Waking Dangers for Sleeping Beauties
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Catch up on the whole series of fairy tale posts here.
I quite like Sleeping Beauty as a story, I’ve got to be honest. I included it in The Crows as a motif/theme, with the house and then Carrie as Sleeping Beauty figures, but Ricky is fortunately asexual and sex-averse, and decidedly not a prince.
If you know about the older versions of this story and how rapey they get, you’ll know why I mention this. If you don’t: content warnings abound, the main ones being rape and attempted murder/cannibalism of babies. Also note that she’s usually about 15-16 in these stories. I’m just stating this up front, so you can nope out if needed or skip to the Recs section below.
In this post, I take a very brief look at different variations of the story and some of the oldest recorded versions there are, and then give a list of recs for retellings and reimaginings – just scratching the surface, really.
As a medievalist, I like that for the Germanic versions of this tale (and the Irish version, which could be influenced by the Norse settlements in Dublin), you can trace this back into texts like the Nibelungenlied (13thC), and Brunhilde’s legend. In some versions of Brunhilde’s legend, such as the Eddic poems, Brunhilde was a Valkyrie who was put into an everlasting sleep surrounded by fire, or whose suitor must jump through fire to reach her and claim her hand in marriage. The hero Sigurd leapt through the flames. The Irish version (below) has the queen of a magical island surrounded by liquid fire while she sleeps, and the Brothers Grimm’s version had Briar Rose surrounded by thorny roses. You don’t get this in the Italian versions, or in Charles Perrault, La Belle au Bois Dormant, where she is just in a four poster bed and the curtains are drawn around her.
A later medieval romance, Perceforest, is the one that Giambattista Basile based his tale upon (Sun, Moon, and Talia) when he wrote his versions down in the 17thC. Perceforest is discussed here on Medievalists.net by Danièle Cybulskie.
In one episode of this romance, which is essentially a 14thC prehistory of Arthur’s Britain, Troylus, from Scotland, is in love with Zellandine, from Zeeland, and she with him. When Troylus hears she’s strangely fallen asleep while spinning flax and hasn’t woken since, he embarks on an adventure to rescue her. Eventually, after various chivalric shenanigans, he discovers her naked on a bed, and the goddess Venus induces him to kiss her, then to rape her, despite his initial resistance to these suggestions. He ends up doing both and neither of them wakes her up as Venus said they would, so he is hurried out of the chamber by his servant after exchanging rings with Zellandine as a sign of his love and contrition and commitment to her (all while she sleeps). Nine months later, she gives birth to a boy, who, in attempting to find her teat to suckle, sucks on her finger and sucks out the piece of cursed flax. This wakes her up, and she mourns her rape and the loss of her virginity while she was unconscious, but marries Troylus anyway, whom she still loves.
China has some tales like this, and Chinese Medieval versions of Sleeping Beauty are discussed here. I’ll paraphrase the plot of one which is summarised by Aglaia Starostina, in the linked article.
In the version Starostina discusses, the protagonist is an attendant of the Emperor’s concubine. The attendant learns from a Daoist master that she is destined to die young. He takes pity on her and gives her a magic pill that prevents her soul leaving her body after death. She takes it and lies dormant in a sepulchre in the imperial palace for 100 years, until the same Daoist master gets a virtuous official called Xue Zhao to overcome the forest and jump the wall to enter the ancient palace, where he revives the ‘dead’ girl. They spend a few days together and she is eventually fully restored to life, and they get married.
Starostina argues this tale falls under the same type as the others as it has a lot of the same elements, including the enchanted sleep for 100 years, and the forest and palace wall as obstacles for the hero to overcome in order to reach and wake the girl.
Thanks to Disney, the main version people think of when they hear ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is the version recorded by the Brothers Grimm, Dornröschen. They took some elements from the Nibelungenlied, but instead of being surrounded by fire like Brunhilde, Briar Rose in their version is surrounded by roses.
This post mainly focuses on various versions of this tale from Europe, although it also shows up in Egypt (The Ninth Captain’s Tale) and Palestine (Wadiah, not available online, but available in Arab Folk Tales of Palestine and Israel ed. Raphael Pentai (Wayne State University Press, 1998).
I think that it’s a good place to mention the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, which is a legend that exists in medieval Islam, and both Eastern and Western traditions of medieval Christianity. In the Christian legend, seven young Ephesian Christians (or eight, in some versions), were concealed in a cave during the persecution of Christians under the Roman emperor Decius (3rdC). There, they fell into a miraculous sleep, to be reawoken in the 5thC during the reign of Theodosius II (Eastern Roman emperor) when their cave was reopened.
They explained that they were a sign of the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection of the body, and after explaining this, they died. Moved by this experience, Theodosius II ordered them to be enshrined and absolved all the bishops who had been persecuted in his own day for believing in the bodily resurrection doctrine. The Sleepers legend appears in both Greek and Latin texts, and appears in a later Anglo-Norman poem and an Old Norse fragment, too.
