Fairy tales and folklore arenât pro-queer, my ASS.
There is LITERALLY a Romanian fairy tale about a princess who spends an entire quest in disguise as a man called Fet-Fruners and then is turned into a man thanks to a hermitâs spell. The hermit intended it as a curse, but the newly-minted man rejoices, since he now feels he is as he was always meant to be. And I quote:
The hermit followed at their heels, but seeing it was impossible to overtake the thief, he fell on his knees and called his most deadly curse down on her head, praying that if the thief was a man, he might become a woman; and if she was a woman, that she might become a man. In either case he thought that the punishment would be severe.
But punishments are things about which people do not always agree, and when the princess suddenly felt she was really the man she had pretended to be, she was delighted, and if the hermit had only been within reach she would have thanked him from her heart.
Fet-Fruners ends up marrying the emperorâs daughter and by all accounts, they live happily ever after. Itâs called The Girl Who Pretended To Be A Boy, originally published in Sept Contes Roumains and later collected by Andrew Lang in The Violet Fairy Book.
âThe Little Mermaidâ is literally about Hans Christian Anderson pining for a male friend who he was in love with who ended up marrying a woman.
And donât even get me started on Greek mythology.
Queer people, trans people, and gender non-conforming people have always existed, and folklore clearly reflects that. If the modern queer community is finding themes in these stories they can identify with, itâs hardly a reach.
jbbartram-illu
germansingergirl
kaledo-art
blakekathryn
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