The Cabbage Princess

What on earth did I just read. That was a weird book. All of the illustrations are done in a very Baroque style. It says the princess is beautiful, but she looks really weird. It's pretty wordy.

Basically, the king is a jerk. He's got a pretty daughter, but she's shy so she rejects all her suitors, and then the Lord of the Forest comes by and says, “Hey, she should marry my son, because I'm awesome and my son is awesome.” And while he's doing that, he and his unicorn trample all over the king's garden. And the king went, “Dude, get out of my house!” And he's like, “Fine! But, I'm gonna cast a magic spell on you so everything that you say will come true.”

So the king calls his wife a hen and she becomes a hen. And he calls his daughter a cabbage and she becomes a cabbage. And he calls his son a peacock and he becomes a peacock. And at the end he says that he's the most wretched man in his kingdom and he becomes the most wretched man in his kingdom. And they search for the Lord of the Forest to take the spell off, and the king says, “Your son can marry my daughter.” And the Forest Lord says, “Why would my son want to marry a cabbage? That's silly.”

And to take the spell off, one of the daughter's suitors has to be able to pick her out from among all the other maids which were different vegetables, but you can't say which one she is. And none of the suitors can do that. One of the suitors ends up on the moon. Then the Lord of the Forest's son comes by and picks her out, and poof, the spell is broken and everybody's happy and the king's no longer a jerk. And the daughter marries the son of the Lord of the Forest. And they live happily ever after, I guess.

If the king's jerkiness didn't manifest as describing people as animals, this wouldn't work at all. Maybe the king needs to be taught a lesson, but The Lord of the Forest just gets to do whatever he wants because he's magical. And the lesson really blames the victim, like King Midas turning his daughter to gold. It's not his family's fault that the king is inconsiderate.