Dealing with Dragons

This novel combines two genres in order to complete the world-building for the fantasy universe of the Enchanted Forest: fairy tales and medievalism. Fairy tales are short stories within the folklore genre, which itself denotes collections of cultural stories that have typically been passed down via oral tradition among specific communities or groups. Fairy tales often incorporate mythical characters and circumstances, enchantments, and magic as central narrative elements. One of the most well-known anthologies of fairy tales is Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which is the result of brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm’s extensive research and cataloguing of oral stories during the early 19th century. 

Wrede’s novel both references and subverts many of the stories and tropes depicted in Grimm’s Fairy Tales. For instance, when Cimorene meets a talking frog, she asks if he is an enchanted prince, and her question alludes to the Grimm brothers’ story, “The Frog Prince.” Wrede’s frog answers, “No, but I’ve met a couple of them” (9), and his reply subverts the expectations set in place by the Grimm brothers’ tale, for he is ironically just an average frog, rather than the transformed prince that Cimorene expects him to be. Likewise, Linderwall as a kingdom is greatly influenced by the conventions of traditional fairy tales. It is described as a pleasant and uneventful place to live, except for the “usual” problems like “royal children and uninvited fairy godmothers” (1). This wry comment alludes to the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, in which a princess is cursed at her christening by an evil fairy. Wrede’s frequent allusions to European fairy tales add a distinct air of whimsy and irony to the narrative, especially when Cimorene, Alianora, and the stone prince all engage Challenging the Status Quo, deliberately invoking and then subverting typical fairy tale tropes and narratives.

The second genre-based category that the novel employs in its fantasy world-building is medievalism, a catch-all term that includes invocations and reproductions of the medieval in eras that occurred subsequent to the medieval period. Importantly, medievalism denotes reproductions of imagined or perceived medieval topics and tropes, rather than accurate, historically factual representations. For example, books like Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon or Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court specifically reproduce elements of the medieval Arthurian cycle, recasting Arthurian characters into new narratives in order to create a fresh cultural commentary. Medieval stories often contain tales of magical creatures, fantastical circumstances, and knightly chivalric quests, a trend that has arguably led to the creation of a high fantasy genre that is rife with medieval motifs such as castles, knights, princesses, dragons, quests, chivalry, sword-fighting, and diverse creatures such as elves and dwarves. 

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the relationship between high fantasy and medievalism is largely influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien’s iconic Lord of the Rings trilogy, which begins with The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) and is continued in The Two Towers (1954) and The Return of the King (1955). Tolkien, an Oxford professor who studied medieval literature by trade, frequently integrated reproductions and invocations of the medieval into his fantasy universe. Because Tolkien’s works influence all subsequent additions to the high fantasy genre, this category has essentially become inseparable from medievalism.

In addition to indirectly invoking these medieval tropes through its use of high fantasy, Wrede’s novel establishes itself as contemporaneous to well-known medieval figures. For example, the stone prince tells Cimorene and Alianora about his classmates at hero’s school, stating, “George started killing dragons right away, and Art went straight home and pulled some sort of magic sword out of a rock” (155). “George” is an allusion to St. George of Lydda, a Christian saint from the third century whose legend is reproduced in the popular medieval tale “Saint George and the Dragon,” in which George was reimagined as a knight of the First Crusade who slayed a dragon in defense of a village. (Incidentally, well after Wrede’s series was published, this myth was reimagined through a feminist lens in Samantha Shannon’s 2019 The Priory of the Orange Tree.) 

The other person that the stone prince mentions, “Art,” is a deliberately casual reference to the iconic figure of King Arthur, who ascended to kingship after fulfilling a prophecy by pulling a sword from a stone at a tournament. Early depictions of this popular tale can be found in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (1136) and Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1485), and the Arthurian legends have been reproduced, invoked, and reimagined thousands of times in the centuries since. These two references reconfigure Wrede’s novel, shifting it from a high fantasy that invokes medieval tropes to an example of fantasy medievalism that directly situates itself alongside medieval narratives. Overall, Wrede’s novel uses both medievalism and fairy tale references to aid in its satire of these genres’ archetypical features.