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Once upon a time there lived a queen who had misguidedly pinned her entire self-worth on her pale beauty. As she aged, she began depending on a magic mirror to confirm her ranking as the loveliest in the land. “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” she’d murmur regally. “Who’s the fairest of them all?” “It’s you, Queenie,” the mirror would answer, giving the monarch strength enough to rule her kingdom one more day.
Sadly for the queen, the mirror was brutally honest, and one day its answer threw her into a dither: Snow White was now deemed the fairest in the land.
Snow White, the queen’s stepdaughter, was a mere slip of a thing. The queen tended to ignore her, and she had felt relieved when the princess had recently proclaimed her adolescent independence by moving into the highest turret of the castle. Ensconced in her new quarters, Snow White reveled in the view. But the turret was constantly chilly, and Snow White was growing more and more pallid.
Upon the mirror’s pronouncement, the queen immediately sent for her woodsman. She planned to instruct him to take the princess deep into the woods and end her young life. In the meantime, Snow White, shivering in her turret, at last turned to her wardrobe in search of warmth. Too vain to put on a shawl, she instead hiked up her skirt and pulled a second pair of drawers over her first. To her delight, she felt a little warmer. So she donned another, and then another, until finally, after she had struggled on her seventh pair, she felt downright toasty. The moment Snow White drew up the seventh drawers, her cheeks pinked up. In the royal chambers below, as she awaited the woodsman, the queen gave the mirror one last chance. “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” she whispered. “Who’s the fairest of them all?” “The crown goes to you, Queenie!” the mirror answered. For, it turns out, all that time the mirror had been interpreting “fairest of them all” to mean “palest of them all.” The now rosy-cheeked Snow White’s life was spared and, with the help of a little pancake powder, the queen went on to rule her kingdom fairly for many years to come.