Revengefully Ever After

The Cinderella story has been on my mind today, probably because in the last few days the Disney version on video has been played around here by little girls. The story, of course, has roots a good deal deeper than Disney, and better thinkers than I can interpret the heroine—as well as the wicked stepmother and stepsisters—as some sorts of archetype, or archetypical family, or something. It’s also one of the tales that reflexively attracts scorn, or at least mild mocking, with its “happily ever after” ending.

But whether Cinderella and the Prince end up happily married isn’t the afterstory that interests me. What, I wonder, happens to the wicked stepmother and stepsisters after Cinderella marries into the royal family? Let’s assume that this is a monarchy with some teeth to it, since who ever heard of a fairy-tale constitutional monarchy? For a few years anyway, I’d imagine that nothing would happen to Cinderella’s stepfamily, the new princess being inordinately good natured and all.

But power corrupts. Little things would start to happen. Windows at the stepfamily’s home would be broken in the night, and the house burglarized a few times, but the constable would be curiously uninterested in finding the culprits. The stepsisters’ husbands—they married merchants of some standing—would suddenly find people reluctant to do business with them. Eventually, they’d go bankrupt and be chucked in debtor’s prison, leaving their wives and kids and now elderly mother-in-law to fend for themselves. The royal tax collector would then demand some outrageous back taxes on their townhouse, where Cinderella used to work so hard. Pitiful appeals to the chancellor of the exchequer are ignored and the family is turned into the street.

You get the idea. All the while HRH Cinderella greets them on formal occasions with formal smiles and hollow assurances that the royal family has nothing but their best interests at heart…