While this isn’t anything really to do with Sleeping Beauty the folktale, I like this legend as a possibility for retellings where theology plays a part, or for thinking more generally about the wider repercussions of someone actually coming back to life after 100+ years in a fantasy setting where there are different religions and doctrines and ideas.
This is especially important if the sleeper is woken by a member of the ruling elite, who is usually inextricably linked to the practices of some religion or other, even if the power they wield is ostensibly only secular. Even if the ruler is an atheist, a lot of other powerful people (and ordinary people) won’t be. So, one crucial bit of worldbuilding that I’d want to consider is: what’s the impact of a sleeper coming back to life in this context?
With that in mind, let’s look at a handful of the darker variants of this tale… CWs right up front that some of the original tales are very much in the “sexual awakening is taken literally” vein, and some retellings go all in on this as well.
For example, Anne Rice, writing as A. N. Roquelaure, wrote a medieval BDSM erotic fantasy quartet where Sleeping Beauty is awakened in this way and thus begins her sexual adventures, and there are some warnings and synopses of the books here.
This tale was also discussed in Episode 03 of the Cinema Story Origins podcast if you’d rather listen!
Wake the Girl, Eat her Children
While the famous version was recorded by the Brothers Grimm, and was further sanitised by Andrew Lang so it’s a simple kiss that does the trick, the notorious version was the one recorded by Giambattista Basile as Sun, Moon and Talia. (TW for rape while in coma, infidelity, secret second family, attempted/intended cannibalism of babies).
If you aren’t familiar with the Italian versions of the tale, you’re probably wondering what cannibalism has to do with Sleeping Beauty. Quite a lot, as it turns out. I’m not sure if Talia is actually meant to be some metaphor or allegory for Italy/Italia, or what, but it just feels like there’s something very mythic going on here with the twins she conceives and the attempted eating of them.
Some of this is discussed in Liane Fisher’s MA thesis on Mythological Intertextuality in Nineteenth Century Ballet Repertory (2006), where the ballet Sleeping Beauty is discussed in Chapter 4, and Basile’s Pentamerone version is discussed in the Appendix, along with Perrault’s version and Egypt’s The Ninth Captain’s Tale. Another open access article on this is Antonela Marić, Marko Dragić and Ana Plavša, The Grotesque and Myth in Giambattista Basile’s Il Pentamerone, in the Journal of Language and Literary Studies.
Essentially, in all these tales, the protagonist is either cursed as a baby for the sins of their parents – who have shown disrespect to the antagonist, usually – or is otherwise destined to die young, or is in peril from someone plotting their demise. The curse, fate, or plot catches up with them no matter how well they are protected. Once asleep, someone needs to wake them up.
In Basile’s version, it’s a splinter of flax that she’s in danger from (echoed in the Egyptian version and a few others), and this is ascertained by consulting her horoscope (there is no curse or wicked fairy). This echoes the Chinese version (linked to and summarised above), where the protagonist’s fate is divined by a Daoist master, who also takes pity on her and tries to save her.
Sure enough, despite all precautions, our protagonist, Talia, gets a splinter of flax in her finger and falls into a coma. A king goes out hunting and accidentally finds her (while she’s in the coma) and is so overcome with grief that this has happened to a beautiful woman, that he fucks her comatose body. Then he goes home and forgets all about it. This doesn’t wake her up – nine months later, her babies do, by sucking on her fingers after they’re born, and in so doing, remove the splinter of flax that has put her in this state.
She wakes up, sees to the babies, names them Sun and Moon, and is very happy about it. The king returns, finally remembering that she exists, and discovers her and his illegitimate kids. He’s really happy about this too. Unfortunately, he’s already married, and his queen is… less happy.
This is where it gets very Titus Andronicus – in fact, we’ve already had Talia’s rape echoing the rape of Lavinia. The queen, out of jealousy and rage, plans to steal the babies, and cook them into pies and other delicious recipes. They are rescued, but she doesn’t know that, and delightedly serves her husband a feast of what she thinks are Talia’s kids. She also tries to have Talia burned to death.
The king discovers his wife has (apparently) fed him his own children and so has her burned to death instead. Lo and behold, the kids are actually fine, and, serendipitously finding he’s now a widower, he marries Talia and everyone’s happy (except his wife, who has been cheated on, had the mistress move in, attempted cannibalism, failed in all her revenge schemes, been burned alive, and now she’s dead). The End.
One Irish version is The King of Erin and the Queen of Lonesome Island, where the prince is sent to the island by his mother for some magical fire surrounding the bed of the island’s queen. His mother tells the prince that the islanders sleep for 7 years at a time, and he will be able to do whatever he likes when he’s there, including get her the magical fluid fire that will save her life, so off he pops and stays for 7 days. (This is near the middle of this tale as an element of the narrative, not the whole of the story).
