The Son of Seven Queens

Imagine you and your husband's six other wives raising a son together.

Salutations, dear reader, and happy Women's History Month! This week's fairy tale comes to us from India. The Son of Seven Queens is a story about a boy and the tremendous influence the women around him had on his life. Click the link above to read the story, and continue below to analyze it with me.

I know this fairy tale is a bit long as it is, but I wish the seven queens were given more personality. They have such an influence on this story, but they're treated as one unit. It seems the only reason that we're told there are seven of them is just the setup for their son to marry a princess later.

All of the women in this story have some magic in them. The seven queens were able to see that if the king went hunting in the North, there would be problems. The princess was able to see right away that our hero was the son of seven mothers. And, of course, the white hind and her mother have magic because they're both witches.

Despite the fact that the main character of this story is a man, he's mostly a messenger for the women in the story. The white hind queen sends a message to her mother to kill him. The princess intercepts it and changes it. When the witch mother gets the message, she does what she thinks her daughter is telling her to do. Having the message changed to have the opposite meaning is a fun trope in fairy tales, but I like it best when it's good people having good things happen to them as a result of the change.

The princess is the crux of the whole story. If not for her, the prince would have died on his first visit to the witch mother and it would have been a much shorter story, with a much more sad outcome for most of the characters. However, the princess chose her future husband and was able to protect him and help him get everything he was promised. The story says she's learned and clever, and I have to agree.

It's also good that the prince, her future husband, cared enough to check in on her and have the message changed each time. I wonder if she ever told him about that. He certainly knew when she revealed who he was to the king at the end! What an excellent way to break the king's enchantment. Not by attacking the white hind queen who put the enchantment on him, but by releasing its hold on him.

The seven queens have a rough story. Not only is their warning forgotten, but then they're thrown in prison with their eyes taken out. Ouch! They live blind for years because the king was enchanted. I suppose there's a nice foil there. The king didn't listen well to his wives and he and they were all punished for it. The prince did listen to his future wife, and he and his mothers were rewarded for it. At least the queens were able to use their eyes again when they got them back.

All of the action in this story is dependent on women, beginning after the king forgot his wives' warning about going hunting in the North. He made the decision to go hunting, but everything else in this story is women making decisions and changing things. And because of the clever and kind princess, things go well for our hero and his mothers. Women are the change-makers in this story; it's just a question of whether they use that power to help those around them, like the seven queens did when they all decided to raise the prince together, or if they want to spite others, like the white hind declaring that the price of her hand in marriage was the eyes of the king's current wives.

The moral of this story is that it's far better to use your power to help those around you than to only have others use their power on you. Alternatively, if seven important women in your life tell you not to do something, don't do it.

Wondering if the youngest queen ever got her other eye back? Curious if the princess taught her husband to read? Have a different moral? Comment below! And don't forget to subscribe if you like what you read.