These authors popularized local folklore into fiction that would eventually reach worldwide readers. The modern, widely accepted versions of popular fairy tales like Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty are largely the product of folktale translations by 17th century French author Charles Perrault and by Grimm's Fairy Tales, published in the early 19th century by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

Such mature themes are rarely seen anymore in children's fairy tales, but adult-oriented versions are occasionally written, such as the late Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber. One older version of Little Red Riding Hood I recall reading had the young protagonist defecating in the woods. In another telling, Cinderella murders someone in her family by decapitation. One telling called The Cinder Wench or The Cinder Maid has the heroine finding her ball gown in a magical nut that has fallen from a tree. Someone calling any one story the “correct” version is ludicrous. Cinderella is a prime example of a fairy tale that has a myriad of different and divergent storylines. As these stories were originally told orally and spread throughout the Old World almost entirely without writing during their earliest tellings and retellings, the folklore spread in divergent paths, sometimes to suit different cultures and sometimes at the whims of the storyteller. The origins of such stories are always difficult to pin down, but the splits and differences can be explained. Sleeping Beauty as we know it today is a concoction of many different tellings of the same story, all with a few necessary similarities but each one with its own details, settings and characters. In many ways, The Legend of Zelda series is very similar to the multitude of revisions that occur in medieval folklore, what we now call “fairy tales.” In such a work as Sleeping Beauty, there is no definitive version – no matter what Disney will feed you.

The Legend of Zelda: Fairy Tales and the Gameplay ExpanseĪug1 Comments “I've done this all before!” Have you, really? Do you truly believe that each game in The Legend of Zelda series is virtually identical to the last? Maybe in some ways, to be sure, such as the constant appearances of the Triforce and the inevitable reemergence of Ganondorf, but there is a historical precedent for these similarities.

Fairies in every legend of zelda game