A common fairy tale trope is for a king to give away his daughter in marriage to a man who can perform some extraordinary feat: kill the dragon terrorizing the land (The Two Brothers), find some impossibly lost object (The Queen Bee) or, as a reward for kindness. (Bearskin, though not a princess; but still, a daughter given away as a reward.)
Sometimes, the princess is okay with this arrangement. Sometimes, she talks her father into making the man do yet another extraordinary feat in the hopes that he fails and she doesn’t have to marry him (The White Snake). And in this week’s reading, we find a princess who outright refuses to marry the man who claims to have defeated the giants who were after her. Instead of marriage, she gives up her family title and goes off to work to earn her living.
For modern fairy-tale authors, we can approach the princess-as-reward trope in several ways:
The good.
If looking at fairy tale symbolism, we could make the case that the king is brokering a union between two good and honorable people, the quintessential man and woman. The courageous man puts his life on the line to help the kingdom and prove he is worthy of the princess. Their marriage is of equals.
The bad.
The princess is not interested in marrying the hero; she is a proud (elitist) princess and makes the honorable (and poor) man’s life more difficult by continually raising the bar in the hopes he will fail.
The ugly.
- A king offers his daughter as a prize to a man he doesn’t like and hopes will be killed. Yet he still offers up his daughter. We’re not told in The Brave Little Tailor what the princess thinks of this arrangement until after she is married and discovers that her husband was once a lowly tailor. Then the proud princess tries to do away with him. No one comes off looking particularly good in this plot line.
- A proud princess is offered as reward to a man who doesn’t want her anyway; who is only out for revenge. (How Six Men Got on in the World) In this case, both the king and daughter plot to get rid of the man and pay him off with gold.
The twist.
The quintessential princess agrees to her duty, but feels something is off, so she is hesitant to marry the victor.
In The Two Brothers, the princess thinks her true hero is dead, but still, she postpones the inevitable marriage to the man claiming to be the hero and the real hero is able to make it back to her in time to stop the wedding.
And in this week’s story, The Skillful Huntsman, the princess refuses to marry the man claiming victory, but when she meets the true hero, marries him.
It’s been interesting to see the various roles princesses have around this princess-as-reward trope. In most cases, these princesses are feistier than people think. It’s always best to read the originals than believe the rumors.
