![]() ![]() When the queen falls ill, still in her prime, she extracts one final promise from her distraught husband: that he will never marry anyone less beautiful than she. But Deerskin takes us further into that story, showing us a royal couple obsessed with one another and a nation intoxicated by their glamour: a world of adoration which quite overlooks the king and queen’s shy and unloved only child. Once upon a time, a brave and handsome king won as his wife the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, and they lived happily ever after. ![]() With grace, sensitivity and compassion, McKinley turns this little-known story into a powerful tale of self-healing. Fairy tales deal with infanticide, child mortality, forced marriages, murder and child abuse and yet Robin McKinley’s Deerskin is based on a tale ( Donkeyskin) deemed so particularly unpalatable that it’s rarely published, even though it was originally written by Charles Perrault. ![]() They were ways of rationalising the brutalities of life, of creating a happy ending beyond the horrific events that might be suffered. Fairy tales were originally born as dark things, a world away from the pastel-coloured sugar of Disney’s princesses, and they weren’t always meant for children. ![]()
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