Fetching magical water for healing purposes also features in some Romani tales collected in Wales and England – I Valín Kalo Pāni/Valin Kōlō Pānī (The Bottle of Black Water) from Wales, a variant of The King of England and his Three Sons, which bears some similarities to this Irish tale and to Der Wasser des Lebens (“The Water of Life”) collected by the Brothers Grimm.
The Irish variant shares the fire around the bed with Brunhilde’s story. It also has the element of the prince taking advantage of the sleeping queen, and when she wakes after seven years (her normal sleep cycle), she finds she has a six-year-old son. She goes to find the man responsible, who thoughtfully left her a note under her pillow. Upon finding he is a prince, and the son of the King of Erin, she is proud of her son’s lineage, but she takes her revenge on his mother (for whom he went to the island in the first place) and has her killed.
But for those of us not fond of anyone touching us while we sleep… there is another way.
Charles Perrault’s version, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, is based upon Basile’s version but the sanitised version of this has the prince arrive at the natural end of the 100 years of enchantment instead, so he gets there just as she naturally wakes up, and they can talk and get to know each other. Perrault kept in the child-eating, via an ogress for a mother-in-law, who hungers for the princess’s babies when she’s left alone with them. Fortunately, she’s thwarted. Perrault doesn’t consider that this makes the prince half-ogre, half-human, or the implications of this; it’s more for the villainy.
Similarly, the prince just has to show up in the Greek version too, The Enchanted Tower, (where the princess has sprung, in full armour, from her childless father’s calf, and immediately been spirited away by a Lámnissa, or lamia, where she is kept in a deep sleep for 40 days and 40 nights). The Greek version blends Orthodoxy with folk memories of Ancient Greek mythology, so it’s a very interesting one! The armoured daughter is rescued by a prince who finds her enchanted tower and performs some impossible tasks to win her back from the Lámnissa. He has previously won over some animals to his cause by helping and feeding them, so they help him succeed in the tasks he must accomplish. These done, he manages to free the princess and she is restored to her father – and God gives her the divine gift of prophecy as compensation (?possibly) after her ordeal, thus showing that it doesn’t matter that she was born from her father’s calf.
Also avoiding a kiss but keeping the attempted cannibalism is the Sicilian version, Maruzzedda. This one is really more of a Snow White variant, but it has the bolted-on end of the Talia tale, and Snow White’s cursed sleep in the casket has a lot of overlap.
Maruzzedda is a shoemaker’s daughter whose sisters are jealous of her, and keep trying to do her in Snow White style by giving her cursed objects. A dead maiden appears to Maruzzedda to warn her against these gifts, like a guardian angel ghost, but Maruzzedda does succumb to a cursed hat that causes her to go into her deep, cursed sleep.
The king finds her and realises she’s not dead, and takes the hat off. She wakes up, becomes his wife, has some kids, and the evil mother-in-law tries to slaughter them and eat them, and have her burned. Again, fortunately, this is thwarted (although she’s actually thrown in the fire and has to be rescued by her husband who has no idea she’s in danger). The kids were rescued by the cook who couldn’t bring himself to chop them up and cook them, so they are actually fine too. And the evil queen mother is burned instead.
In another Sicilian version, The Beautiful Anna, Anna is choked by a grape given to her by her wicked sister, and the prince finds her and realises there’s something lodged in her throat. He gets it out, she wakes up, and the tale continues, including the prince’s evil mother who again tries to eat her grandkids. Sun, Pearl and Anna is another Italian version very similar to this, except it’s a cauldron of boiling oil at the end, and the children’s names are Sun and Pearl as opposed to Sun and Moon, as in Talia. And, of course, in around 1700, you have Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales, where his version is Beauty and her Children (and her name is Carol).
A full timeline of the tale’s evolution in print can be found here.
A few more variants for you: Der gläserne Sarg/The Glass Coffin is a Grimm Brothers’ collected variant.
Egypt’s version (where a splinter of flax is the culprit), discussed here, can be read here. This one is much more fun, and far less gory.
A Bengali version is reportedly The Petrified Mansion, recorded in 1920, in Bengal Fairy Tales.
There are so many! Plenty are horror story fodder, or lend themselves to dark Gothic aesthetics for retellings and reimaginings. I don’t see enough cannibalism in Sleeping Beauty, that’s for damn sure.
Retellings, Reimaginings, and Recommendations
I did a bit of surface digging and found a lot of lists to share. A list of queer Fairytale Retellings can be found here (BookRiot) – there is a GoodReads list here, and here (across genres) and here (historical romance), and here (retellings of myths and fairy tales). More queer fairytale recs here. List of SFW/no-sex, no non-con here (compiled by K. M. Shea). Another very long list of retellings here.
