Pertaining to Snow White

“Bob, you know everything, right?”

“Always the same. No hello, no nothing, just comes to flatter me and ask a favor”

“It’s not a favor, it’s more...a simple request”

“Simple requests are just favors you don’t plan on repaying. So what is it?”

“You once said that all fairy tales are based on fact, right?”

“I mean, not all, but a lot of them. Some make the claim of most. But not all.”

“Snow White has always been my favorite story, so I was wondering if I could learn the real story behind it.”

“Learning the truth behind your favorite story may not be a great idea, but I’m willing to tell you if you want.”

“I get that, but I want to learn about my favorite.”

“Alright, fine. Let’s see if I can’t remember how it goes.”

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This story, like most fairy tales, takes place a long time ago. Like, a really long time ago. So long ago that the actual names of all involved have been lost or forgotten. And, like a surprising number of fairy tales, this story begins with a queen. Where’s the king? Who knows. Different histories state several possibilities such as war, an ill-fated peasant revolt, or possibly just dysentery. Unimportant, what’s important is that he’s dead and the queen’s still around.

The queen was walking through her garden one fine winter’s morning, when she came across an injured crow, black wings splayed awkwardly, blood steaming gently as it stained the snow. She moved to pick it up, likely to render aid or perhaps bring it to someone else who could give it aid, or possibly simply to move it out of her garden. As she reached towards it, it bit her sharply on her finger, like most injured wild animals would, drawing blood. That wasn’t all that surprising, but what was surprising was that it burst into a silvery purple mist, leaving nothing behind, not even the stain on the ground. Were it not for the bite on the queen’s finger, there would be no sign it had ever existed.

Despite how unnatural this was, in the grand scheme of things, in a world of magic, it’s not particularly out of the ordinary. So she had a court wizard inspect the wound to make certain that it wasn’t cursed, and then basically forgot about the whole incident. Or at least, she forgot about it until she showed all the signs of pregnancy. It was shown to be caused by a powerful magic that had summoned the crow. Her council of wizards, and her doctors couldn’t find anything wrong or malicious about the pregnancy, so they decided to keep an eye on her. Right up until she died in childbirth, leaving behind a baby girl with skin pale and white as snow, lips the vivid red of blood, and hair the vivid black of crow’s feathers. The queen would have noticed this particular coincidence, had she survived. The baby girl was known as Snow White. (Dear God, I hope that’s just what she was known as and not her real name, that’s an awful name for a baby)

Being heir apparent, with her mother dead Snow White was the new queen, however a baby can’t quite meet all of the obligations of a ruler, therefore, until she came of age, there would be an acting queen to fulfill all obligations. This acting queen was to be the late queen’s right hand and head of her council of wizards. She was an elf, just over six feet tall and slender, with catlike green eyes and waist length blonde hair, and brilliantly gifted in the realm of magic. It was this knowledge of magic that allowed her to see that something wasn’t normal with Snow White. Well, her magical knowledge, and the fact that there were rumors from the doctors that delivered her that she clawed her way through the stomach of her mother in some sort of DIY C-Section by the baby. But that wasn’t widely known and was overlooked by most of those who did know it. The fact that it was so easily overlooked was also used as evidence by the elven queen that Snow White wasn’t what she appeared.

The elven queen did her best to not pass judgment on Snow White, as nobody could control the circumstances of their birth. However, as Snow White got older, not passing judgment became more and more difficult. Rats, birds, and even cats would show up headless, drained of all blood, although recently homeless people were turning up drained of blood as well. Of course, the elven queen couldn’t prove anything and didn’t want to jump to conclusions, so she consulted her magic mirror to see who was to blame. She found that the person to blame was a powerful vampire, but was unable to see who specifically through a veil that the vampire maintained. Or rather, it was maintained up until one day when the vampire was using a significant number of her powers on something else.

The elven queen was watching her mirror one day, while Snow White was having a riding lesson. Suddenly the veil lifted, and the elven queen saw the riding instructor hypnotized, frozen in the middle of putting away a saddle, and Snow White, approaching him with teeth bared, fangs and claws extended. There was a flash of movement, quick as a striking snake, then blood. And, as suddenly as it began, it was over, and the veil was firmly back in place. The elven queen acted quickly, gathering several guards and taking them to the stables, but they were obviously too late. She tried to tell her guards what she had seen, but she couldn’t reach them through the thick layer of hypnosis that Snow White had them under.

Obviously using someone who had frequent access to Snow White to stop her reign of violence was out of the question, as they would all be too affected by her vampiric hypnotic aura to be able to even contemplate violence against her, so that left people on the outskirts of the town. And the elven queen needed to act quickly before this fourteen year old sociopathic vampire came of age to take the crown. So she turned to a huntsman for help. He was tasked with taking Snow White deep into the forest and killing her, bringing her heart back to the elven queen as proof. Not that the elven queen particularly required proof, she just needed a valid reason to have him remove Snow White’s heart, one of the few mundane acts that can prevent a vampire from coming back to life.

