A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS #ONCEUPONNOW

01 | A THOUSAND

01 | A THOUSAND

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ABOUT;

ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS  is a tale about the king of the Sassanian empire. In discovering his own wife is cheating on him and his brother's wife is cheating on him, he grows bitter and desolate. He has his own wife executed, sinking into the idea that all women are the same.

The king marries a virgin each day, killing her before she has the chance to dishonor him. Eventually, the vizier, the provider of the virgins, cannot find any more virgins to give as the king's brides. The vizier's daughter offers herself, and he reluctantly agrees.

Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter, begins to tell a tale the first night, but does not finish it. This, keeping the king curious, forces him to postpone her execution that night. The next day, she would finish the tale and start a new one. Cleverly, she did not finish the tale. Doing this, she kept the king curious and postponed her own execution. This continues on for a thousand and one nights.

The ending varies a bit, some with Scheherazade asking for a pardon, or the king seeing their children and deciding he does not want to kill her, or even him simply being too distracted.

In this modern day retelling of A Thousand and One Nights, it takes place in the fictional country of Sassania, a country similar to the Sassanian empire. Sassania is a country torn apart by its monarchy, and the antagonist, Arista, sees this clearly.

Some minor details have been changed, and because it takes place in a fictional country, this retelling does not heavily emphasize the modem aspect, but does mention present day inventions.

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THE STORY;

WHEN I WAS young, I grew up listening to fairy tales. I heard stories about princes that would sweep maidens off their feet and give them all they would dream of.

The older I got, the more I realized that those fairy tales were lies. They were just watered down versions of the true story, a gritty story about working for what you wanted. The Grimm brothers recorded the stories as tellers of ethics and morals, but over time, they have been twisted into tales of love at first sight and magic. My country has stories too, stories and fables, but they too have been corrupted into something that was not their intention.

One of my favorite movies as a child was The Little Mermaid- I thought how romantic it was, a girl that didn't belong escaped to another world. She fell in love with a prince, and somehow, they managed to stay together. Two people from such different worlds, a mermaid and a man, still stayed together.

But in the real version of The Little Mermaid, the prince marries the wrong girl. The mermaid watches from afar, broken-hearted as the one she loved loves another. She is given a choice: die herself or kill him. She cannot kill him, because to kill him is worse than killing herself, so she dies, dissolving into foam. And the prince only watches as the girl who loved him sacrificed herself for him. 

I think that's the best version: the truth. Sometimes, the prince loves the wrong girl. Sometimes, the mermaid doesn't swim back home or to her happy ending. Sometimes, there are endings, and they aren't always happy.

The older I got, the more I realized that princes are sometimes monsters, princesses are sometimes victims, and sometimes there are endings, but they aren't the endings you hoped for.

Sometimes, in the end, you find out the king is a monster. My king is a monster. And this is the tale of the damsel who slayed the monster, only to find out that sometimes, in defeating a monster, you turn into one as well. 

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