MARI NESS: SYMPATHY FOR THE FALSE BRIDES

Anyway. From here, the story abruptly changes directions, as a starving Maleen and her maid leave their country in search of food and shelter. Eventually they end up in the land of Maleen’s still incredibly useless prince, where, after considerable begging, they manage to obtain jobs in the kitchen. Why exactly Maleen doesn’t go to her prince and ask directly for help is a good question, though, to be fair, as noted, the story has already gone to some lengths to focus on just how useless the guy is.
Also, to be fair, the prince has since become engaged to someone else.
This shifts the tale into something else: a false bride story. That is, a tale where the struggling girl or princess finally reaches her prince, only to find him married off, or about to be married off, to a dreadful woman—in some cases, a troll. In most stories, this forces the girl to trade what few belongings she has left to the false bride in the hopes of just getting a conversation with the guy. On her side, the false bride is usually so desperate to get the prince to notice and love her that she agrees to all sorts of wildly inappropriate things just to get the magical dress, or the lovely ring, or whatever magical item might finally—finally—get the prince to fall in love. That is, a magically hellish love triangle, and one that almost inevitably ends poorly for the false bride, who is sometimes evil (or a troll), and sometimes not. Ugly, or pregnant, or just wrong, but not necessarily evil.
The idea, of course, is that the lovely girl must free the prince from the wrong marriage because, gasp, fairy tales forbid that a handsome, charming prince, useless or not, end up married to a—gasp—ugly woman (or troll). There’s something to be said for that, especially in tales like “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” (a story that I promise we’ll get to eventually) where the prince is under an enchantment: I rather like the idea of girls doing the rescuing and getting all of the adventures. At the same time, having to rescue their princes from the monstrous women who ensnared them… well. Hmm. And at times, I can’t help but have some sympathy for the false brides.
As in this case. This particular bride isn’t just ugly, but deeply ashamed of her looks, to the point where she’s terrified of heading to her own wedding, since people will see her. Her solution? Getting a kitchen maid—Maleen—to stand in her place at the wedding. Why a kitchen maid? Well, partly to heighten the dramatic irony of just happening to choose the girl who just happens to be her prince’s first choice of bride, but also presumably because any marriage with that great of a gulf in social rank could be easily invalidated, and also because, also presumably, the ugly bride assumes that no one will look at the girl and go, wait, didn’t I see you in the kitchens? A bit snobbish, sure, but also, at least a few people there presumably see all other people as just colorful blurs thanks to a lack of access to prescription lenses.
I’m presuming a lot here, but to be fair, so is the tale. Maleen, however, refuses to presume anything, noting that it’s not exactly her place to pretend to be a king’s bride. The false bride solves this by threatening to kill Maleen, so, off everyone goes, with Maleen singing a little song about nettles to a nettle bush, presumably to cheer everyone up, or at least herself up. She also chats to a little footbridge and to the church door. The prince is understandably a little surprised about this—my understanding (gathered entirely from television coverage of the weddings of real-life European royalty to be all fairy tale and proper about it) is that singing to nettles and chatting with inanimate objects is not part of Royal Wedding Traditions. He’s also a little astonished that his father has somehow found a new bride who looks and sounds almost exactly like his old and apparently dead bride, like “astonished” is probably not the world you should be going for here, Prince Useless, as I’m now going to call you. “Creepy” is the right term.
Anyway, it’s all a bit brutal for Maleen, what with the singing to nettles and having to pretend to be the other woman who is marrying her true love, plus, the prince giving her some jewelry during the ceremony. She hastily removes her fancy clothes, allowing the false bride to join the prince, and I can’t help but think that maybe—just maybe—her prince’s failure to remember that she’s the sort of person who will sing to nettles and be kinda passive-aggressive about how she once needed to eat him in part because he couldn’t break through a wall that she could with a bread knife had something to do with her decision here.
Unfortunately, since Prince Useless wants to know why, exactly, his bride was more interested in talking with nettles, bridges and doors than, say, him, this also puts the false bride in an uncomfortable situation, since as she says—quite understandably—”I don’t talk to nettle plants.” This leads to a comedy of errors with the false bride (heavily veiled) continually jumping up and running out of the room to find out what, exactly, was said to the various objects.
Eveeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnntttuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuaaalllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyy, even Prince Useless figures out that something is slightly off here—and pulls the veil from the false bride’s face. She explains that she was terrified that people would make fun of her. The prince’s compassionate response to this? To ask her to bring the kitchen maid who took her place to him. Instead, the false bride orders the servants to cut off the kitchen maid’s head. It’s a real threat—the servants are on the edge of obeying until Maleen screams, finally stirring Prince Useless to do something. He comes out, kisses Maid Maleen, and orders the false bride to be executed.
And, well, I can’t help wondering several things about this. Starting with the political implications: yes, given that it’s taken his father a full seven years to find another bride, I have to assume that many, many others agreed with me that Prince Useless was not much of a catch—but at the same time, I think it’s fair to say that in this case, the false bride is probably at least of aristocratic origins, and may have some annoyed family members. And continuing with the personal implications: ok, yes, the false bride did threaten Maleen’s life…
...but otherwise, what, exactly, is she guilty of? In the other false bride tales, the false bride is often guilty of putting the court under some sort of deception. In this one, however, she is initially guilty only of getting engaged to Prince Useless—something that the story explicitly states was the work of his father, not her—and of being so ugly that she’s terrified of being seen in public. Especially since it can be argued that Maleen went to work more or less willingly in the palace kitchens (more or less, since as a princess apparently not trained to do much and shut up in a tower for seven years, her job skills seem limited, and she has few other options). As a kitchenmaid, she is, as the story makes clear, the employee of the false bride. Sure, “pretend to be me at my wedding” is just a touch outside the usual duties of a servant, and “I’ll kill you if you don’t” is more than a trifle overdone—but, still, the false bride is not wrong to expect a servant to more or less obey her—and to expect that the servant will not chatter to nettles, bridges and doors along the way. Is ordering another woman to take her place at a wedding really the best way to handle her insecurities? I’d go with no. But at the same time, this is a false bride that I can’t help but feel a bit of sympathy for, a false bride trapped by her own insecurities and standards of beauty almost as much as Maleen was back in her tower. Just, without a bread knife.
And given that the false bride does end up executed, maybe she was right to feel so insecure. Just a thought.