The Thousand Tales of Cinderella

In days long ago, there lived a girl named Cinderella. What this girl was like is not important, for the story does not care who she is. She might be kind and considerate, and she might be bitter about the circumstances of her life, but this does not matter. All that one need know is that she existed, and she lived with her stepmother and two stepsisters. These stepsisters are frequently called ugly, but then again we don't know - does the story refer to the faces and bodies of these young women, or are we supposed to see their personalities as their vile parts.

This is irrelevant, and so this retelling shall not go into that. After all, the stepsisters matter very little to this story, except as a frame to the life of Cinderella, the frame that also shows the way she was treated by her stepmother. The stepmother of Cinderella must be cruel, and so here she shall be called so, and we shall emphasise the ways in which she forces our Cinderella to perform all the housework at the expense of her own happiness, treating her much like one would a slave.

The story of our Cinderella shall begin with the Prince's ball. The Prince is as little a character as our Cinderella, and so we need not know the reason for which he throws a ball - perhaps he is forced to by his father, or perhaps he has met Cinderella before and feels that this is how he can meet her again. Either one is a way to give character for our prince, but for the purposes of this story we will not answer the question.

As the family prepares to go to the ball, with the stepsisters hoping to be fit for marriage to the king, Cinderella must be denied the opportunity to go, rather by the cruel hand of her stepmother or her stepsisters. For this reason, she will be alone and cast out, wishing that she could go to the ball. Why does she want to go at all? This does not matter, for it is up to the teller of the story for what reason that ball seems so appealing. Nevertheless, Cinderella will be helped by someone who can give her a dress for the ball, and sent on her way, with the warning that she must be home by midnight, whether due to magic or through the circumstances of life.

Cinderella shall meet the Prince, and through dancing they will fall in love. However, Cinderella will be forced to flee once midnight comes, leaving behind something that may identify her. This part of the story is the most open, for there are a million reasons that may prompt two people to fall in love, and every storyteller will have their own.

Using Cinderella's token, the Prince will find Cinderella and they shall be reunited, and her life with her step-family shall end. This is the end of the story that we are told, but in their world, the story continues on. And as we have discussed, every storyteller will tell this story differently, changing the characters and the conflicts in the way that suit them best.

And so, why might any of these stories have a happy ending? We have given our Cinderella and Prince only the simplest tale, but if I reach out and take someone's story where Cinderella is a headstrong warrior woman and combine it with another's where her Prince is a dominant and traditional husband, then the story cannot be happy. The nature of Cinderella and her Prince, you see, is to never have a happy ending. They are taken to be retold a thousand times, just as I tell it to you now, my lass, and to be told differently every time. To them, they have life, one that may end happily. But to us, well, they shall never truly be at peace.