Once upon a time…
There was a king. Well, there were a lot of kings, but I’m talking about one in particular.
This king had a wife he loved, and a daughter who he loved even more. When the daughter was born, she had stupidly white skin, so they named her “Snow White”. She also had raven-black hair and rose-red lips, and in some versions of the story her full name incorporates those things, too. It’s a good thing her fingernails weren’t any extrordinary color, or her name would have been rediculous.
Anyways, when Snow White was still a baby, her mother died. Everyone was super sad about this, most of all the king. But since it was illegal for the king to not have a son, he had to remarry.
The king knew he would never love anyone as much as he’d loved Snow White’s mother, so he made a political alliance, and married the richest woman he could find.
Aaaand then he died. Very suddenly, under totally not-suspicious circumstances, really, I swear.
The new queen was like “oh no! The king is dead, how very unexpected! I guess that leaves me in charge!”
The ex-king’s advisors were like “well, yes and no. Legally, you’re only in charge until Snow White turns sixteen. Then she’ll become queen, and you’ll become an advisor.”
The queen filed that away, and spent the next ten years ruling the kingdom like an evil dictator.
Now, the Evil Queen (as opposed to Snow White’s mom, the Good Queen) was super vain. She was so vain that she got a magic mirror which told her how pretty she was every day.
Each night she’d go to her mirror and say “magic mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”
It would reply “you are.”
And all was well.
Years passed, and Snow White turned fifteen. Suddenly her acne cleared up, her braces came off, she developed cleavage, and her feet were the daintiest in the land.
When her body finished developing curves, the mirror gave up. It was like “yo. Queen. Your Highness. I hate to tell ya, but your stepdaughter. Damn.”
The Evil Queen was kinda upset about this. She remembered that she’d lose her power when Snow White turned sixteen, and seriously started to hate the girl. So she called the head of her guards to her one dark, stormy night.
She told him “I have a secret mission for you. Take this dagger, this box, and Snow White out into the forest. When you get away from civilization, cut out her heart and put it in the box. Then bring it back to me.”
The guard was like “umm. Why?”
Which got him a ten minute lecture about following orders. So the next morning he took Snow White on a field trip into the forest! He showed her all the blackberry bushes, and where bunnies lived, and pointed out bird nests, and… he knew he couldn’t do it. He’d served under her father and mother, and kinda felt like he was a surrogate father to her. He couldn’t hurt her, much less kill her.
Finally, after wrestling with his conscience all morning, he sat her down next to a stream and told her why they were out there. Snow White was pretty freaked out, and when he told her to run away, she ran.
The guard killed a deer, and put its heart in the box. When he gave it to the queen, she was too busy laughing maniacally to notice it wasn’t a human-sized heart.
…I’d say most people probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a human heart and a deer heart, but I get the feeling this woman would.
Anyways, Snow White ran through the forest, following the river for a number of hours. When she thought she’d gone so far she must be out of the kingdom, she came across a house.
It was kinda an odd house. It was big, like several people lived in it, but at the same time small, like the people who lived there were children.
She knocked on the door, but no one was home. So she went in, hoping to explain to whoever lived there that she just needed a place to spend the night when they got home.
Stranger danger hadn’t been invented yet, so this was a perfectly acceptable thing to do.
Being alone, and bored, Snow White started cleaning. First she just wiped down the chairs so she had somewhere not-gross to sit, then she wiped down the table. But there wasn’t room in the sink for the dishes she took off the table, so she washed all the dishes. Then she cleaned the windows, because she couldn’t see through them to check if anyone was coming. And then she was still bored, so she swept the floor and cleaned the cobwebs off the ceiling.
The house owners still weren’t home, so she went upstairs to check if they had a book or something. Turns out, they did! So she didn’t have to clean the bedroom! Snow White opened the book, sat down on a bed to read, and immediately fell asleep.
A while later, the house owners came home from work. They happened to be seven dwarves, all brothers, who mined gems out of the nearby mountain.
They walked in, tired from a hard day’s work, and were like “…wait.”
It took them a couple minutes to figure out that the house was, like, clean. That had never happened before, and they were very confused by it. They slowly made their way through the kitchen/dining room/living room; some amazed, some suspicious. Then they went upstairs.
They found Snow White sleeping on one of their beds, and totally freaked out. There was a human in their house! One of the dwarves was convinced she was gonna kill them all, but another said she looked harmless. Another pointed out she’d cleaned the house, so she couldn’t be all that bad, and finally one suggested they wake her up and ask her why she was there.
