Review of AWS - "Ever/After" (Part 12)
And here we are. The last story of this anthology. And surprisingly...it's rather nice too.
Of course, it also has the advantage of not being based on any fairytale. As far as I can see, it's original. So, A.N. had to come up with this all on his own, rather than spewing his invective at an established story.
A prince is arranged to marry a princess that he doesn't know. Their wedding goes off without a hitch, despite the fact that he sees that she's hefty and she expects him to be a serial womanizer who will cheat on her. I guess that she must have been reading this book.
However, both of them are surprised. It turns out that he's a virgin (I know, how shocking, right? A hero actually being a virgin - gasp!) and she is the one who seems to know her way around the bedchamber. She's also dominant in bed and he is quite happy to oblige her. So, they end up falling in love.
I'm just waiting for A.N. to muck this up somehow.
They have children and A.N. says that bad things happen around them. There's a murder, robberies, etc. all what you would expect from the daily news. But so far, the king and queen seem to be happy. They have intelligent and gifted children, and they love each other. Wow, this is actually beginning to look like a nice story, a fairytale that people can -
And then, in late middle age, the king becomes infatuated with a duchess. After a one-night-stand with her, he realizes that it was a mistake. But it's too late, because then the queen proceeds to cheat on him with pages and stableboys.
OF COURSE, BECAUSE GOD FORBID THAT ANYBODY HONOR THEIR MARRIAGE VOWS IN THIS DYSTOPIA OF A UNIVERSE. FIDELITY IN MARRIAGE IS A PIPE DREAM. IT'S AS MYTHICAL TO A.N. AS A UNICORN FLYING OVER A RAINBOW.
But, fortunately, the queen also realizes that she made a mistake, and she and the king reconcile. In fact, their marriage has actually been invigorated after this, because now they've 'proven' that they've 'still got it.'
Because they couldn't have figured that out without cheating on each other. Good Lord.
But eventually all good things come to an end. After a long and happy life together, the king falls ill. While he's on his deathbed, his wife sings to him in order to soothe him and he dies peacefully. She soon follows him, not long after. Their children prosper after she dies and become excellent rulers themselves.
In short, despite the deaths of the king and queen, there's still a happily ever after. So, what happened? Why did this story get an unambiguous happy-ever-after ending and the other ones didn't?
Even though this is a nice story (despite the completely unnecessary infidelity), I can't bring myself to enjoy it because I'm too busy wondering why it's here. Why is it light and hopeful? Why is it happy? Why, when the rest of the stories are determined to be the opposite of that?
Well, look at the details. Like I said earlier, this is not based on a pre-existing story. It was entirely made-up. So, there is nothing for A.N. to jab at or tear down. There are no pre-existing characters that he can destroy.
And most of all, who are his characters here? Well, we have the nice king, who does cheat on his wife once, but immediately regrets it and never strays again. He's a virgin on his wedding night and is fine with letting his wife take control of the bedroom.
And then we have his wife. Who, as the story never fails to remind us, is not conventionally attractive.
When the prince first meets her, she's 'hefty.' One of her daughters, who strongly resembles her, is described as 'corpulent.' In other words, the queen is supposed to be overweight.
And what was it that A.N. said in the prologue?
"The middling maidens - the ones best seen by candlelight, corseted and rouged - have nothing to worry about."
and
"Vengeful entitles seek only to devastate the rarest, the ones who have been somehow been granted not only bower and trumpet but comeliness that startles the birds in the trees…"
In other words, this princess deserves her happy ending because she's not pretty. She's not saintly. In short, she's Not Like Other Girls.
She's not like stupid Beauty, who's just so nauseatingly beautiful and virtuous that she deserves to be taken down a peg. She's not like that beautiful ballerina whom the Steadfast Tin Soldier pined after. No, she's a regular woman. She doesn't have extraordinary beauty or goodness that would make people feel insecure. She's not mean or ugly either, she's just...average.
Like "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." Not too hot, not too cold, just right.
Which is not that different from Barbara Walker's retelling of "Beauty and the Beast," in which the only reason why the heroine was ugly was because Walker thought that she'd have more character that way (strongly indicating that if she were beautiful, she wouldn't) and so she could stick it to the story by saying that her marriage to the Beast at the end was free of vanity, unlike the marriages of beautiful people.
But that doesn't explain away everything either. Because despite his professed aims in the prologue, A.N. has not done a good job of tearing down the fortunate to raise the unfortunate up. He's just made everyone, except these lucky few, miserable.