The VERY Messed Up Origins of The 12 Dancing Princesses | Fables Explained - Jon Solo

this episode is brought to you by Squarespace the all-in-one platform you can use to build your online identity in business what is going on everybody my name is John solo and this is messed up origins the show where I break down the often horrifying original versions of your favorite childhood stories I hope you're ready for this episode because it's what experts in the field of folklore call a doozy today's stories are all variations of the twelve dancing princesses and they are all bizarre they feature some evil princesses pulling Bill Cosby's other princesses being turned into sheep in a visit to a quaint little town called hell this is almost our 80th episode of messed up origins and it still never fails to amaze me what people thought of is children's stories back then it's almost as crazy somebody watching Jake Paul or Lele pons as content and saying that safe for kids like honestly though if you're planning on watching this episode with your kid you might want to consider locking them and the cupboard under the stairs until it's over because these tales get pretty intense however before we dive into what may be the strangest selection of stories to date I got to give a shout out to this week's sponsor Squarespace at this point everyone knows what Squarespace is they're an incredibly easy to use all-in-one platform where you can build a website for basically any purpose you can think of whether you're trying to sell some merchandise show off your art or build a virtual gallery full of pictures of Danny DeVito and who could blame you for wanting to do that they make the process super simple they have an entire selection of starter templates for you to choose from that they're always adding to as well as a wide variety of fonts and colors that you can change it will so your site ends up looking exactly how you picture it in your head you can buy domains through them at reasonable prices or even import ones you already own for free see I know literally nothing about coding so I've been very open about sharing my love for Squarespace and how helpful they were when I built my stop origins com if it weren't for their intuitive user interface and their customer support team ready and waiting on the rare occasion I had a question my site would probably be more of a joke than space gem com if you want to follow in my footsteps and try out Squarespace yourself just follow my link in the description or go to Squarespace comm slash John solo to start your free trial and use coupon code John solo to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain again a fantastic ad read that I know everybody watched and no one skipped over right anyway now that that's the way it's time for us to get started as always make sure you drop a like subscribe if you haven't already and most importantly enjoy so the story I want to start with today features twelve dancing princesses but it goes by another name the shoes that were danced to pieces this tale was written by our boys Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and was included in the second volume of their first collection of fairy tales in 1815 they were told the tale by a family friend and were the first to ever publish a story of this tale type a tu 306 the danced out shoes so that means their rendition is the oldest that we have record out it starts by introducing the reader to a king who had twelve beautiful daughters which is actually the most unrealistic part of the story in my opinion when you have that many kids there's just bound to be an ugly one it's science well all twelve of the king's daughter slept in the same bedroom and every night you would lock them in from the outside the strange thing besides them all sleeping in the same bedroom is when he'd greet them in the morning their shoes would all be torn to shreds or I'm sorry the story says they were danced to pieces so I should probably phrase it that way don't ask me how he knew they were torn up from specifically dancing though that's just something we've got to accept the princess is all denied but they were up all night dancing and ruining their shoes so the King made an announcement that anyone who helped them solve this mystery would get one of his daughter's hands in marriage and his throne when he died however if somebody volunteered and couldn't figure it out within three days they would be executed I think we can all agree that's a pretty harsh punishment to give someone who's trying to help you but I guess he was trying to motivate them apparently back then they hadn't heard of positive reinforcement well despite the risk there were many fine young men who volunteered but their investigations all went down the same way at night the man would post up right outside the girls bedroom door to make sure none of them left but inevitably he'd start to get tired and fall asleep and when he woke up the next day their shoes would all have holes then at the end of the three days when the volunteers still hadn't figured it out his head would be cut off yummy now he cut away to a former soldier who's walking into the King City when he stopped by a mysterious old woman who gives him some valuable advice that if he's trying to solve the mystery of the torn up shoes to not drink the glass of wine he's offered by the princess because it's laced with a sleeping potion like I said taking a page out of old dr. Huxtables book then the old lady hands him in a visit ability cloaks we can observe the girls without them knowing because there's no way he can abuse that power and the soldier heads to the castle once he arrives he volunteers to help with the investigation the King says ok and before you know it it's nighttime and the soldiers being offered some drugged wine by the oldest sister he accepts it but little did she know he had a sponge tied to his chin so when he held up the glass it