What's your favorite headcanon?

[Knaight]

Huge difference to Greek myths here.

Greek tragedy went to show how you can't escape your fate because Mankind itself can't, since there are higher powers in the cosmos that determine mankind's and each man's and woman's fate.
For example, the gods. You don't mess with a God because they will always win, and usually their revenge is awful.

As far as I know, the Sheherazade story is 100% natural with no supernatural theme - so she is a human among human made misery.

But I might be wrong. It's been awhile, I read better stuff now :-)

From the perspective of an ordinary person the gap between an absolute monarch and a god is pretty academic. The absolute monarch is still effectively a force of nature in terms of power, and while Sheherazade succeeded by trickery that's also not necessarily a meaningful difference.

Plus, the frame story for a folk tale anthology (and by "a" I mean "any one of several versions of, because folklore") involving a highly successful trickster archetype is pretty brilliant.

[Bohandas]

Adventure Time and Infinity Train take place in the same universe. The Infinity Train and the Dungeon Train are the same train at different times. Or at least share the same builder or are somehow otherwise affiliated.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

One detail of correction: in the original, the king was only remarrying once a month. He'd get married, enjoy the honeymoon, then execute the bride before she could betray him. At some point a transcriptionist compressed the time frame to daily.

Also, the king is a blind idiot if he couldn't notice his wife was pregnant despite sitting next to her every night.

I'm not sure if this makes the story less horrifying, but it certainly makes the timescale more manageable, and it also makes the "she just tells stories until the king dies" explanation a lot more likely. 1001 months is more than a normal human lifetime*.

*source: in Dutch there's a song called "26000 dagen" (days), where the titular amount of days is roughly the lifetime of a modern human, with a month being more than 26 days, 1001 months is more than a human lifetime. Pop culture math longcuts!

[Fyraltari]

I'm not sure if this makes the story less horrifying, but it certainly makes the timescale more manageable, and it also makes the "she just tells stories until the king dies" explanation a lot more likely. 1001 months is more than a normal human lifetime*.

*source: in Dutch there's a song called "26000 dagen" (days), where the titular amount of days is roughly the lifetime of a modern human, with a month being more than 26 days, 1001 months is more than a human lifetime. Pop culture math longcuts!

1,001 months is over 83 years.

Edit: However that doesn't mesh with the story: for one it is called the 1,001 nights, for two: the whole concept is that the king doesn't want to kill her without knowing the end of each story and I don't see how she could postpone it a whole month each time.

[Rogar Demonblud]

She isn't. She's just buying another day each time. Presumably she started the storytelling before the end of the month, so he'd be used to it (and she could figure out what he likes).

[Themrys]

Speaking of Sheherazade, I have recently came to think about during a Wikipedia delve.
Does anyone but me notice what kind of a mess the ending actually is? If it is supposed to be a happy ending, anyway.

"And then the hero got married to the serial rapist and murderer guy, but he *decided* to not murder her (anytime soon..... He still has the power to, should he decide he wants to at a different point).
Hooray!


Maybe fairytales like this one are reasons many girls have such severely-messed up ideologies how life and "being happy" is supposed to work?

"But I can change him!"
Yes, right
*headbangagainstwall*

I want this story genderswapped to see the outcry =)

No, the reason why many girls have such severely messed-up ideologies how life and "being happy" is supposed to work is patriarchy. The same patriarchy that enables men to murder women with impunity.
The only reason this way of thinking isn't a good survival mechanism anymore is that, very recently, women get to decide if and whom to marry. Girls who think they can change a man for the better are a bit like hostages with Stockholm Syndrome who got freed and still haven't gotten rid of Stockholme Syndrome. A hundred years or so ago, the hope of being able to change their horrid husbands was all that kept some women from jumping out of the window.

Sure, it's a thing that was culturally transmitted, but Fifty Shades of Grey is a much better example for that than Shehezerade.


Shehezerade wasn't messed up in the head, she just didn't have a choice. Some stories frame it as her father not having been able to find yet another girl for the king to murder, so his life was in danger, some frame it as her wanting to save the girls of the realm. In any case, I never read an edition where she had romantic notions about loving the king. She was quite aware he was a rapist and mass murderer. Changing him simpy was the only option.
And it is not even really framed (in most of the versions I know) as her thinking he can be changed, it is mostly her stalling for time, saving another girl each night.

