so like im not under the impression that im saying anything too new but still. play with me in this space for a sec.
you know cindarella right? ok imagine cindarella at the end of her story. shes just escaped her abusive household and married the prince. awesome. so she goes back to the castle with the prince and they have a beautiful wedding and all but now theres all this courtly etiquette she has to learn and all this scrutiny being placed on her as this former servant turned royal. again, nothing new. even disneys already spun this yarn in the cindarella sequels. but stay with me. cindarella and the prince have a kid. a couple of kids, daughters. lovely little girls who are born into a family that will always be able to provide them whatever their hearts desire. everyone is so happy.
then the prince, now the king most likely, dies. doesnt matter how it happens. war, sickness, a political assassination. probably not that last one. something mundane, as far as deaths go. the loss is devastating. cindarella is wrought with grief, and her children are still so young, between the mourning and her now doubled daily responsibilities, she is unable to really care for them the way she wants to. so cindarellas daughters are raised by governesses and tutors, all pretty standard considering both their situation and their status. its expected really. its also expected that cindarella, the queen, will eventually remarry, but how can she even entertain the idea? her husband was the one who rescued her from her life, who gave her her family, and now hes gone.
she refuses suitor after suitor until one day she looks into the mirror and the face looks back is aged and hard and chiseled away by duty and loneliness. her children are strangers to her. search as she might she cant find any sign of herself or even her late husband in their eyes. they have grown up pampered, too distanced from their fathers loss by years and by their upbringing to even really remember him. cindarella finds their carefree existence repulsive. at their age she was already scrubbing floors, doing the sort of daily labor that would normally take an entire serving staff. and she never forgot her father. even now she holds his image in her mind, though his features and her husbands often blend in her mind.
finally, inevitably, she does remarry. not for love so much as for some sense of stability and perhaps companionship. the king of a neighboring nation, their union is celebrated and promises a future of newly returned prosperity for a kingdom thats fallen on hard times. the king is a widower himself and brings with him his young daughter. though their relationship is cordial enough, the queen often questions her new husbands loyalty to her, her kingdom, her family. men are fickle and he has no real obligation towards her outside the legal bonds of their marriage, which are hardly enough to deter a king. even as she plays the part of wife and queen she continues to eye him with scrutiny, and encourages her daughters to do the same to his heir. she is not their sister, but future competition for the throne.
then the king dies. what a punchline. all the strain, all the sacrifice, and another husband is gone in a flash, leaving her to care for his daughter, this brood parasite, in his absence.
she is careful not to show her resentment towards the girl outright. she doesnt have to. her own daughters are more than happy to take up the task, redoubling their torment of her. the abuse isnt questioned; they are her elders and the legitimate heiresses to the crown. who is she? an orphan with royal heritage is still an orphan. and whos to say, with her father now gone, their wasnt a dalliance with a concubine or two in his past? the queens word is law, and if she says this girl is nothing, she is nothing.
yet despite her best attempts, the dethroned princess is resilient, beloved, if not by her step-family than by the servants and the visiting dignitaries and the public at large. even animals and the flowers and trees that grow around the palace grounds seem to favor her. little by little the queen dismisses the staff, turns away the visitors, cuts down the trees. the world outside continues to turn and the kingdom falls into poverty, the palace becomes an oversized ornate mausoleum in the heart of the capital, inspiring nothing but scorn from the commonfolk. the queens daughters, for the first time in their lives, dont get what they wanted for their birthdays, and they dont know why but they know somehow its that other girls fault.
one evening, head full of national debts and plague and peasant revolt, the queen cindarella goes for a long walk around the far reaches of her estate to clear her mind. after a time she comes upon a small cemetery. its the one place the gardeners refused to touch when she was having them cull the unnecessary foliage and so has become hideously overgrown, but as shes passing by she notices a familiar light coming from within. she doesnt hesitate. shes been waiting for this moment for years now, in truth, ever since her true love died. she knew all along there was one being that could make it all right somehow, and though her heart had grown harder the longer she made her wait, she had never entirely lost hope.
until, that is, she enters the cemetery and finds the fairy drifting between the moonlit boughs of the old willow tree with her step-daughter standing beside her.