After a whispered argument, they took a broom and poked her with the handle until she woke up.
At first Snow White didn’t know where she was or why she was surrounded by tiny bearded people. And then she remembered and was like “oh heck, I’m in your house!”
The dwarves confirmed this, and asked why she was in their house. Snow White explained as best she could, after which they offered to let her stay if she cooked and cleaned for them. Not having any better ideas, she agreed to the arrangement.
And all was well.
The next morning, the Evil Queen went to her mirror and asked who the fairest in the land was.
The mirror was like “ehhhh look. For a woman in her 40’s, you’re great. But Snow White is just better than you in basically every way.”
The queen was like “you mean I’m outdone by a corpse?”
And the mirror was like “nah, Snow White is still very alive and very curvaceous. While you… are starting to sag a bit, not gonna lie.”
This rather upset the queen. She called the guard to her and demanded to know why Snow White was still alive.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The guard was like “.....because murder is against my religion? Andalsoyou’retheworst.”
The queen was again very upset. She had the guard locked in the dungeon until he changed his religion and/or died. Then she got to work.
Admittedly, I haven’t read the original version of this story since I was about ten. I probably should have re-read it before starting to write this, but I don’t have wifi at the moment, so onward we go. If what I write isn’t anything like the original… my bad.
Anyways, Snow White kept living with the dwarves. She kinda enjoyed it, really. She was used to living in a castle, surrounded by guards and maids and whatnot, so this wasn’t as much of a change for her as it would have been for the average person. Turns out she enjoyed cooking, she wasn’t too bad at it, and cleaning was kinda fun.
Especially since the dwarves would come home every evening and be like “holy crap our walls are white? Who knew!” and “hey, my drum!! I haven’t seen this thing in ages thanks so much for cleaning and finding it!!!” Having someone appreciate your work always makes it better.
A week went by, and the dwarves just loved Snow White to pieces. She hadn’t been appreciated like that since her dad died, so she was having the time of her life. She was in such a good mood that she kinda forgot about the whole attempted murder thing.
So when a kindly old lady passed by selling hair pins, Snow White had zero suspicions.
The old lady was like “yep, I’m on my way to the city to sell these hand-crafted hair pins. I’ll give you one free if you happen to have a bowl of stew for a weary traveler?”
And Snow White was like “I absolutely have a bowl of stew for you! Also the seven guys I live with won’t be here for a couple more hours, and I’ve been talking to the hekkin’ birds to entertain myself, so tell me your life story.”
The old lady who absolutely wasn’t the Evil Queen in disguise told her she was very kind, and sat down to make up a life story. When the stew was done, she gave Snow White a hair pin.
Snow White was like “oOoOoOoh pretty!” and stuck it in her hair.
And promptly died.
The Evil Queen laughed evilly, dropped the old lady disguise spell, and teleported back to the palace.
…I can’t remember if this was the first mention of her doing magic or not. I mean, she might have gotten the mirror from anywhere, it doesn’t say if she made it. But after Snow White leaves the castle she absolutely does magic.
Anyways, a couple hours later the dwarves came home and were shocked to find Snow White dead! They were very upset by this, and moved her onto the couch to check her pulse and breathing and stuff. Nope, she was dead.
One of them was like “wellp, time to prepare her for burial.” He pulled the pin out of her hair, and suddenly Snow White was alive again!
She sat up, gasping for breath, and stared around her at the dwarves. After a brief celebration, they asked what had happened, and how she’d gotten the hair pin. She told them about the old lady, and they explained the concept of “stranger danger”. They told her to not accept things from random people until the queen was dead. Snow White reluctantly agreed, and they got on with their lives.
The next morning, the Evil Queen went to her mirror and said “magic mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”
The mirror was like “mmmmmmm ok so, don’t hate me, buuuuuut…”
After a good deal of screeching, the queen went to enchant something else.
So, in fairy tales there’s this thing called the “rule of three”. Things have to fail twice, and the third time they work. Good, bad, neutral, doesn’t matter. If something fails the first time, it has to be repeated two more times. Only on the third try will it work. This gives the success a sense of accomplishment without taking so long it bores the audience.
Given the prevalence of this trope, I know there was something between the hair pin and the famous poisoned apple that Disney cut to. There has to be. I know the Evil Queen showed up in a different disguise, gave whatever it was to Snow White, she “died” again, and the dwarves revived her by taking it off. I just for the life of me can’t remember what it was. My brain is telling me maybe a cloak or a pair of shoes? Who knows.