And if you look closely, no kings ever get killed in European fairytales, either. Even those kings who are really horrible villains. In the original of Sleeping Beauty, the prince rapes her, but the villain isn't he, it's his actual wife, who is understandably angry when his rape victim and illegitimate children turn up at court.
And then there's the king who wants to have his wife executed for crimes that were invented by his mother - guess who the villain is here. Not the king. He's totally innocent.


It may have to do with people seeing kings as being blessed by god ... or with simply not wanting to be known as that person who tells tales in which kings are killed. Wouldn't have been good for their survival.


A genderswapped version of Shehezerade wouldn't work. No queen would take a series of male strangers who know they will be murdered in the morning to her bedroom and send her guards away. I mean, sure, men would complain a lot about this guy who married a mass murderer and didn't immediately kill her, but I don't think you could make the original premise work, even.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

The new Hellboy takes place in the same universe as From Dusk Till Dawn.

Spoiler

Show

The wrestling vampire in the opening scene of Hellboy helps explain the relative lack of male vampires in From Dusk. They run other entertainment venues besides the strip joint. That's also how they can repopulate after particularly disastrous nights, backup vampires.

[Son of A Lich!]

As mentioned before, keep in mind both that 1001 nights is not only figurative, but also that it's been translated between various languages to reach where it is today.

Most pre-movable type printing press languages don't have quantitative numeric systems for the common people. It simply wasn't worth while to learn basic math to, say, a farm hand. People didn't live nearly as long as they do today, and more importantly, it's just easier to get away with a logarithmic number system. This is why 40 keeps popping up in the old testament (it rained for forty days and forty nights, for example, in the story of Noah), the word being used in the native language of the time period didn't have a quantitative value associated to it. So, in translation, they just substituted it for 40 because it was 'about' right.

This is also why people seem to live for an absurdly high number of years in the old testament. Job is something like 200+ years old and that's just one of the more extreme examples. From the original texts, its more likely that his age was something akin to saying "Older then Old-Old" and had to get translated somehow into the quantitative system that English uses.

This is part of the reason why Dozen is used in English even though 12 is another word for it. Dozen is part of a logarithmic system Old English use to use, and was adapted to mean 12 later (Because 12 divides evenly into 2, 3, 4 and 6, where 10 doesn't).

Take all this with a grain of salt, I remember reading on it way back in the day (Hero with a Thousand Faces, maybe? That sounds right, but I'm not sure) and it blew my mind then. So the specifics are likely wrong, but the general gist probably holds some weight. ... Probably... I think... Gods, now I don't know...

[Eldan]

And if you look closely, no kings ever get killed in European fairytales, either. Even those kings who are really horrible villains. In the original of Sleeping Beauty, the prince rapes her, but the villain isn't he, it's his actual wife, who is understandably angry when his rape victim and illegitimate children turn up at court.

Prince Popiel of Poland and by extension,
Bluebeard and by extension, Conomor the Cursed
Macbeth
And of course Greek Myth: Oedipus, Tantalos (if getting killed by the gods counts), Polydectes, Priam, Minos
The Samarian Kings in the Bible
And the Roman Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. The Roman Republic was founded on a mythological kingslaying.

Also, there's rather a lot of elven kings and dwarven kings getting slaughtered, but I suppose those don't really count.

It is quite rare for Christian Kings though.

[Themrys]

Prince Popiel of Poland and by extension,
Bluebeard and by extension, Conomor the Cursed
Macbeth
And of course Greek Myth: Oedipus, Tantalos (if getting killed by the gods counts), Polydectes, Priam, Minos
The Samarian Kings in the Bible
And the Roman Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. The Roman Republic was founded on a mythological kingslaying.

Also, there's rather a lot of elven kings and dwarven kings getting slaughtered, but I suppose those don't really count.

It is quite rare for Christian Kings though.

Myths don't count, those are about real kingslayings. (or symbolic ones, but either way, Greece had a "democracy" of sorts, so they wouldn't have had the same attitude to kingslaying) Macbeth is Shakespeare, not a fairytale.

