by Wendy BooydeGraaff.
There once was a prince, (we all know stories about princesses require a prince), dashing and rich, who was utterly in love with a certain woman—you know the type: toned biceps, determined walk, clipped diction, married. Yes, married (not to the prince), and with no forecast of divorce. This certain woman loved the prince, but alas, they could not inherit the throne together as king and queen according to the laws of the land.
The people of the land, however, required an heir, and to have an heir, there needed to be a princess, preferably one who had been locked up in a tower and who maintained long, lustrous hair.
The prince toured the land, or, on most days, had his knightly assistants tour the land, looking for towers and shy young maidens who qualified as potential princesses. He and everyone else had determined that shy meant weak and easily influenced, and therefore in need of saving. He found such a maiden, watching the sheep, or rather his knightly assistants found her, and told him where to go.
The prince arrived on the scene just as the potential princess was taking a break to eat some cheese on a stone bench out on the sheep pasture. As he strode toward her, she jumped up. Aha, he thought, she really IS The One. She recognizes me and is overcome with welcome. She will look fine on my arm in the royal parade, and everyone will stop harrassing me about that heir.
When he got closer, he saw she was dancing around the bench, shaking her hair, while a spider frantically tried to climb up her long strands. Here, the prince knew he could be of heroic help, so he grabbed the spider with his brawny hand and squished it against the stone bench. You are free, he told The One, and Bonita knew at that moment the opposite was true: she would never be free again. She, too, had grown up hearing princess stories, and knew one should never turn away the attentions of someone as valiant as the prince, especially when one is a mere shepherdess. And what attention he paid! Listening to her shy thoughts when she felt comfortable to offer them, seeming to want the same things she wanted: peace and amnesty; and even when she broached the topic of spiders, he listened to how she wanted them to live, just not in her hair.
Therefore Bonita cut her hair so as to avoid more needless spider deaths, and when the people saw her on the arm of the prince, the long-haired ones cut their hair, to emulate her beauty. Bo ducked her head and blushed, which the people thought charming and befitting of their future princess.
Lady Bo and the prince married in a grand ceremony with thousands of lilies (a funeral flower, but the princess adored lilies). She grew more honest and more understanding of the people who asked her to listen to them. While she listened to the people, the ones who were enduring natural and war-made crises, she noticed the people began to listen to her, and in turn, to each other.
The prince, however, was angry because he had married a shy and reclusive prospect, one he assumed had the requisite docile character of a stereotypical princess, and he expected Lady Bo to honor that ideal always. But now, the princess told him thoughts about making life better for the people which directly contradicted his need to grow power, and play polo, and do whatever suited him. The people were for shaking hands, and appeasing. No one needed their input. Conversely, the princess had married a prince who listened to her, but now he only shouted at her before she could get the entirety of her words out.
Amidst the shouting, they somehow ended up with two heirs to the prince’s throne. The gallant prince, who himself still loved the married woman, could not bring himself to love this princess who was exhibiting determination, initiative, and influence. However, the people loved Princess Bo, and when she and the prince walked the royal parade together, the people wanted to touch her hand, or give her flowers, or say a kind word with flushed face. The people ignored the prince.
Because of all the shouting and the knowledge of where the prince’s heart resided, Princess Bo could not give him loving looks from under her bowed brow in public anymore; she did not give him loving looks at home, either. She was honest. And her fame had only made her more honest, and more interested in the people and what they needed.
The prince found a tower, and tried to put the princess in it, but the people were paying attention, and they saw the princess did not want to be locked away, and therefore, they protested the very existence of locking towers, and frustrated, the prince rode off to where his heart resided, which was with the married woman, and there he stayed.
The princess looked inside herself and found her heart had been mashed like potatoes. She showed her heart to the people, and they loved her all the more because they also had hearts that were mashed or macerated or punctured.
The princess went back to the sheep, to become regular Bonita again, but there was someone else shepherding the sheep, and anyways, Princess Bo felt what she really had wanted was to go back to the place where her heart had still been hopeful. The pastured sheep instilled some peace and calm, which sutured a few bits of her heart.
She took her stitched-up heart back to the people who loved her, and worked among them, creating a new vision for princesses, one where a princess drew attention to the matters of the people. She touched people who were damaged by wars and cyclones and epidemics.
But someone else was watching her. Someone who was not the prince but had just as many resources and people working on his behalf, perhaps even more. The observer was rich and handsome and had many potions, and we all know princesses will drink whichever potion with which they are presented, even though, of late, Princess Bo had only been drinking sparkling water. This potion, presented to her, was in a cut glass goblet, and bubbled with mystery and allure, the very two qualities that had latently intrigued Princess Bo. After all, why not try a different mode of personal life? She had already lost so much. She drank and oh, it was exciting, fast-paced, delicious, though the end of her story followed soon after, for though mystery and allure are very good, they can also create a crushing audience of overly-interested individuals who will chase down Princess Bo and her potion-bearer for want of exposing the mystery and allure, and as in all stories, the chased will flee, helter skelter, which makes the mystery and allure all that more mysterious and alluring, until the chase results in the inevitable smash, only to find that when cracked open, there is nothing more to there than raw pulsing hearts with the pink chambers exposed.