But – you lot never disappoint. Here is a list of retellings, many of which are queer, and a lot are new to me. I love doing these posts because I always learn stuff and find new things to read!
Sleeping Beauty by Esnala Banda, a poem posted on African Feminism.
CW: CSA, rape, violence against women.
ESNALA BANDA IS A ZAMBIAN POET, WRITER, BLOGGER AND AFRO-CREATIVE PASSIONATE ABOUT WOMEN AND SHARING THEIR STORIES. SHE ALSO HAS EXPERIENCE IN MARKETING AND PHOTOGRAPHY AND IS CURRENTLY A FREELANCE WRITER FOR NKWAZI MAGAZINE, AFRICAN FEMINISM, AND ZAMBIA TRAVEL MAGAZINE.
Shears by Devan Barlow in Small Wonders Magazine: free to read Sleeping Beauty poetry at this link!
The Winter Duke by Claire Eliza Bartlett: An enchanted tale of intrigue where a duke’s daughter is the only survivor of a magical curse.
When Ekata’s brother is finally named heir, there will be nothing to keep her at home in Kylma Above with her murderous family. Not her books or science experiments, not her family’s icy castle atop a frozen lake, not even the tantalizingly close Kylma Below, a mesmerizing underwater kingdom that provides her family with magic. But just as escape is within reach, her parents and twelve siblings fall under a strange sleeping sickness.
In the space of a single night, Ekata inherits the title of duke, her brother’s warrior bride, and ever-encroaching challengers from without—and within—her own ministry. Nothing has prepared Ekata for diplomacy, for war, for love…or for a crown she has never wanted. If Kylma Above is to survive, Ekata must seize her family’s power. And if Ekata is to survive, she must quickly decide how she will wield it.
Part Sleeping Beauty, part Anastasia, with a thrilling political mystery, The Winter Duke is a spellbinding story about choosing what’s right in the face of danger.
Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust (a retelling of The Shahnameh as well as Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel).
A captivating and utterly original fairy tale about a girl cursed to be poisonous to the touch, and who discovers what power might lie in such a curse…
There was and there was not, as all stories begin, a princess cursed to be poisonous to the touch. But for Soraya, who has lived her life hidden away, apart from her family, safe only in her gardens, it’s not just a story.
As the day of her twin brother’s wedding approaches, Soraya must decide if she’s willing to step outside of the shadows for the first time. Below in the dungeon is a demon who holds knowledge that she craves, the answer to her freedom. And above is a young man who isn’t afraid of her, whose eyes linger not with fear, but with an understanding of who she is beneath the poison.
Soraya thought she knew her place in the world, but when her choices lead to consequences she never imagined, she begins to question who she is and who she is becoming…human or demon. Princess or monster.
While Beauty Slept by Elizabeth Blackwell: The Truth is No Fairy Tale.
I am not the sort of person about whom stories are told. Those of humble birth suffer their heartbreaks and celebrate their triumphs unnoticed by the bards, leaving no trace in the fables of their time….
And so begins Elise Dalriss’s story.
When she hears her great-granddaughter recount a tale about a beautiful princess awakened by a handsome prince, it pushes open a door to the past, a door Elise has long kept locked. For Elise was the companion to the real princess who slumbered – and she is the only one left who knows the truth of what happened so many years ago.
As the memories start to unfold, Elise is plunged back in to the magnificent world behind the opulent palace walls. Fleeing a hardscrabble existence and personal tragedy, she builds a new life for herself as a servant to the royal family and quickly rises within the castle hierarchy. As Elise proves herself a loyal confidante, she is drawn into the lives of an extraordinary cast of women: a beautiful queen who wakes each morning with tears on her pillow, an elderly spinster who in heartache shuts herself away, a princess who yearns to be free, and the ambitious and frightening sister who cannot accept the fact that she will never rule. Elise has guarded their secrets – and her own – for a lifetime. While Beauty Slept is her story.
In this rich and compelling novel of love and terror, friendship and fate, we are introduced to a heroine of extraordinary determination – the true heart of a legend – who reveals what it really takes to reach happily ever after.
“The Sleeping Beauty” in Rosario Ferré’s The Youngest Doll: A gentle maiden aunt who has been victimized for years unexpectedly retaliates through her talent for making life-sized dolls filled with honey.
“The Youngest Doll,” based on a family anecdote, is a stunning literary expression of Rosario Ferré’s feminist and social concerns. It is the premier story in a collection that was originally published in Spanish in 1976 as Papeles de Pandora and is now translated into English by the author.
