The Happily Ever After Fairy
Once upon a time, in a land so far away it had magic, dragons and flying horses. There, lived powerful, extremely nosy and meddlesome fairies. You may have heard of them. They like to pop in and out of stories most people think are make-believe but are in fact as real as you and me. They have appeared as fairy godmothers to poor naive cindergirls, deep sea witches to mermaids who think land is a better choice, always the side characters in dreams that come to story spinners. This is their story.
We start in the 1800s in a field, where Hans Christian Anderson was just ending his tale, of a princess who slept on 20 mattresses and felt a tiny pea right to the very bottom, to his audience of thirteen girls. His audience were silent, enraptured up to the end. One girl gave a sigh,"That was beautiful!" She declared.
Peals of laughter rolled off a child in the back. She showed no signs of stopping.
Finally, slightly affronted, the great storyteller got up and asked the little girl why she laughed so much at a tale that was not at all funny.
"Oh," she gasped, "It's just that that silly prince wound up so miserable in his marriage after he wed that fussy little miss!"
To the naked eye of course, this girl was no different from the other girls. Dressed in the same clothes with an easily forgettable face. She was in fact, one of the fairies that I just described to you. Her name was Clovir, the fairy in charge of "happily ever afters". You see, not all "happily ever afters" were happy, and it was her job to try and make them happy. When she got tired of her job she liked nothing better than to listen to tales of her successes in disguise.
Quite potentially she had the hardest task among the other fairies who sometimes didn't seem to think when they matched a princess to a prince or even a toad. She never even got any credit or airtime in the resulting tales that floated to the minds of storytellers!
One bloody difficult task of hers just so happened to be when her sister, matched the little princess of the kingdom, Viriae, to that nasty frog prince. There was a reason he had been turned into a frog after all. Fairies didn't just do these things on a whim. Of all princesses he chose to try winning a kiss from--a girl of only eleven! On top of that, like all eleven year old princesses, she was extremely spoilt. What a nightmare.
Now this occurred a fairly long time ago, so let's not discuss Clovir's real age. She is quite sensitive about this.
Back to the story. We start from when the princess, Varicella and her prince, Zoster were riding off in their carriage of pure gold followed by his happy manservant, Heinrich. Did you ever find it odd that out of all the characters in this story told by the brothers Grimm, Heinrich was the only character who was named? That my dear readers, would be Clovir. The real Heinrich had died of a broken heart when his beloved master was turned into a frog, do not ask me why.
So when Zoster who by the way was, despite his handsomeness, twenty-one years old at the time, gathered his adorable bride in his arms quite prepared to ravish her, Clovir coughed and the carriage wheel promptly fell right off. Varicella was quite upset about the carriage breakdown and her lungs swelled as she let out a huge wail about how her father's carriages would never break apart just like that. It thus became Clovir's job to soothe the upset girl while fixing the carriage wheel.
This of course was a minor deterrence for Prince Zoster who I am sure you all have figured out by now, had a taste for younger women. Much younger women. Over the next few years, Clovir had her hands full with arranging various disturbances throughout the castle, re-educating the little princess and the prince. After all, the frog spell evidently had not done its job. Thank goodness she only had to work on this till the princess turned fourteen. A marriageable age for that time--her father had only wanted to be rid of her slightly earlier.
The princess was slightly easier to manage. After all, she was young. Moldable. Annoying. So where words of wisdom failed, a good spanking always helped.
The prince on the other hand...that was difficult. After months of causing distractions she discovered a far easier way of dealing with the problem. After all, she was a fairy and despite being somewhat ineffective, there was no denying that the prince had strongly disliked being a frog. So she modified the spell to whenever the prince's thoughts were cast in the direction of well...shall we say youth. He would be turned into a frog. If doctors of today could use her tactics this world would be a far better place.
So their days were lived out as such. Eventually by means of association, the prince learned to be a less disgusting creature. The princess grew to be a lovely woman. When she decided her job was done, Clovir as Heinrich, chanced across Prince Zoster's transformation into a frog and burst into loud sobs, falling down in feigned death, disappearing from their lives as Heinrich would have. Needless to say the shock of losing his loyal manservant ensured that the lesson Clovir had intended to teach was well ingrained into Prince Zoster's head.
Thus, Prince Zoster and Princess Varicella lived truly happily ever after. Clovir moved on to her next task of sorting out a disillusioned mermaid turned human and her new husband. However that, is a story for next time.
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