Help me find this fairy tale story please!
May 7, 2019 8:39 AM Subscribe
My search skills are failing me. Does anyone remember this story or book about a princess? Plot description within.
From what I can remember, this read more like a recent-ish story rather than a classic fairy tale or retelling, but it was DEFINITELY about a princess or some other high level noble lady and was clearly fairy tale-inspired. Length-wise, it seemed like it was either a lengthy short story or a fairly short novel or novella. I don't remember it being part of an anthology, but it's certainly possible that it was. I probably would have read it somewhere in the late 90s or early 2000s, but it's not necessarily of that time.
The plot goes something like this: a princess is born to a king and queen and a kindly witch shows up to give the child two magical gifts—but she doesn't actually say what those gifts are. The child starts growing up and is kind of a brat at the start, partly because she's a pampered princess, and partly because all of the other princesses she's heard of got these super obvious awesome witch gifts at birth and she's got diddly squat for all she can tell.
Something like an attack on the castle or something similarly bad happens, because all of a sudden this princess has to run away and hide in the woods from people who are chasing her down. She manages to evade capture and escapes deeper into the woods. She ends up walking for a really long time, finding a road and lucking out and finding some food and water along the way (though not much). There were some bandits on the road, but she managed to hide from them until they were gone. Eventually she finds her way to this village or family farm or something.
This nice family takes her in (she's all raggedy by now, I can't remember if she tells them if she's a princess or not) and once she's recovered, she starts to help out around the place, and I think it ends up being for kind of a long time? And she learns to be less spoiled through the power of hard work and loving community and being thankful for what she has and whatnot. I think she might even stop trying to get word about her old life at some point and fully commit herself to her new circumstances, figuring her parents are probably dead anyway.
I dimly recall her adoptive father figure or someone gets very ill and she has to go out and try to find medicine or a doctor or a rare flower or something to help him? And somehow she is able to do so in time and help him.
I THINK what eventually happens is that the witch that gave her gifts ends up coming through the village and recognizes her. And the princess is like, hey yeah, no biggie now, I'm all good here, but I was super curious about what my so-called gifts were supposed to be.
PLOT TWIST: the two gifts the witch gave her were the gift of staying safe and the gift of attracting the things she needed (or something like that). That was how she was able to escape pursuit and hide from the bandits and also how she was able to stay alive in the woods long enough to find a welcoming family who took her in and also to find that medicine or whatever later on. The gifts were subtle and need-based, but ended up being INCREDIBLY valuable, much more so than grace or wit or beauty or any of the usual princess gifts.
I think it turns out her family is okay and still looking for her, and she might go back home at the end. Or not? Honestly the end wasn't as important as the big witch gift reveal.
Anyway, I remember REALLY liking this story as a kid because of the emphasis it placed on personal growth, being happy with what you had, and celebrating less obvious (but clearly no less useful) gifts. But I can't remember the name of it and my search terms are not turning it up.
Does anyone remember reading this story? Or can I rally the forces of Librarian MeFi to aid me in my search? Thank you!
Note: I don't THINK it was The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye, although it seems like it might have been in the same vein.
From what I can remember, this read more like a recent-ish story rather than a classic fairy tale or retelling, but it was DEFINITELY about a princess or some other high level noble lady and was clearly fairy tale-inspired. Length-wise, it seemed like it was either a lengthy short story or a fairly short novel or novella. I don't remember it being part of an anthology, but it's certainly possible that it was. I probably would have read it somewhere in the late 90s or early 2000s, but it's not necessarily of that time.
The plot goes something like this: a princess is born to a king and queen and a kindly witch shows up to give the child two magical gifts—but she doesn't actually say what those gifts are. The child starts growing up and is kind of a brat at the start, partly because she's a pampered princess, and partly because all of the other princesses she's heard of got these super obvious awesome witch gifts at birth and she's got diddly squat for all she can tell.
Something like an attack on the castle or something similarly bad happens, because all of a sudden this princess has to run away and hide in the woods from people who are chasing her down. She manages to evade capture and escapes deeper into the woods. She ends up walking for a really long time, finding a road and lucking out and finding some food and water along the way (though not much). There were some bandits on the road, but she managed to hide from them until they were gone. Eventually she finds her way to this village or family farm or something.
This nice family takes her in (she's all raggedy by now, I can't remember if she tells them if she's a princess or not) and once she's recovered, she starts to help out around the place, and I think it ends up being for kind of a long time? And she learns to be less spoiled through the power of hard work and loving community and being thankful for what she has and whatnot. I think she might even stop trying to get word about her old life at some point and fully commit herself to her new circumstances, figuring her parents are probably dead anyway.
I dimly recall her adoptive father figure or someone gets very ill and she has to go out and try to find medicine or a doctor or a rare flower or something to help him? And somehow she is able to do so in time and help him.
I THINK what eventually happens is that the witch that gave her gifts ends up coming through the village and recognizes her. And the princess is like, hey yeah, no biggie now, I'm all good here, but I was super curious about what my so-called gifts were supposed to be.
PLOT TWIST: the two gifts the witch gave her were the gift of staying safe and the gift of attracting the things she needed (or something like that). That was how she was able to escape pursuit and hide from the bandits and also how she was able to stay alive in the woods long enough to find a welcoming family who took her in and also to find that medicine or whatever later on. The gifts were subtle and need-based, but ended up being INCREDIBLY valuable, much more so than grace or wit or beauty or any of the usual princess gifts.
I think it turns out her family is okay and still looking for her, and she might go back home at the end. Or not? Honestly the end wasn't as important as the big witch gift reveal.
Anyway, I remember REALLY liking this story as a kid because of the emphasis it placed on personal growth, being happy with what you had, and celebrating less obvious (but clearly no less useful) gifts. But I can't remember the name of it and my search terms are not turning it up.
Does anyone remember reading this story? Or can I rally the forces of Librarian MeFi to aid me in my search? Thank you!
Note: I don't THINK it was The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye, although it seems like it might have been in the same vein.
I'm not sure what the story is, but a lot of the elements reminded me of The Fairy's Mistake by Gail Carson Levine. Maybe this will jog a memory path, or perhaps it is one of her other princess tales?
posted by sweetjane at 1:33 PM on May 7, 2019
posted by sweetjane at 1:33 PM on May 7, 2019
Could it be Spindle's End (Robin McKinley)
In McKinley's version of the classic fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty, a wicked fairy named Pernicia appears on the princess' name-day and places a curse on the baby, claiming that the child will, on her 21st birthday, prick her finger on a spindle and fall into deathly sleep. The cursed princess is rescued on her name-day and secretly taken away by a young fairy, Katriona, to her village, a town called Foggy Bottom, located in the damp and swampy section of the country known as The Gig. There Katriona and her aunt (affectionately known as Aunt) raise the princess as an ordinary village maiden, naming her Rosie after the last of the princess' twenty-one names.posted by spamandkimchi at 1:46 PM on May 7, 2019
Are you thinking of Graceling by Kristin Cashore?
posted by VelveteenBabbitt at 2:01 PM on May 7, 2019
posted by VelveteenBabbitt at 2:01 PM on May 7, 2019
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by stormyteal at 9:17 AM on May 7, 2019