The daughter of a former governor of Puerto Rico, Ferré portrays women loosening the constraints that have bound them to a patriarchal culture. Anger takes creative rather than polemical form in ten stories that started Ferré on her way to becoming a leading woman writer in Latin America. The upper-middle-class women in The Youngest Doll , mostly married to macho men, rebel against their doll-like existence or retreat into fantasy, those without money or the right skin color are even more oppressed.
In terms of power and influence, these women stand in the same relation to men as Puerto Rico itself does to the United States, and Ferré stretches artistic boundaries in writing about their situation. The stories, moving from the realistic to the nightmarish, are deeply, felt, full of irony and black humor, often experimental in form. The imagery is an architect dreams about a beautiful bridge that “would open and close its arches like alligators making love”; a Mercedes Benz “shines in the dark like a chromium rhinoceros.”
One story, “The Sleeping Beauty,” is a collage of letters, announcements, and photo captions that allows chilling conclusions to be drawn from what is not written. The collection includes Ferré’s discussion of “When Women Love Men,” a story about a prostitute and a society lady who unite in order to survive, and one that illustrates the woman writer’s “art of dissembling anger through irony.” In closing, she considers how her experience as a Latin American woman with ties to the United States has brought to her writing a dual cultural perspective.
Unraveled by Claire Olivia Gordon: Aurora Davis, expert crocheter, lives an ordinary life… until a mysterious crochet shawl appears at the store where she works, Yarn Emporium. The Briars and Roses Shawl, which claimed the life of its previous owner, pulls Auri under its spell. Unable to stop crocheting, she embarks on a quest to break the curse.
Catherine Bishop has a hard enough time fighting her OCD every day without a curse being thrown into the mix. But when her beloved grandmother dies, Cat suspects there’s something more to her death. Her investigation leads her to Auri… whom she’s been crushing on for months.
Auri and Cat plunge into a magical world where ancient curses tangle together and faeries seek revenge. As they navigate Feylinn and their blossoming romance, it soon becomes clear that Auri is in serious danger…and her life isn’t the only one at stake.
The Sleeping Soldier by Aster Glenn Gray: an m/m gender flipped version!
After a century-long sleep, a Union soldier wakes up in 1965.
Cavalry lieutenant Russell Krause is all at sea in this strange new century of electric lights and automobiles. But he soon acquires a Caleb O’Connor, a kind-hearted, history-loving college student with secrets he’s desperate to hide. Caleb is gay, and he’s completely smitten with this lively, warm-hearted soldier, who has swiftly become his best friend.
But Russell’s nineteenth century understanding of friendship is far more affectionate than any 1960s friendship is allowed to be. In between telling Russell about escalators, record players, and the Civil Rights movement, Caleb has to explain that men in 1965 are no longer allowed to hold hands or share beds or kiss… which is tough, because Caleb would love to be kissing Russell.
Despite these chilling changes in social customs, Caleb and Russell’s loving friendship grows ever closer. But the cultural divide may prove wider than even love can bridge. Content period-typical attitudes in general, but especially toward homosexuality.
A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow: It’s Zinnia Gray’s twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it’s the last birthday she’ll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no one has lived past twenty-one.
Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia’s last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.
The Castle Behind Thorns by Merrie Haskell: Stories don’t know everything.
When Sand wakes up alone in a long-abandoned castle, he has no idea how he got there. The stories all said the place was ruined by an earthquake, and Sand did not expect to find everything inside torn in half or slashed to bits. Nothing lives here and nothing grows, except the vicious, thorny bramble that prevents Sand from leaving. Why wasn’t this in the stories?
To survive, Sand does what he knows best—he fires up the castle’s forge to mend what he needs. But the things he fixes work somehow better than they ought to. Is there magic in the mending? Or have the saints who once guarded this place returned?
When Sand finds the castle’s lost heir, Perrotte, they begin to untwine the dark secrets that caused the destruction. Putting together the pieces—of stone and iron, and of a broken life—is harder than Sand ever imagined, but it’s the only way to regain their freedom.
With gorgeous language and breathtaking magic, Merrie Haskell’s The Castle Behind Thorns tells of the power of memory, story, forgiveness, and the true gifts of craft and imagination.
Spindle Fire by Lexa Hillyer: A kingdom burns. A princess sleeps. This is no fairy tale.
It all started with the burning of the spindles.
No.
It all started with a curse…
Half sisters Isabelle and Aurora are polar opposites: Isabelle is the king’s headstrong illegitimate daughter, whose sight was tithed by faeries; Aurora, beautiful and sheltered, was tithed her sense of touch and her voice on the same day. Despite their differences, the sisters have always been extremely close.
And then everything changes, with a single drop of Aurora’s blood—and a sleep so deep it cannot be broken.
As the faerie queen and her army of Vultures prepare to march, Isabelle must race to find a prince who can awaken her sister with the kiss of true love and seal their two kingdoms in an alliance against the queen.
