Says Sarah Viehmann:
Today is for the Ace-spec Prince and Princess in H.C. Andersen’s The Snow Queen
Andersen’s The Snow Queen is split in five parts that sort of tell five short tales. The fourth tale is called “The Prince and the Princess”. In it little Gerda, who is looking for her friend Kai after he was taken by the Snow Queen, learns about a Prince and Princess about which we are told the following by two helpful crows:
- The Princess is the sole ruler of the kingdom and uncommonly clever, but because of this she was also rather bored.
- She made up her mind to marry “as soon as she could find a husband who would know how to respond when spoken to”. Any attractive young man willing to try his luck could come to the castle and the Princess resolved to marry the one that “seemed most at home in the castle and spoke the most eloquently”.
- The newly made Prince is a short young man with bright eyes and old clothes, who did not come to court the Princess, “but to listen to her wise words. He liked what he heard, and she took a shine to him too.”
When Gerda goes to find them, hoping that the young prince is her friend Kai, she finds them asleep in a gorgeous bedroom, sleeping side by side in two separate beds, that have been crafted to look like lilies. A white one for the Princess, a red one for the Prince, both hanging from a golden stalk.
Instead of being angry that Gerda snuck into their room, the Princess comforts her, the Prince gives up his bed for her, and the next day they give her warm clothes and a carriage full of food to continue her journey.
And to top it all off they appoint the two crows to be their official “court crows”.
So basically, Hans Christian Andersen gave us a couple of kind, clever, crow-loving, ace royals and I for one intend to love and support them until the end of time.
