Saturday, October 30, 2021

The Daughter of the Sun

In the third interlude that just came out yesterday (I try to do one a year), I recount "The Daughter of the Sun" fairy tale.
The fairy tale originates in Italy, and like most it was an oral story that was passed down for who knows how long.  It was originally written down by Domenico Comparetti in the 1870's.  Then in the 1950's Italo Calvino wrote a book on Italian fairy tales and folk tales and he added a few elements to the story. 

The basic of the fairy tale is that a royal family had a daughter whom mystics said would bear a child of the sun's by her twentieth birthday, so they locked her in a tower where she wouldn't see the light of day.

As fate would have it, she does end up having a daughter of her own by the sun, but the baby is abandoned in a field before her parents find out about it.  The baby is found and raised by another royal family and she falls in love with her adopted brother, the prince.  

As her origins were questionable, the Prince's family wouldn't let them get married and instead was set up in her own cottage, where she exhibited all sorts of unusual powers and abilities and the story goes on from there.

Much of my adaptation is from Comparetti's original version, although I left out a chunk of the story that I didn't feel I needed for my telling.  In the original version the prince went through several engagements, in my version he went through only one.  Calvino introduced the concept that she could become immaterial and walk through solid objects and I kept that element as a homage to him.

I added my own element to the myth as well, as in both prior versions there is no mention of her ever meeting her birth mother, but I added that one in.  In the original version, when the prince became ill, she revealed her true origins to the court, but there was no explanation as to how she could have known them as she was abandoned as a baby, so I made a different explanation for the ending; plus of course tying it in with my universe.  

I had read the story a few years ago and I knew I wanted to incorporate it into my universe for a while, and now seemed like a good time to fit it in!

Here's a link:  Interlude 3

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