Isabelle crosses land and sea; unearthly, thorny vines rise up the palace walls; and whispers of revolt travel in the ashes on the wind. The kingdom falls to ruin under layers of snow. Meanwhile, Aurora wakes up in a strange and enchanted world, where a mysterious hunter may be the secret to her escape…or the reason for her to stay.
Beauty and Cruelty by Meredith Katz: Cruelty, once an evil fairy and now working in fast food, comes home one day to find the lazy, drooling King of Cats on her doorstep. Worse, he comes bearing news Cruelty would be happier not hearing: Sleeping Beauty has gotten tired of lying around and is trying to save the world Cruelty left long ago.
Any respectable Archetype knows it’s a waste of time; their chances of survival are much better if they can hide in the human world. But since nobody sent her an invitation to the world-saving, she’s pretty much required to interfere.
Sparks fly in more ways that one in this F/F urban fantasy as Sleeping Beauty and the Evil Fairy try to put aside their differences in order to try to save the world of Archetypes.
Rainbow Awards 2016: Winner Best Lesbian Debut; 2nd place Best Lesbian Fantasy Romance.
Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King: In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep; they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze.
If they are awakened, and the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent; and while they sleep they go to another place.
The men of our world are abandoned, left to their increasingly primal devices. One woman, however, the mysterious Evie, is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease.
Is Evie a medical anomaly to be studied, or is she a demon who must be slain?
Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher: Thornhedge is the tale of a kind-hearted, toad-shaped heroine, a gentle knight, and a mission gone completely sideways.
There’s a princess trapped in a tower. This isn’t her story.
Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right?
But nothing with fairies is ever simple.
Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He’s heard there’s a curse here that needs breaking, but it’s a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold…
Finding Aurora by Rebecca Langham: a queer short story/novella.
Aurora Rose slumbers in the city of Oldpass, a cursed kingdom once allied with Grimvein. The victim of a malicious spell, she is powerless to control her own fate. At least, that’s how the story goes.
Now, as Grimvein faces attack, Prince Amir has been tasked with the life-threatening rescue of Aurora, his parents hopeful he will marry the princess and secure safety for their kingdom. Talia, the strongest spellcaster in the known lands, protects and guides the prince in his quest to save a woman that threatens to change their lives forever.
In finding Aurora, the pair will realise the truth about themselves and each other, coming to understand just what – and who – they really want in life.
Briarheart by Mercedes Lackey: A retelling for younger readers (YA/MG).
Miriam may be the daughter of Queen Alethia of Tirendell, but she’s not a princess. She’s the child of Alethia and her previous husband, the King’s Champion, who died fighting for the king, and she has no ambitions to rule. When her new baby sister Aurora, heir to the throne, is born, she’s ecstatic. She adores the baby, who seems perfect in every way. But on the day of Aurora’s christening, an uninvited Dark Fae arrives, prepared to curse her, and Miriam discovers she possesses impossible power.
Soon, Miriam is charged with being trained in both magic and combat to act as chief protector to her sister. But shadowy threats are moving closer and closer to their kingdom, and Miriam’s dark power may not be enough to save everyone she loves, let alone herself.
The Gates of Sleep by Mercedes Lackey: For seventeen years, Marina Roeswood had lived in an old, rambling farmhouse in rural Cornwall in the care of close friends of her wealthy, aristocratic parents. As the ward of bohemian artists in Victorian England, she had grown to be a free thinker in an environment of fertile creativity and cultural sophistication. But the real core of her education was far outside societal norms. For she and her foster parents were Elemental Masters of magic, and learning to control her growing powers was Marina’s primary focus.
But though Marina’s life seemed idyllic, her existence was riddled with mysteries. Why, for example, had she never seen her parents, or been to Oakhurst, her family’s ancestral manor? And why hadn’t her real parents, also Elemental Masters, trained her themselves? That there was a secret about all this she had known from the time she had begun to question the world around her. Yet try as she might, she could get no clues out of her guardians.
But Marina would have answers to her questions all too soon. For with the sudden death of her birth parents, Marina met her new guardian- her father’s eldest sister Arachne. Aunt Arachne exuded a dark magical aura unlike anything Marina had encountered, a stifling evil that seemed to threaten Marina’s very spirit. Slowly Marina realized that her aunt was the embodiment of the danger her parents had been hiding her from in the backwoods of Cornwall. But could Marina unravel the secrets of her life in time to save herself from the evil that had been seeking her for nearly eighteen years?
Thornspell by Helen Lowe: Helen Lowe reimagines the Sleeping Beauty story from the point of view of the prince who is destined to wake the enchanted princess in this lush, romantic fantasy-adventure.
Prince Sigismund has grown up hearing fantastical stories about enchantments and faie spells, basilisks and dragons, knights-errant and heroic quests. He’d love for them to be true—he’s been sheltered in a country castle for most of his life and longs for adventure—but they are just stories. Or are they?