Pretend this section is a fully written-out bit about what I just described, and we can cut to the apple. Ok? Great, thanks!
So another week passed. The dwarves decided one of them should always stay home with Snow White, to keep an eye on her. This suited Snow White fine, since even the cutest bunny isn’t a particularly good conversation partner.
But then the day came when the dwarves had to go sell their diamonds. To do that, they needed all seven of them present. And Snow White couldn’t join, because she was (shudder) a human. That would be illegal or something.
They locked her in the house, ordered her to not talk to anyone, and went to the market.
Snow White cleaned the house, made herself lunch, ate it, debated taking up knitting, and was just about to die of boredom when she heard a knock at the door.
Rejoicing, she ran to the window, swung it open, and looked out. There was a harmless-looking old woman at the door, carrying a big basket full of bright green apples.
Forgetting everything she’d been through, Snow White was like “hey! Human! Want to give me your life story?!”
The Evil Queen in disguise was like “certainly dear, but can I come in? I’ve been walking all day, and need to rest my feet. I’ll give you an apple for being so sweet!”
Snow White was like “oh, sorry, I can’t. I’m locked in for my own safety or something. But I might be able to pass you a stool through the window for you to sit on!”
The queen agreed, and sat down to regale Snow White with a long, winding tale about her life as an apple farmer. She told her about the perils of giant bees, how foxes kept trying to trick her out of bushels of apples off her apple bushes, and how apples had to be picked at night because they turned into flowers during the day.
In reality, the queen had never even seen an apple tree, but this was fine because neither had Snow White.
After a couple hours, the queen got up and passed the stool back through the window. She thanked Snow White for listening and letting her rest, and offered her a nice, big apple for her kindness.
Snow White was like “ah, what the heck!” and took the apple. It looked so juicy and delicious that she took a bite then and there.
Aaaaand died.
Again.
Since she’d been leaning halfway out the window, the apple fell from her hand and rolled under a bush.
The Evil Queen dropped her disguise, laughed like a maniac, and teleported back to the castle.
A few hours later the dwarves got home, saw Snow White hanging dead out the window, and collectively facepalmed.
They pulled her inside, put her on the couch, and tried to find what she was wearing that was making her dead. It’d worked the last two times, after all. They, erm, they didn’t succeed. It was quite embarassing for them, but they took everything off and she still didn’t have a pulse.
Sooo they put everything back on, and tried to think of what to do next.
Since it seemed like Snow White was legit dead this time, they decided to make her a coffin and bury her. Except she was so darn pretty that they decided to make her a coffin out of glass.
Which leads me to think either there was some kind of Lucy Westenra thing going on, or dwarves don’t know that humans decompose after death. Possibly both.
Anyways, they made the coffin and put her in. Then they carried it through the forest, heading to their mine to sepulcher her there.
Meanwhile, a prince was riding through the forest on his way to the city. I presume. I don’t know what he was doing there, or why he was alone, but somehow he stumbled across the funeral procession.
He saw the glass casket and went up to it. He was like “daaaang, she’s ho- Iiii mean… it’s customary for humans to kiss the dead goodbye. Lots of metaphorical significance in that. I presume none of you have kissed her, being dwarves who don’t know human rituals, so mind if I do it?”
The dwarves, never having attended a human funeral, immediately set the casket down and opened it up. They watched solemnly as the prince knelt down and kissed her.
Y’no, I never fully appreciated how totally freaking creepy this story is before.
Anyways, thanks to the kiss, I’m going to think of details here as little as possible, somehow the piece of apple that Snow White had in her mouth came out!
…Nope, not thinking about how!
When the apple bite was out, Snow White woke up! She was like “\woken up being kissed by a hot guy? I could get used to this!” and questioned nothing.
She still didn’t know what “stranger danger” was, and I’m pretty sure she never learned.
Aaaaanyways, she was alive! The dwarves were very grateful, and asked the prince to stay for dinner. He did, and learned that Snow White was a princess!
The prince realized that if he 1) married Snow White, and 2) killed the Evil Queen, he’d become king!
So the dwarves married them that afternoon, and the next day the prince went to the castle and beheaded the Evil Queen.
Killing her was pretty easy since, y’no, everyone hated her. The guards didn’t help him, but they certainly didn’t stop him, either.
Then the prince brought Snow White back to the castle, they became king and queen, and theoretically lived happily ever after.
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Moral: don’t ask mirrors to rate the hotness of every female in the country, as this includes underage girls, and is very creepy.