THE NEXT KINGDOM OVER (MYTHS AND LEGENDS)

MYTHS AND LEGENDS: EPISODE 368 "EYE LOVE YOU"

My favourite setting here is "the next kingdom over." (Its palace is the home of the princess, ie the love interest and eventual wife.) All places in "that land" or "kingdom" we see are the road and the palace (later on, the princess has a second palace built with her dowry), and all characters we see who live here are the princess (love interest and eventual wife), who has the ability to read, her dad, her servants, who also have the ability to read, the guards, the palace doctor, and "Everyone" (even though we hear of no civilian settlements).

..............................

... is probably a phrase that will get you arrested. 

It depends on the kingdom and how dangerous you are acting, but, when stopped and questioned by guards in the road, the next kingdom over, ... he was detained. Because he was getting married! Kind of.

Whether she understood fatalism, and knew there was a prophecy that she would marry the man that ..., or she had a very specific type, the princess of that land was... waiting for a man with ... to make his way through the kingdom. Everyone knew about this. Everyone thought it was a stall tactic on the part of the princess to not marry someone she didn't like, but they humoured her, until her dad would eventually grow tired of the whole thing and make her marry anyway.

Until the young man walked through the front door of the palace, on his stated quest. Well, "walked" is a generous term. The guards were a bit overzealous and he was dragged through. But with a hasty doctor visit and profuse apologies, the kid was set right.

Sitting down with his new fiancée, he explained that he'd love to marry her... He was just on a quest .... The princess had a healthy suspicion that the boy did not, and also the ability to read, so she asked to see the message. She held it up.

"Oh, it's a little crumpled, and slightly got a little blood smear on it from the guards' 'greeting'... Uh..." She would have her servants clean it off for him, while still maintaining the seal of the queen's ring. They, of course, changed it to read: "...." (Basically, a Uriah letter is changed to something more positive).

........

... seeing as they wanted for nothing, the young man could finally marry the princess, because, in stories where people get married the day or week they meet, a two-month engagement was absolutely ridiculously long.

So, the young man ... lived in the kingdom of his now wife. They got married in an extravagant wedding, and .... As he laid in bed with his new wife, .... 

THE END.

"Sorry, sorry, I CAN'T do it!" the princess, the young man's new wife, said, sitting up in bed and crossing her arms.

...

The princess laughed: "No!" ... The princess wanted (her stepmother-in-law's) story to end with her DEAD. Buried in a field used for farming, ... and covered in manure.

The husband ... grimaced. That was really specific and dark.

The princess nodded: Oooh... Oh, she had ideas! This was happening! She rose and got to work.

The young man ... looked around the palace.

"Cool, cool palace!"

The dowry went to the palace the princess had built, and it was a nice palace.

..........

... down to even the wall carvings and the placement of the furniture, ...

.........

"Guards, arrest that woman (stepmother-in-law)", .... 

The guards didn't do it. Instead they looked at the princess and the young man, who nodded. The guards then dogpiled the Queen.

...

The Queen was dangerous. But they had no idea of what to do with her.

The princess chimed in. Oh, she had ideas!

... (The evil Queen is executed by the princess's guards with the method the princess had suggested).

.......,.....................

It really was the princess pushing for justice in the original, which... good for her, I guess! (I AGREE WITH JASON WEISER MYSELF!) 

FEMALE LITERACY IN ANDERSEN'S THE RED SHOES

In the Andersen tale "The Red Shoes," (De røde sko) orphan protagonist Karen does not know how to read until her wealthy female guardian has her taught how to, opening up avenues of opportunity for a young Victorian nouvelle riche female that, sadly, the author closes abruptly for her. Even when she gets to work in a vicarage at the end of the tale, she never uses her position to teach the underprivileged to read...

Now how does Maria Tatar translate this detail of the tale and what does she have to say about it in the annotated edition?

Sadly there are no annotations by Tatar about Karen's literacy, though that of the highborn and high-ranking Clever Princess in the Fourth Story of The Snow Queen she has not given short shrift to (and annotated as a reference to a satirical barb on newspapers, I quote verbatim, at an early Victorian time when the press was the one and only mass medium!). Here is, though, how Tatar translates Karen's literacy:

"She had to learn to read ...,"

A very short six-letter half-sentence, but still one that counts as a reference to female literacy and to saving a female orphan child from the gutter.

Sur La Lune has H.B. Paull's Victorian version:

"... she was taught to read ..."

but sadly no annotations at all for "The Red Shoes" either. The annotations page for the tale only has:

Nothing!

