The Tragic Downfall of the Sorcerer Queen
by Aron Blue

Once upon a time a powerful Sorcerer Queen ruled a peaceful and prosperous queendom. The neighboring King was jealous of her power and greedy for her land. So he plotted to overthrow her, but oh so slowly. 

He sent the daughter of the most beautiful woman in his kingdom as a royal hostage to the Sorcerer Queen. And then waited. Because he knew quite well of the Queen’s magic truth-telling mirror and also of her weakness: vanity. Meanwhile, as the child grew into a teenager, he sent his own son, the Prince, over to visit her occasionally and strike up a pleasant friendship. “Because you’re going to marry her,” he said. 

The beautiful hostage turned sixteen, and the magic mirror reported the inevitable news. The Queen fell into a paroxysm of jealousy and began plotting horrific and transparent assassinations, much to the consternation of her people, who were mostly peaceful Dwarves and Humans, miners and hunters. Sure enough, “Snow White” became the heroine of the people through no attempt or effort of her own (other than a sweet personality) and went into hiding in the forest, fiercely protected by the locals.

This is when the Queen began to behave unpredictably. The King wasn’t fully aware of her abilities as a sorceress, and so hadn’t factored in her uncanny ability to change her appearance and to create extremely complicated and undetectable poisons. Perhaps, too, he did not understand what dark forces he had awakened in her. Instead of Snow White living in the forest and developing a cadre of local forces loyal to her (and eventually the Prince), she fell victim to the Queen’s superior intellect and twisted drive to see her dead.

The King heard the news almost immediately from his animal spies. Quickly he summoned his best alchemists and gave them every detail. They threw together an antidote and gave him no promises. Meanwhile, he ordered his servants to deliver a glass coffin to the forest and arrange a public funeral.

“Take this antidote to the funeral,” the King said to the Prince. “If it works, we have doubled our lands in a bloodless revolution. If it doesn’t, we’ve still created a martyr that we can manipulate to our advantage for generations.”   

He arrived just in time to slip the antidote to Snow White under the guise of a final kiss. Miraculously, it worked. The Queen, meanwhile, had been driven half-mad by her sudden blood-lust and foray into dark magic. When Snow White loyalists were sent to assassinate her, they could only watch in horror as she perched on the edge of a cliff daring the lightning to strike her, which it finally did. Unless she was the fairest, she could not live.

Oh Vanity!