Fairy tale gay

Please note: This article was originally published in October 2023.

Once upon a time, there wasn’t a single queer person in the world, so there was no need to talk about them in stories…

Wait, what?

Image: Walter Crane illustration of Faithful Heinrich (right) and his prince

For as long as humans have had voices, folk and fairy tales have been spoken aloud around the fire.

Of course we are – they’re ‘classic’ fairy tales with catchy tunes. But it wouldn’t feel right to me to name only younger readers as the intended audience for my fairy tale, because the adults who influenced me as a child would have needed to hear its messages in order to pass them on to me. But someone decided to write them down with ink on a page, and while society continued to change and evolve, the stories dried, dark as a stain.

However, our fascination with them has remained.

Turn a few hundred pages forward in the history books, and we find ourselves in a time where queers are more able to make themselves known (though certainly not universally); and we’re still picking up The Brothers Grimm.

I wrote the story that I needed to read, about acceptance—not only of others but also myself. I hadn’t discovered everything about myself and maybe I still haven’t now, at 29. It was all too clear in the story that I had not completely figured out my genderqueer identity when I first wrote it. And it can inspire adults to be those supportive people to the children around them.

I love fairy tales, too: these fascinating windows into an uncanny archaic mindset. It’s annoying, but at least the dragon is polite.

But when the dragon hoards a person, that’s a step too far. Thank goodness he turned back into the handsome prince he once was when you violently threw him against the wall! We only meet Heinrich when the prince and princess have found their happily ever after.

And sure, it is suited for children and middle-grade readers, but I think the story will speak to adults just as much. I love to question gender constructs, to question justifications, to question what it is that we should be aspiring to.

“Have you heard the one about…? Most (queer) people I know who are around my age experience moments of nostalgia where we grab a book that we wish we could have had as a child, or a teenager, or three years ago when we were struggling to make sense of our identity—because the media we had access to when we were younger did not contain any, or barely any, LGBTQIA+ representation, and even if the subject ever came up, the adults we knew might not have acknowledged that this could be us.

I hope that The Dragon of Ynys can be one of those moments of nostalgia and comfort for some of us.

Eh, Belle?

We’re so enraptured, even (or especially) by the sanitised versions Disney gives us. Thank you for supporting independent bookshops!

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