From the day that a mysterious lady in a fine carriage speaks to him through the castle gates, Sigismund’s world starts to shift. He begins to dream of a girl wrapped, trapped , in thorns. He dreams of a palace, utterly still, waiting. He dreams of a man in red armor, riding a red horse—and then suddenly that man arrives at the castle!
Sigismund is about to learn that sometimes dreams are true, that the world is both more magical and more dangerous than he imagined, and that the heroic quest he imagined for himself as a boy . . . begins now.
Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley: a YA retelling.
All the creatures of the forest and field and riverbank knew the infant was special. She was the princess, spirited away from the evil fairy Pernicia on her name-day. But the curse was cast: Rosie was fated to prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into a poisoned sleep-a slumber from which no one would be able to rouse her.
Lava Red Feather Blue by Molly Ringle: Awakening the handsome prince is supposed to end the fairy tale, not begin it. But the Highvalley witches have rarely done things the way they’re supposed to. On the north Pacific island of Eidolonia, hidden from the world by enchantments, Prince Larkin has lain in a magical sleep since 1799 as one side of a truce between humans and fae. That is, until Merrick Highvalley, a modern-day witch, discovers an old box of magic charms and cryptic notes hidden inside a garden statue.
Experimenting with the charms, Merrick finds himself inside the bower where Larkin lies, and accidentally awakens him. Worse still, releasing Larkin from the spell also releases Ula Kana, a faery bent on eradicating humans from the island. With the truce collapsing and hostilities escalating throughout the country, Merrick and Larkin form an unlikely alliance and become even unlikelier heroes as they flee into the perilous fae realm on a quest to stop Ula Kana and restore harmony to their island.
Content warnings: Magic used nonconsensually to compel others; violent attacks, including some blood and fire; death and grief; imprisonment; untrustworthy governments.
Sleepless by Clare Sears – short, queer retelling in The Hunger journal, free to read online.
Clare Sears is a writer, teacher, and associate professor of sociology and sexuality studies at San Francisco State University. Their non-fiction book Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco (Duke University Press, 2014) was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award and their writing on queer cultures and histories has appeared in GLQ, WSQ, The Routledge History of Queer America and The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies. They are currently writing a novel on queer and trans history, haunting, and memory set in 1870s San Francisco.
Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper: it is strongly advised to check the content warnings on StoryGraph.
With the publication of The Gate to Women’s Country, Sheri S. Tepper came to be recognized as a major science fiction writer. Now the author of Raising the Stones and Grass — a New York Times Notable Book and Hugo Award finalist — turns to Beauty, a fantasy with a story that is more, much more than fable.
Drawing on the wellspring of much-loved, well-remembered fairy tales, Tepper delivers a thought-provoking and finely crafted novel that thoroughly involves the reader in the life of one of the most captivating heroines in modern fantasy — Beauty. On her sixteenth birthday Beauty is seemingly able to sidestep her aunt’s curse. Instead she is transported to the future. Here begin her adventures as she travels magically back and forth in time to visit places both imaginary and real. Finally she comes to understand what has been her special gift to humanity all along.
For in Beauty, there is beauty. And in beauty, magic. Without our enchanted places, humanity is no more than an upstart ape. And this, we realize, is why Beauty must be saved, both in the fantastical world of Tepper’s novel and in the actual world in which we live.
A Wicked Thing and Kingdom of Ashes by Rhiannon Thomas: Rhiannon Thomas’s dazzling debut novel is a spellbinding reimagining of Sleeping Beauty and what happens after happily ever after.
One hundred years after falling asleep, Princess Aurora wakes up to the kiss of a handsome prince and a broken kingdom that has been dreaming of her return. All the books say that she should be living happily ever after. But as Aurora understands all too well, the truth is nothing like the fairy tale.
Her family is long dead. Her “true love” is a kind stranger. And her whole life has been planned out by political foes while she slept.
As Aurora struggles to make sense of her new world, she begins to fear that the curse has left its mark on her, a fiery and dangerous thing that might be as wicked as the witch who once ensnared her. With her wedding day drawing near, Aurora must make the ultimate decision on how to save her kingdom: marry the prince or run.
Rhiannon Thomas weaves together vivid scenes of action, romance, and gorgeous gowns to reveal a richly imagined world … and Sleeping Beauty as she’s never been seen before. The sequel is Kingdom of Ashes and completes the duology.
The Bone Splinter by Leslie Vedder: Sleeping Beauty meets Indiana Jones in this thrilling fairytale retelling for fans of Sorcery of Thorns and All the Stars and Teeth.
Fi is a bookish treasure hunter with a knack for ruins and riddles, who definitely doesn’t believe in true love.
Shane is a tough-as-dirt girl warrior from the north who likes cracking skulls, pretty girls, and doing things her own way.
