
Of Princesses and Dragons. Dating story no. 14
I will never stop marvelling at the genius of the old storytellers who invented the phrase “and they lived happily ever after”. Behind that phrase, as behind mayonnaise, you can hide any flaw, crack or whiff of staleness: the fact that once the tale was over the newlyweds lived in completely different wings of the palace, if in the same palace at all; the fact that affairs with the servants did not count as adultery; and a great deal more besides. The most interesting thing in these stories is the idealised figures of the princesses and their princes. The kind that simply do not exist.









