MISC/HCC: The Queen's Roast, a fairy-tale

Drew Perron pwerdna at gmail.com
Tue Jun 6 13:24:07 PDT 2017


On 6/4/2017 10:38 AM, Tom Russell wrote:
>     THE QUEEN'S ROAST, a fairy-tale.
>       told by Tom Russell
> 
> I have no idea if this should be flagged with "ACRA" or not, but if
> you've read any fairy tales, you probably know the kinds of things to
> expect!

It's a fair point. o3o

> There was once a good king. He was wise and temperate; he was a
> skilled diplomat and also an able campaigner; he was without guile,
> but was not overly trusting; he was just and he was kind. He was
> excellent in all ways, and excelled in all things, save for one fault,
> one blind-spot: his queen.
>     The queen was vain, and wicked, and selfish, and cruel. If the king
> had a thousand virtues and one fault, then the queen had a thousand
> faults and one virtue - and that virtue was that she made him happy.

Fascinating. This framing is very, *very* traditional. I was wondering if you 
were ultimately going to pull the rug out from under that.

>     And so on the night before his majority, she killed her son the
> young king and ate him. Just as she finished the final course, she was
> given news that the young queen had given birth. Before the young
> queen could give suck, she too was killed and devoured.

Holy crap. o.o This is definitely a Grimm-style fairy tale.

>     The queen regent - and I shall just call her the queen from now on,
> as her rival was in the process of being digested -

Reasonable.

> For it was
> not a prince at all, but a princess. This would mean that the throne
> would pass to the good king's brother, who was no friend to the queen.
> And so she decided to disguise the child as a boy, so that the queen
> might rule in "his" stead.

More traditional transgression - goodness, what's going to happen?

>     Cruelty attracts cruelty, and that night the wicked queen was
> visited by a wicked imp. A bargain was struck. Every year, on
> Walpurgis Night, the two of them would have a private feast, and
> together eat a young and beautiful girl,  which the queen was obliged
> to provide, "but not from peasant stock; I want premium meat,
> delicately roasted". In exchange, the queen would grow younger,
> instead of older, and live beyond her natural life. The queen, having
> found her daughter-in-law far more delicious than her son, was
> planning on making a regular diet of young and beautiful girls anyway,
> and so felt like she got the better of the bargain.

OF COURSE @-@;;;;

>     The queen grew younger with each passing year, and her
> granddaughter the king grew older. I would like to say that the king,
> who was called Jack, was sweet and good, and free of guile, as her
> grandfather and father had been, and that her grandmother's cruelty
> only made her better, the way a fire only serves to temper steel. Jack
> was better than the queen, but neither was she as good as all that,
> and Jack learned many bad habits from her grandmother, as every child
> learns from those who rear them. Jack learned to be clever, and to
> lie, and not to trust. Jack did not learn how to forgive or to forget,
> but to be vengeful and capricious.

Ohhhh, that's rather a good way of putting it. :o Makes sense.

>     Because she spent every day disguised as a boy, Jack became good at
> disguises, and fond of them. Often she would disguise herself,
> sometimes as a boy and sometimes as a girl, sometimes as a noble and
> sometimes a peasant, sometimes as old and sometimes as young,
> sometimes as a person and sometimes as an animal, and escape the
> castle for a day, and go on some adventure.

Definitely, definitely.

>     "Oh, that's an easy thing," said the imp as he gnawed on a
> sumptuous thigh, "you'll do as you did once before. Jack will take a
> bride, and once the bride is with child, you'll roast the parents, and
> we'll have a double feast." He licked his lips.
>     "But Jack can't father a child," said the queen. "And besides,
> there's hardly any suitable young brides left in my kingdom."

Heeheehee.

>     The imp snapped his greasy fingers. "I have it! Look you in the
> mirror. Are you not beautiful and young? As young as Jack? You hardly
> look like the wicked old queen the people hate, and who has not been
> seen in years. You'll marry Jack yourself, and I'll get you with
> child." The imp smiled inwardly, for this was his aim all along. When
> the imp-child came of age, it would not be so easily disposed of, and
> his kind would again rule over the lands of men.

Oho. Man, wheels within wheels, that's *smart*.

>     "Next Walpurgis Night," continued the imp, "you will not serve a
> roasted maiden of noble birth, but a wee peasant babe, newborn, and
> never-loved, freely given up by its mother.

We're hitting Peak Transgression!!

>     "Of course, roasted!" said the imp. "Delicately roasted, and
> roasted alive! We're not savages.

Heeheehee

> With that, he left, and so too
> did the queen, and once the room was empty and she was unobserved, so
> too did Jack, who was disguised as a chair.

Awwwww, snap.

> She was likewise outraged that an innocent babe would be
> roasted alive a year hence, but not, I'm afraid to say, nearly as much
> as she was to discover that upon reaching her maturity, she herself
> would be roasted and devoured.

Heeheeheehee

>     Jack immediately infiltrated the kitchen staff, and determined that
> on Walpurgis Night, they were all dismissed save one, who did the
> roasting. Only a wicked man could do such a thing every year, and so
> Jack had no qualms about shoving him into his own oven.

Of course~

>     That night, she was visited by the imp, who assured her that on the
> day the babe was to be roasted alive, a stranger would appear at the
> castle, a beautiful maiden with flaxen hair, whose name would be
> Mercy. And Mercy would know what to do, and would do it. The queen was
> delighted.
>     The imp took his leave, and once out of sight, threw off his cloak;
> it was Jack. And Jack would be Mercy, too, one year later.

:D
>     "A tail?" said the imp, squinching it between his fingernails. "Is
> it customary for human babies to have a tail?"
>     "No," said Mercy, "but it's quite common for a pig!"
>     "A pig? A pig!" hissed the imp, and all at once he was shuffling
> across the great long dining table and toward the queen.

Dun dun dunnn

>     Jack smiled; there was no mercy in it.

A very good line.

>     The people rejoiced that the queen was dead, and fully expected a
> new golden age to begin with Jack's rule in "his" own right. And while
> their misery was much relieved, they were on the whole disappointed,
> for Jack was not an especially good king.
>     But she was clever and crafty, and fond of disguises.

Hmmmmm. *nods* Interesting. There's a lot of ways I expected this to go, and 
this wasn't any of them. o3o

Drew "a fascinating take" Perron


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