Briar Rose is a prince under a sleeping curse, who’s been waiting a hundred years for the kiss that will wake him.
Cursed princes are nothing but ancient history to Fi–until she pricks her finger on a bone spindle while exploring a long-lost ruin. Now she’s stuck with the spirit of Briar Rose until she and Shane can break the century-old curse on his kingdom.
Dark magic, Witch Hunters, and bad exes all stand in her way–not to mention a mysterious witch who might wind up stealing Shane’s heart, along with whatever else she’s after. But nothing scares Fi more than the possibility of falling in love with Briar Rose.
Set in a lush world inspired by beloved fairytales, The Bone Spindle is a fast-paced young adult fantasy full of adventure, romance, found family, and snark.
Malice and Misrule by Heather Walter: a duology.
A princess isn’t supposed to fall for an evil sorceress. But in this darkly magical retelling of “Sleeping Beauty,” true love is more than a simple fairy tale.
Once upon a time, there was a wicked fairy who, in an act of vengeance, cursed a line of princesses to die. A curse that could only be broken by true love’s kiss.
You’ve heard this before, haven’t you? The handsome prince. The happily-ever-after.
Utter nonsense.
Let me tell you, no one in Briar actually cares about what happens to its princesses. Not the way they care about their jewels and elaborate parties and charm-granting elixirs. I thought I didn’t care, either.
Until I met her.
Princess Aurora. The last heir to Briar’s throne. Kind. Gracious. The future queen her realm needs. One who isn’t bothered that I am Alyce, the Dark Grace, abhorred and feared for the mysterious dark magic that runs in my veins. Humiliated and shamed by the same nobles who pay me to bottle hexes and then brand me a monster. Aurora says I should be proud of my gifts. That she . . . cares for me. Even though it was a power like mine that was responsible for her curse.
But with less than a year until that curse will kill her, any future I might see with Aurora is swiftly disintegrating—and she can’t stand to kiss yet another insipid prince. I want to help her. If my power began her curse, perhaps it’s what can lift it. Perhaps, together, we could forge a new world.
Nonsense again.
Because we all know how this story ends, don’t we? Aurora is the beautiful princess. And I—
I am the villain.
Briar Girls by Rebecca Kim Wells: Lena has a secret: the touch of her skin can kill. Cursed by a witch before she was born, Lena has always lived in fear and isolation. But after a devastating mistake, she and her father are forced to flee to a village near the Silence, a mysterious forest with a reputation for luring people into the trees, never to be seen again…
Until the night an enigmatic girl stumbles out of the Silence and into Lena’s sheltered world. Miranda comes from the Gather, a city in the forest brimming with magic. She is on a quest to wake a sleeping princess believed to hold the key to liberating the Gather from its tyrannical ruler—and she offers Lena a bargain. If Lena assists her on her journey, Miranda will help her break the curse.
Mesmerized by Miranda and her promise of a new life, Lena jumps at the chance. But the deeper into the Silence she goes, the more she suspects she’s been lied to—about her family’s history, her curse, and her future. As the shadows close in, Lena must choose who to trust and decide whether it’s more important to have freedom…or power.
Rose Briar by Eleanor R. Wood: a short story in Truancy Magazine, free to read at this link!
A SciFi reimagining of Sleeping Beauty.
Sleeping Helena by Erzebet YellowBoy: What does a girl do with eight gifted and meddling aunts, one of whom can see into the future, yet who cannot escape the curses of the past? The answer is: not much, for someone has conspired to put the girl and her aunts to sleep for one hundred years.
Unlike the traditional tale of Sleeping Beauty, however, Sleeping Helena’s years flow backwards — back in time to a fateful day that changed not only the lives of her family, but of an entire nation. No prince, but a King’s own lover will find the beauty in her chamber. While the fate of the nation has been decided and cannot be undone, the fate of the family rests on a lover’s kiss, and what Helena will do should she awake.
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen: A powerful retelling of Sleeping Beauty that is “heartbreaking and heartwarming.”
An American Library Association “100 Best Books for Teens”
An American Library Association “Best Books for Young Adults”
Ever since she was a child, Rebecca has been enchanted by her grandmother Gemma’s stories about Briar Rose. But a promise Rebecca makes to her dying grandmother will lead her on a remarkable journey to uncover the truth of Gemma’s astonishing claim: I am Briar Rose. A journey that will lead her to unspeakable brutality and horror. But also to redemption and hope.
Sleeping Castle and Sleeping Princess by Jane Yolan in Mirror Dance – poetry, free to read at the link! Mirror Dance has now closed, but its archive has a lot of great retellings and poetry to mine!
Next Time:
Sleeping Beauty in film is the next post so please pop your suggestions below in the comments for that, and the next poll is below so I can get a head start on the research!
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