Simpleton takes the Golden Goose to market (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Paper Bag Princess (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
fairy tale pic (Photo credit: Kjirstin)I had lot of fun with the third exercise in Apathy. We had to write a fairy tale in which the main character responds to everything with "I don't care." We could decide if that changed by the end of the tale. In some of the classic tales the princesses are passive characters in the story. This exercise me reminded of the fairy tale "The Princess Who Couldn't Laugh." When writing I threw in a few nods to my favorite fairy tale "The Paper Bag Princess."Apathy #3
Once upon a time, there was a princess who was the despair of the entire kingdom. When Princess Roland was born, the fairy Elizabeth cursed her. Elizabeth had been offended by the loud raucous noise of the Princess birth celebration. Thus, she cursed Princess Roland to never care about anything.
At first glance, Princess Roland was everything a princess should be. She had long blond hair that her servants combed one hundred times every morning. She wore pretty pink gowns that her servants dressed her in. She had all the finest things and ate the most delicious food. At the end of every day, her hair would be in tangles and her dresses turned to grey rags. Her toys would be broken and all food would turn to ash in her mouth.
The king and queen had offered her hand in marriage and the throne to anyone who could break the curse. All the clowns and mimes came from miles away to perform for the princess. The playwrights wrote brilliant plays to entertain her. Knights and princes came to hold tournaments in her honor. When asked her opinion on all these things, she would always say, “I don’t care.”
Musicians would play all their greatest hits. Toymakers would bring her their most clever toys. Merchants would bring all their finest goods. All of them were met with, “I don’t care.” The kingdom began to suffer and sicken with concern for the princess. The people began to starve due to the expense of the attempts to make the princess care. When informed of this the princess said, “I don’t care.”
After most of the knights had died in the endless tournaments, the kingdom was ripe for the picking. A dragon drawn by the suffering laid waste to the kingdom. He burned the kingdom and ate the people. He looked and looked for the princess but all he found was the pale tattered Roland. When he threatened to kill her if she did not tell him where the princess was, all she said was, “I don’t care.”
The dragon tried to cajole her. The dragon pleaded with her. He puffed himself up and menaced her. “I don’t care.” The dragon hung his head in shame. How could he call himself a dragon if he could not even terrify one young servant girl? He shed gold from his scales and flew away to reevaluate his life. Roland turned and walked away from the giant pile of gold for she didn’t care.
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