absorbed all the wine a few minutes later he lays down starts snoring loudly as if he's asleep and the princess is all laugh at him for sealing his own fate they don't give a flying fart about this dude losing his life because of that when was the last time you heard a fairy tale where the princesses were this evil believing that he's unconscious they all proceeded to get ready for their nightly disco and then the oldest princess knocks on her bed causing it to sink into the ground and reveal a secret passageway the soldier follows the princesses into the passageway which leads to a forest full of trees with silver gold and diamond leaves and it's at this point the soldier almost blows his cover because he breaks off branches from the trees so he has proof of their shenanigans at one point he accidentally steps on the youngest princesses dressed too but when she calls out that something isn't right the oldest one calls her a snow goose and tells her to shut up personally I don't know what's so bad about being a snow goose but apparently that princess looks down on them eventually the girls arrive at a body of water where there's 12 boats waiting for them each rowed by a handsome prince the soldier sneakily joins the youngest princess on her bow in the prince comments that rowing the boat is so much harder tonight now on the other side of the water was a beautiful brightly illuminated castle where joyful music was playing and lo and behold each Prince proceeded to dance with his princess until 3:00 in the morning when their shoes had been torn to shreds now that the girls were essentially shoeless they had to go back home so the soldier rode with them across the lake then raced ahead so we could get back to his bed and faked being asleep before they got there and this next bit may surprise you but the soldier actually didn't report his findings to the king right away he decided to wait because he wanted to see the beautiful sight again he followed the girls to the castle for the next two nights and before his final journey back he snatched a goblet they were drinking wine out of as evidence on the last morning the soldiers stood before the king with the twelve princesses behind him and told them they were sneaking to an underground castle to dance with twelve Prince's naturally this intrigued the king so the soldier told him the whole story and showed them the broken branches and goblet as proof the princesses had no choice but to confess what they we're up - and the soldier was given his prize he took the oldest sister as his bride because in his own words he was not a young man anymore and they were married the same day then his punishment for their transgressions the prince has had as many days added to their curse as they had spent nights dancing with the princesses full disclosure the story never reveals what the princes curse actually was I'm assuming it's something related to being trapped in that underground castle but I have no idea how the princess is Dancing with them was supposed to help regardless that was the story of the shoes that were danced to pieces and I hope you enjoyed it like I said it's the oldest version of the story that we have written record of but there are other versions for example Andrew Lang's twelve dancing princesses from 1857 this seems to be the version that most people are familiar with it's very similar to the grimm brothers but it has a little more detail and the more mature aspects are toned down this one follows a farmhand who was a dream of marrying a princess someday and he gets a job working as a gardener on the castle grounds to up his chances he hears about a mystery surrounding the princesses and how every night their shoes end up with holes in them so he takes it upon himself to try and crack the case he hides under one of their beds to see what they're up to at night a risky move for sure and the rest plays out very similar to the Grimm's with him following them to an underground Castle and watching them dance in the moonlight some key differences in Andrew Lang's version though is there's no roofies involved in the suitors who came before the farmhand weren't killed when they couldn't figure out what was going on they just mysteriously disappeared as we all know do or die circumstances were pretty common in old fairy tales but editors and the Victorian era didn't appreciate them hence the change now normally I'd be pretty annoyed about a censorship like that but for once I can at least appreciate the reasoning because the Victorian era was a time when self-help was encouraged critics despised the idea that those who had strove and failed should be worse off than those who had never striven as a result the editors didn't want to punish the blokes who had tried to solve the mystery but failed because at least they try oh and one last fact about Lang's version I think you would appreciate it contains a princess and the pea reference when the narrator is describing what the farmhand heard about the princess as he says they were so very sensitive and of such truly royal blood that they would have felt at once the presence of a pea and their beds even if the mattresses had been laid over it apparently laying was a fan of Hans Christian Andersen's work anyway is messed up as the story was I made some bold promises back in this episode's intro and I plan to keep up so let's move on to our next fairy tale which makes the Grimm brothers version look like it was written by the Wiggles so this next story titled the three girls might be both the strangest and most messed up story that we cover today now that may be because it was found in a book called gypsy folktales but who's to say for sure in terms of the overall plot it's very similar to the past few stories we covered a king who in this version has three daughters has no idea how their shoes are getting ruined every night so he orders his assistant janko's to follow that but janko's fights off