A Silent Knave

Okay. So you’ve heard of the Silent Princess or you haven’t, whichever one it is. The boy - prince? - well, he breaks a woman’s pot three times as she’s trying to get water and his curse was to fall in love with the Silent Princess. He does, he gets her to talk, and he marries her. Well, the true story is actually a bit different.

You see, the Silent Princess wasn’t actually a princess. She was the replacement for the real princess, who had only to see another person to babble away. So, seeing as the ‘Silent Princess’ wasn’t so silent, they chose a street urchin to be the ‘silent’ one, and very few knew of the hoax. The old woman was one of these - after all, she had devised it. And she picked her up off the streets and she became the silent side of the Silent Princess. She was the true Silent Princess, although she was no princess.

Why don’t we start with the boy who broke the old woman’s jar three times?

This boy was seven, and did not yet have clear notions of what was right and what was wrong. He thought it was all in good fun - throwing rocks at the old woman’s pitchers. So, the third time, she turned to him with a curse.

“You shall fall in love with the Silent Princess!”

So, he thought. He was young, naïve. He did not care for love nor princesses yet. He didn’t think of this curse again for twelve years. At the age of 19, after finding he just couldn’t commit to any of the women available to him, he pleaded with his father for the right to search the Silent Princess out. He had grown ill, and felt that searching for her could be his only cure. At this, his father readily agreed. An advisor was sent with this young man.

It was six months later when they finally reached the place where the Silent Princess dwelled. The mountainside was covered in skulls and skeletons, just as the tale say. And they enter this village. The sultan grants a visit to the Silent Princess, set for a few days later, so the prince and his advisor roam around the village, in the markets. The bird is a myth, however, for the creature purchased from the marketplace is a fairy.

And here is where the tale that is known differs from the truth.

The fairy, a petite blue creature, is bought as a gift for the Silent Princess, but, as the night wears on and the prince wondered out loud, “How can I be the one to compel her to speak when so many before me have failed?” and the fairy spoke up.

His plan was that of the bird’s in the original tale. With no other ideas under his belt, and he does not want to bring doom upon the advisor sent with him. He agrees, quite readily, to the
fairy’s suggestion.

The plan goes smoothly - all three times. And the prince is to wed the Silent Princess, and he does. She is beautiful, and he is envied for succeeding in taking her silence from her, and thus becoming eligible to wed her. But what he never suspected of his now talkative, beautiful bride, was that she was not his princess.

They have been married for three days, yet he finds that he does not feel the same flutter in his breast that he did for her soft, sweet voice from behind her veils. Her seven veils. And now, the more the young prince ponders, the more he notices things.

The princess behind the veil - hadn’t she been paler? With lighter hair? And not at all talkative - thus, the Silent Princess. Blue eyes….Not the tanned, black haired gossip queen he now was married to. And the woman he was married to - he didn’t love her.
At first, he decided that the old woman had messed up her curse. He decided that he would just wait, and soon he would be madly in love with her, and that would be that.

The true Silent Princess, however, was thrown back into the streets that she hadn’t seen since her third year of life. Fourteen years later, she didn’t know how to survive in this strange new place. Or rediscovered place, if you will. A month later was when the sultan made a drastic change in his decision.

The girl was retrieved from the streets. She had been relieved, until she was sentenced to die for having spoken. The old woman, who was in the village, became angry, and searched out the prince - he who still had not left.

“What do you want?” he asked, not too harshly, of the old woman.

“Your curse has not yet been fulfilled!” she said angrily. “You’re in love with the Silent Princess but you remain unaware of who she is!”

“I’m married to - ” he began indignantly.

“Imbecile,” the old woman snapped. “Now you listen here. The princess you’re married to has never been silent a day in her life. The true Silent Princess is to be executed at dawn, for speaking. She was just a street urchin to start with, then she was the Silent Princess. She was tossed aside when you married the princess, yet now the sultan has recalled this decision and decided upon her death instead! If this comes to pass, your curse will kill you.”

“How so?”

“Your heart will die when she does.”

The prince merely turned away, and left the old woman steeping there in her anger.

The next morning, he glanced from the window of his bedchamber in time to see a limp, ragged, yet still unbearably beautiful, drop. Hanging by the neck, she stirred for just mere moments before going completely limp. The prince’s heart burned in his chest, and it was then he believed the old woman’s words.

It was three days later when the prince lost his will to live entirely, wishing to be free of his truly loveless hell. With his true love in his mind’s eye, he willingly toppled from the highest of the mountain’s many cliffs.

His newly wed and also newly widowed wife would have only a dark haired boy with blue eyes to remind her of the man she’d lost so early in love.