The Myths and Legends podcast also mentions that magic four-letter verb (READ) as part of Karen's education with her posh old female guardian:

"Karen was taken into the house, and taught to read ...,"

While the Tales podcast by Parcast Media has:

"She had ..., tutors who taught her how to read ...,"

In Spanish:

"Tenía ..., tutores (sic) que le enseñaban a leer ...,"

In The Midnight Archive:

"She was taught to read, to write, ...  to behave like a proper young woman."

Andersen seems to be as ambivalent towards intelectuallism in "The Red Shoes" as he is in The Snow Queen. The Prince and Princess are as out of touch with reality as they are "gode" (a word variously translated as ("good" or "kind"); their ostentatious carriage drawing the attention of the robbers, who massacre all the redshirt servants and claim the bounty of pastries. Likewise, Karen is taught how to read, learning to read from tutors, but never puts this knowledge to good use (in my oral secularized adaptations, at least, I vindicate this literacy --Andersen, EAT YOUR HEART OUT!-- and have her teach how to read to the children at the orphanage --yes, the vicarage became an orphanage in my version-- where her journey started...).

PS. Andersen's source text for Karen's literacy has:

"... hun måtte lære at læse ..." 

"At læse" means "to read." Compare this description of the Clever Princess in the Fourth Story of The Snow Queen:

"... hun har også læst alle aviser, der er til i verden, ..."

TSQ-IV: FEARFUL SYMMETRY

This retelling is a fragment from the Snow Queen version retold in the Myths and Legends Podcast episode 21, Fearful Symmetry. (As an aside, I've linked both Savitri and the Princess in the Fourth Story with Portia on my FutureLearn Shakespeare course and argued that the title of the play should rather be The Heiress of Belmont...)
PS. The question mark is left there until someone can clarify which word the narrator said. The question is currently on in this podcast's Facebook...

This week, on the Myths and Legends Podcast, it's the story of the Snow Queen, the fairytale that very loosely inspired Disney's Frozen. You'll see how children's entertainment has changed over 170 years...
This is the Myths and Legends Podcast, episode 21: Fearful Symmetry. 
The fun thing about the stories of Hans Christian Andersen is that they aren't technically folktales. They're absolutely fairytales, due to their inclusion of fantastical, supernatural elements.
I'll jump right into the story. You don't need any background, other than the fact that it takes place in the 1800s in a Scandinavian country. And that's about it. 
(Skip right to the Fourth Story, at minute 17!!)
[···] ...a human male. 
[···] ...the human boy, [···] ...a lot of Kais, or human boys, [···] ...finally gets to the relevant part.
So, as an aside, the story's kind of getting into the weeds here. [···]
Basically, there's a super-smart princess, who decides that she'd like to get married. She doesn't want to get married to just anyone, but she wants her intellectual equal. She issues a challenge for all the young men in the realm to come and have a conversation. The one who can hold his own (?) will be her husband.
The young men come, but they are so intimidated by the princess that they can hardly say a word. Enter a young man with shabby clothes and a pack... or sled... slung off his back. He's wearing nice boots, and goes up and talks to the princess. And she... likes him. 
The young poor boy married the princess, and he's currently in the palace with her. 
[···] ...to the palace up a back hallway. [···] in, [···] the prince and princess's bedroom, where they're sleeping, [···]  Instead of being incredibly angry about an intruder in their chamber, the prince and princess get up, and let (Gerda) have their bed. (She) sleeps there, and stays in the castle for a few days. The three get along well, and they wanna help her find Kai, if he's still alive. They give her a carriage, horses, drivers, servants, and everything. And (Gerda) rides off, waving goodbye to the prince and princess, ...
(Segue into the Fifth Story, at minute 19)
[···] ...down the road in the carriage, happy and comfortable. [···] Then, she saw the blood.
(Ominous background music)
An arrow went through the driver, then stuck into the wall of the carriage. Blood poured in the hall, and that's when she heard the screams, all around. (She) could hear more arrows that hit into the driver, and ducked and cowered in a dark corner of the carriage. People climbed aboard. [···] ...could hear the screams, weeping, and pleading of the servants that had left the castle [···], before the sounds of daggers, and silence.
[···]  and they (tall, ugly men) were dragging the bodies from the carriage, and going through the pockets of the dead men for any valuables. They were bandits.
(In the Seventh Story, at minute 34)
She (the robber girl) said that the prince and princess are in a foreign land, [···]