The Twelve Brothers

Just spinning wool in a tree. Like you do.

This week, we go back to the familiar territory of the Grimm brothers' fairy tales, but with a tale that is not as widely known as many of their others. The Twelve Brothers is a story about a crazy king, a crazy good princess, and ravens. Click on the link above to read the story, and then let's dive into the nitty gritty.

First of all, why was this king insane? Has he never heard of rewriting his will? If he really didn't want to leave his sons anything, he didn't have to. There are many ways around this without killing them. Apparently, none of them were certain enough for this crazed monarch. So, the queen is left with a terrible dilemma. I'm glad she doesn't decide to try to kill her husband to stop him from killing their sons, because that would be a completely different kind of story. In this case, the mother tells her sons to run, and run far. I'm not sure if they didn't think they were really in trouble, or were just lazy, but the brothers didn't go very far away. It has barely a test of her princess-ly might for their sister to find them.

The boys may not have been worried about getting far away from their father, but they were worried about going back. As soon as they reunited with their sister, I thought they would go home and she would defend them to her father until he agreed that they could live. Instead, she just started living with them. Then again, she is only 10 and facing her father down might have been a little bit too much for her.

Speeding ahead, after she'd been living with the boys for some time, the princess picks twelve white lilies and accidentally turns them into ravens. I actually had to stop here and reread the paragraph. Excuse me? How did picking flowers turn her brothers into ravens? Was there a curse on the house? Did something happen to all of the boys when they were born? Is there a curse on the king's family, passed down to the males, and that's why he wanted to kill his sons? What I think actually happened was that at some point, the teller of this story decided they also wanted to tell the story of twelve boys turning into ravens and picking flowers seemed as good as any reason to mix that story in with this one.

In any case, the boys are now ravens and a helpful woman appears out of nowhere to explain why to the princess. If she's a fairy, which she seems to be, why did she leave that spell on the lilies? Or, better yet, why didn't she tell the princes and princess about it so they left the flowers alone? Maybe the fairy is related to the queen who never set off herself to find her kids or let them know if she was successful in changing her husband's mind about murder.

Speaking of questionable decisions, why did this new king want to marry a woman he just met sitting in a tree spinning? Add her muteness to that and you've got a pile of strange that the new king didn't hesitate to pick up and take home with him. I can't blame the new king's mother for being suspicious, but she went overboard. It's a good thing the princes' time was up before the princess burned to death. I'm not sure her silence would have counted if she were dead.

The moral of this story is either to make sure mental illness treatment is available and free of stigma so that all can easily get the care they need, or not to pick any flowers in case they turn your family members into birds. One or the other.

Do you have a different moral? Or want to talk about something I missed in this story? Comment below!

If you give me a folktale, fairy tale, legend, etc, I will write a post about it. Just let me know if there's any you would like to hear.