Scattered Pages

The Fairest of Them All

Apple White walked daintily down the halls of Ever After High. He was having the most spelltastic day! Not only was he finally able to see his best friends forever after, after their long summer break (well, they had seen each other on several joint Royal family vacations to private islands and the like, but it was the principle of the thing!), he had also managed to convince Headmaster Grimm to allow him to room with Raven this year.

Contrary to popular belief, Apple didn't hate Raven. He didn't hate anyone, really. That was kind of a part of his whole thing as 'the Fairest of Them All'. He saw the boy as a friend, and as a crucial part of his story. Apple bit his rosy-red bottom lip, recalling the blight that had plagued him and his friends for so long at his mental mention of the word 'story'.

Apple's generation had been a worrying one. The children of the current standing fairytale characters kept being born... wrong. Fairytale princesses had been born as princes, Rebels that were supposed to be female were male, and there were barely any princesses to speak of. Hexes, the Evil Queen had even had a son instead of a daughter! People, especially Headmaster Grimm and the Royals were worried about what it meant. Did it mean their stories were fading? That the details were getting blurry? Would they all go 'poof' and be forgotten?

Apple himself wasn't supposed to exist. He should have been a girl with hair black as night Instead, he was a boy with blonde hair paler than sunlight. He wasn't right. He wasn't supposed to be like this.

So his mother had tried to remedy the situation in any way she could. She had started feeding him more apples and foods with apples in them to give him a taste for the fruit. She had prevented him from taking Hero classes or any form of combat class, because Snow White was a fair damsel who needed saving, not a knight in shining armor. She had even seriously debated dying his hair black, but had only decided against it because she didn't want to damage his hair with chemicals. These were never things Apple was particularly fond of, but he endured, because the last thing he wanted to do was disappoint his mother.

Then she had started dressing him in more effeminate clothing, and to his pleasant surprise, Apple found he liked dressing that way. He liked wearing eyeshadow and pretty hair accessories. He liked wearing lipstick. He liked being pretty.

'Which is fine I suppose, Apple dear. The next Snow White is expected to be the Fairest of Them All, after all.', his mother would tell him off-handedly as a child, and Apple had taken her words to heart.

He'd always tried his best to be the perfect Royal. He never caused trouble, he never did anything remotely Rebellious, and he always did what his mother told him.

(He always did as he was told, even when his heart told him that what he was being told was wrong. Like how Raven was predestined to be evil, despite him being one of the nicest people he had ever met. Or how Ginger Breadhouse was a villain and couldn't be trusted, despite the fact she left sweets outside everyone's dorm rooms every other Saturday out of nothing but the goodness of her heart, that everyone always threw away when they figured out who made them. Apple had tried some of them by accident once, and found that Ginger's sweets were perfectly innocent, regardless of what Gus and Helga Crumb would constantly scream to anyone who would listen. The poor girl really deserved better)

Yes, Apple was the perfect Royal. And perfect Royals followed their stories to the letter, which meant he was going to have to be poisoned by Raven, fall asleep, and wait like a good damsel for his prince (or princess, no one quite knew who would be the one to wake him and marry him. It, like with most things regarding his generation, was up in the air) to kiss him awake. And for any of that to happen, he needed Raven Queen.