at breakfast, and in fact she has a bruise on her back from the pea. Cripes, how would you like to go camping with this woman? Yet, the household rejoices and the two are wed to live happily ever after.

This is a counter-productive fairly tale. The very idea that qualification for royalty consists of the tendency to bruise easily and to complain about minor discomforts is not something you want to foster in a three-year-old's mind.

With luck, she'll never run across the commemorative Princess and the Pea Barbie¾. You think I am joking? I would not joke about this.

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© Todd Pinsky 1998-2002. All rights reserved.