more than he can chew while spying on the three girls he finds out that they're being visited nightly by three Devils who take them through a trapdoor that leads them down to hell where they proceed to dance the night away apparently these broads never learned it's a bad idea to dance with the devil what makes this even more bizarre is they aren't just dancing though they're dancing on beds of knives and this is how their shoes get destroyed so fast then because we're just getting started on the weirdness The Devil's proceeded to lay the two oldest girls on a bed one at a time and go dancing in the sheets if you know what I mean this is wild janko's was hiding under the bed by the way I can't forget that detail the next day janko's reported his findings to the King and in response the King pulled out his rifle and shot his two oldest daughters dead and then cut them open so the Devils and their bellies would scatter all I can say is it's a good thing janko's wasn't lying the story isn't over yet though the King had his daughters buried in their graves guarded by soldiers but every night the soldiers would be ripped apart by the princess's spirits this had gone on for so long that the only people left to guard the graves were a new recruit in janko's they were terrified for their lives but lucky for them a wise old man came up to them before nightfall and said that when the coffins open up and the girl's spirits come out for Jenko sand the soldier to jump in the coffin themselves and stay there no matter what to make a long story short they did exactly that rendering the spirits attacks on them useless and by morning the Kings daughters were not just a lie but more beautiful than ever the king was so ecstatic when they all returned to the castle that he left janko's marry one daughter the soldier married the other and everyone lived happily ever after those gypsies man they write some good stories [Music] so this next tale Kate cracker nuts is from the British aisle and is a nother collected by Andrew Lang it's a mesh of the ATU 3:06 tail type as well as a tu 7-eleven the beautiful and the ugly twin you'll see why it fits there in just a minute this one is basically the twelve dancing princesses with the genders reverse and then evil stepmom thrown in the mix there's a king who has a daughter named Anne and his new wife the Queen has a daughter named Kate the Queen is jealous of Anne's famous good looks but Kate loves her new sister well the punish the girl for being so goddamn beautiful the Queen puts a curse on ants that her beautiful face is replaced by a sheep's head and Kate not knowing it's her own mother's fault thous to find the cure she wraps a cloth around Anne's head they leave home and they soon find a castle that's inhabited by a king and his two sons one of whom has come down with a strange illness that leaves him bedridden and what's even stranger is that anyone who agrees to watch the son overnight just disappears without a trace that this doesn't scare Kate who volunteers to be the night watcher in exchange for shelter for her and her sick sister now fast-forward to the middle of the night when the Prince rises up like The Manchurian Candidate gets stressed and rides his horse off into the forest all while looking like he's sleepwalking Kate follows him on her own horse for not just one but for three nights in a row and each time he leads her through a mysterious forest to a magnificent dance that's held under a green Hill apparently homeboys hanging out with some hobbits here's the thing the forest the prince leads her through is not just any forest it's inhabited by faeries and they happen to have exactly what Kate needs to solve all of her problems on her second night following the prince she steals a magic wand from a baby fairy and cures her sister sheep head with it and on the second night she steals a bird from that same baby fairy and cures the cursed Prince by cooking it and feeding it to him in the end they all return to the castle Kate marries the prince and marries his brother and they all live happily ever after I'll admit I didn't do that story the justice it deserves but we'll be talking about it again in the future as a featured fable so keep your eyes peeled for that as for this episode though that was the messed up origins of the twelve dancing princesses and a few other stories that it may have evolved into I hope you enjoyed it and learned yourself a little something in the process if that was the case I would really appreciate you dropping a like and subscribing to have more content just like this delivered to your sub box on a regular basis and sharing this video with anyone you know who likes this story as always the links to my social medias are also down below so just give those a follow if you want to stay updated on messed up origins news suggest a topic or just say hello I also want to give a special thank you to those who saw my post on Instagram about needing more art for this video and took it upon themselves to whip up some beautiful drawings at the very last minute the solo fam is lucky to have you guys and I appreciate your help with this one well that about does it for this episode so I'll be seeing you guys next week with even more messed up origins until then my name is John solo and remember john chat first [Music]

Channel: Jon Solo

Views: 515,137

Rating: 4.9780121 out of 5

Keywords: Messed Up Origins, Messed Up Origins Jon Solo, Jon Solo, Messed Up Origins 12 Dancing Princesses, 12 Dancing Princesses, grimm brothers stories, 12 dancing princesses grimm brothers, 12 dancing princesses original story, fables explained, jon solo fables explained, disney explained, disney explained jon solo, mythology explained jon solo, messed up origins philoctetes, messed up origins snow white, kate crackernuts story, kate crackernuts, messed up origins bluebeard

Id: 6a0_fDndY5g

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 24 2020