The Perfidious Vizier

If I was traveling here and someone brought me to a well, I wouldn't ask too many questions either.

Salutations, dear reader. This time our fairy tale comes to us from the Middle East. The Perfidious Vizier is a story about transformation and help from an unexpected quarter. Click the link above to read it and continue below to analyze it with me.

 So we have yet another story of women being given in marriage like they're objects. We don't hear a peep from the lady in question during this entire story, so we have no idea if she would have preferred either prince, or anything about her. Typical. So, I guess we won't try to analyze her character.

Moving right along, we have the price who was supposed to marry the princess. It's a little inconvenient that the main characters don't have names, since we have two princes. I guess we'll just call the evil one the cousin. So, the good prince sets out on a journey with his father's advisor and 1,000 horsemen. We actually don't know much about this prince either. Does he want to marry this princess? Is he actually a good person, or do we just have to assume he's good because he's the main character?

The main character does seem to be a tad dramatic. After he's turned into a woman, he decides to stay in that spot in the desert until he's either changed back or he dies. That's quite the ultimatum, especially since he won't eat or drink. However, we do have to consider the time and place this happens in. Maybe there would be problems for him if he went home and was suddenly a woman. The prince had no problem with the vizier going home to tell the king about this transformation, so he doesn't care if his father knows, but there might be other problems.

(As a side note, despite the prince's gender swap, I'll continue to refer to him as a him because it seems pretty clear that he didn't want to be a woman. And the story continues to refer to him as a man as well. Probably to cut down on confusion since no one has a name and there was already a princess.)

I'm curious about how the vizier came to know about this spring, since he's apparently the only human who does. Did a jinn tell him? And if so, why? Additionally, did anyone else drink from the well? Are some of the prince's soldiers now women? It would be pretty funny if there was already a female soldier hiding her gender who drank from the well and now everyone just expected her to be a woman. But, I digress.

The prince runs off with the first rich looking man who shows up and feels sorry for him. Never mind that this is a Jinn. But he appears to not be tricky like many other djinns in stories, so I suppose it's okay. The human prince also accepts everything the Jinn prince says without question. In this case, it works out really well for him, but it could have been really bad. Like how the prince trusted the vizier without question. Although, of the two, he should have been able to trust the vizier and not necessarily the prince of the Jinn.

I confess that I had to look up what an ’Efreet was, but now I understand why the prince was afraid of him at first. Apparently, the 'Efreet are demons of the underworld. I wouldn't want to ride on one of their shoulders either. But the Jinn prince tells him to, so the human prince does, and makes to to his future father-in-law's house unharmed. The human prince and his fiancee get married and eventually go back to the prince's kingdom.

We find out that the cousin died of jealousy and envy. But what happened to the vizier? I would assume he already got his payment from the cousin. So, did he leave the kingdom where he'd been an advisor with all of his money? Or maybe get a seat at the court of the cousin? Because it's not like the vizier could stay where he had been after he betrayed the prince like that. Someone would figure out it wasn't an accident eventually, and I'm assuming there would be a reckoning. But that's outside of the scope of the story, so we can only wonder.

The moral of this story is, if you're traveling with someone, make sure they drink first out of any wells that you're suspicious of. Alternatively, if you do manage to have something drastically change about your appearance, stay where you are and hopefully a magic prince will come fix it for you.

Have a different moral? Curious about why the only things that got names were the dark land they journeyed to, the 'Efreet, and the two wells? Have a story you want me to talk about? Comment below!