Unfortunately, when the time came for the huntsman to do the deed, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Perhaps Snow White used her hypnotic abilities on him, or possibly he was just a decent person, unwilling to kill a seemingly innocent person. Whatever the reason, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He told Snow White of the elven queen’s plot, and told her to flee into the woods, before hunting and killing a boar and bringing it’s heart back to the elven queen. This was enough to fool her, and she drove a silver stake through the heart and locked it in a mirrored box, steps which she knew were redundant if the heart was removed from the vampire, but it made her feel better.

Meanwhile, deep in the woods, Snow White found a house full of dwarves. Seven? More? Less? Who cares. When she came upon them, they were beating on each other with large, wooden poles, an old dwarf game born from the fact that their bones don’t break, a fact that keeps them alive during cave-ins. Of course, this same bone density prevents them from floating at all. A five-foot tall dwarf can and will drown in five feet of water, if they can’t find a way out. That’s all unnecessary information, but I share it because I think it’s cool. That, and the fact that their beards act similar to a cat’s whiskers or a mole’s star-nose, allowing them to “see” in the mines, even when there isn’t enough light to see by. In fact, shaving a dwarf’s beard will reveal several fleshy tendrils around their mouth and nose, similar to that of the star-nose mole.

Anyhow, Snow White came across these several dwarves and decided to work her magic. The dwarves, being a magically powerful race, resisted her power for a time, but being kind and reasonable people, the dwarves decided to take in this abandoned fourteen-year old, especially after she told them why she was in the woods. They were wary and somewhat mistrustful of her for a day or two, some of them for three, but eventually they succumbed to her persuasive aura. Snow White helped out around the house and pulled her weight there, for those three days. After the dwarves were all under her spell, she went back to being waited on hand and foot, like she did back at the castle.

Almost a week went by without any issue, before the huntsman got back into contact with the elven queen. During that week he had pondered on why the elven queen would have used the nail and mirrored box on the heart. After pondering for several days, the huntsman got into contact with a cleric, worried that the elven queen may have been planning some demonic ritual. Upon learning from the cleric that it was a method of ensuring that creatures such as vampires wouldn’t return, the huntsman realized that he may have made a mistake, and got in touch with the elven queen as soon as humanly possible. He let her know of his deception and she panicked a little bit, before sending him on his way and using her magic mirror to attempt to track down Snow White. She couldn’t conclusively locate Snow White with it, due to a magical veil mentioned earlier. What the elven queen could do was just make out who Snow White was staying with, then use magic to track them down, as they had no protections from magical spying.

The elven queen then tried the approach of “if you want something done right, do it yourself”. She tried three different methods of killing Snow White. First, she made a corset from a fabric that had been blessed, which could stop the breathing and heartbeat of a vampire if left in place long enough. Unfortunately, the dwarves returned home soon enough after she put on the corset to remove it and save her life. Second, the elven queen tried a blessed and lightly enchanted silver comb, that, when in Snow White’s hair, dropped her into a coma-like state, but yet again the dwarves returned and removed the comb before it could kill her permanently. Finally, the elven queen injected holy water into an apple, as vampires can and do still eat human food, they just don’t need to, particularly after drinking blood.

The apple method managed to work, dropping her into a near death state. She would linger for a short while and then die after a week or two. The dwarves decided to return her to the castle, so that everyone could mourn her properly. The elven queen volunteered to have a glass coffin created to everyone could pay their last respects. This shocked the dwarves, as they knew that she had conspired to have Snow White killed, but it was a pleasant surprise. Of course her actual reasoning was to expose Snow White to sunlight, killing her quicker, but the elven queen didn’t share that reasoning with everyone, just the altruistic reasoning.

This should have succeeded in killing off Snow White, but sunlight doesn’t actually affect vampires near as much as you think, mostly just feeling like a bad sunburn. Of course, that’s not as well known as the myth, so the elven queen went ahead with her plan. It really should have worked, despite reliance on a myth, although not as quickly as the elven queen wanted, but a week and a half later, a stranger came into town.

This stranger was a prince from a neighboring kingdom, and another vampire, conceived in the same way and from the same person who sent the crow to Snow White’s mother. He knew how to save Snow White and did so easily, although I’m not exactly sure how. The story ends the same as the original story, with the prince and Snow White marrying, and forcing the elven queen to dance in red hot iron shoes at their wedding until she died from exhaustion and pain.

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“The end” finished Bob.

“What? That’s it? The vampire murderers win?”

“I mean, win is a strong word. Their Anaterrum knight killed both Snow White and the prince that same night.”

“Wait, what’s an Anaterrum knight?”

“One of the Knights After the Manner of the First Holy Order, the role of the Anaterrum knights is to protect the leaders, until those leaders become tyrannical. Then they cut them down without mercy or hesitation. Named after one of the first leaders of the Knights, Ser Anaterra, who...did just that, to everyone’s surprise. Now, are we done, or do you have any more questions?”

“Do you know what happened to Snow White’s father?”

“Yep. According to the official records of the Knights After the Manner of the First Holy Order, he was hunted down and killed by Ser Matthew Jameson, that same Anaterrum knight who killed Snow White after he escaped the gibbet cage he was locked in for killing Snow White. Now, I really need to get back to work.”