There once was a witch who fell in love with a prince. She was young and beautiful and did everything she could think of to woo him- she glamoured his tapestries to play out fairytales, enchanted the flowers in his gardens to bloom eternal, charmed all of his statues to sing arias for him- but he simply didn’t feel the same. Though he did not love her, the witch could not bear to see the prince with anyone else, so she decided to put a curse on him. Any girl that the prince loved would die. But his father was getting on in age, and the prince would soon need to take his place, take a queen, and produce an heir. Unwilling to risk loving anyone and condemning them to death, the prince locked himself away in the castle and decided to marry the one woman he could never love- the witch herself. At first she thought this a dream, for she was sure that she could make the prince fall in love with her once they were married, and she was immune to her own curse. But time went on, and the prince’s heart remained unmoved even as his wife stood with him through his father’s funeral and his own coronation. However, the witch eventually became pregnant, and thought here was her chance to turn things around. Surely the new king would love her once she’d given him the heir he both needed and craved, for he had grown lonely in his self-isolation. And sure enough, as soon as the child was born, the young king felt love for the first time since his father’s death. It was just unfortunate that the child was a girl.