You might have a point with Bluebeard, but I am not sure that was a king. I recall him being portrayed as nobleman, or perhaps just very rich, but there might be several versions.

My point being: There's precedence for kings getting away with extremely evil deeds while being excused by the narrative and/or redeemed (or treated as poor victims of an evil woman's schemes) in many other tales, not just Shezehrade (have I written that right? I thought I knew how to spell the name), and it is very likely not because the woman telling those tales wanted to excuse male violence, and more because kings tend to not be happy about the common people telling tales in which common people murder kings. And partly because people knew that killing a king, even if successful, would - for a commoner - likely result in being executed by the heir, so they would assume their heroes would have the same risk-benefit calculation.

It is possible that this is especially true for kings in monotheistic societies who claimed to be chosen by their one and only god, but I suspect it is more about how absolutistic the regime is, and how established the nobility - in a society where upon killing the king you could become the new king without further qualification, kingkilling would have been more acceptable.


I have also always suspected that the "poor girl marries prince" was never, originally, about love, and more about money. Probably a result of true love being very rare even if you married a commoner, so marrying a prince and getting your own bedroom would have been much more desirable. That would explain why those girls usually forgive and forget the most horrible behaviours by their husbands (not like they would have a choice) and it is treated as happy ending.

[Eldan]

Myths don't count, those are about real kingslayings. (or symbolic ones, but either way, Greece had a "democracy" of sorts, so they wouldn't have had the same attitude to kingslaying) Macbeth is Shakespeare, not a fairytale.

You might have a point with Bluebeard, but I am not sure that was a king. I recall him being portrayed as nobleman, or perhaps just very rich, but there might be several versions.

Uhm, "Greece" did not have a democracy. Especially not in the Archaic period when the stories take place and often were first told. Greece never had a single government and many of the city states were some kind of monarchy. Even those that were Republics, like Athens, might be more classified as aristocracies or oligarchies than democracies.

And Shakespeare's stories are almost all either based on history or older tales. As in Mac Bethad mac Findlaích, King of Alba.

My point being: There's precedence for kings getting away with extremely evil deeds while being excused by the narrative and/or redeemed (or treated as poor victims of an evil woman's schemes) in many other tales, not just Shezehrade (have I written that right? I thought I knew how to spell the name), and it is very likely not because the woman telling those tales wanted to excuse male violence, and more because kings tend to not be happy about the common people telling tales in which common people murder kings. And partly because people knew that killing a king, even if successful, would - for a commoner - likely result in being executed by the heir, so they would assume their heroes would have the same risk-benefit calculation.

It is possible that this is especially true for kings in monotheistic societies who claimed to be chosen by their one and only god, but I suspect it is more about how absolutistic the regime is, and how established the nobility - in a society where upon killing the king you could become the new king without further qualification, kingkilling would have been more acceptable.


I have also always suspected that the "poor girl marries prince" was never, originally, about love, and more about money. Probably a result of true love being very rare even if you married a commoner, so marrying a prince and getting your own bedroom would have been much more desirable. That would explain why those girls usually forgive and forget the most horrible behaviours by their husbands (not like they would have a choice) and it is treated as happy ending.

But yeah, I do agree with your general point. I didn't mean to contradict you. I mostly just wanted to see if I could find any actual story. I was certain that some of the Grimm tales had kings being killed, but now I can't find any.

Your last passage is especially interesting too, yeah. If marriage is overwhelmingly an economic institution, and arranged by the family, not the partners (and especially not the woman), Romance takes a far backseat. (It's also interesting how many of the medieval courtly romances are never consumated, or are even between single knights and married women. A cynical look at them might be "sure you can pine after some gallant knight instead of your noble husband, as long as you don't do anything about it".)

[Sapphire Guard]

Everyone at the table in Casino Royale is an intelligence operative of some description. All the players except Le Chiffre are spies.

[sktarq]

Also that 1997's Event Horizon movie takes places in the Warhammer 40K universe

And as for "romance"
It basically didn't exist, hell amour (as apposed to philia, agape, eros, etc), didn't exist as a common idea in and of itself until the S French bards made it up in the middle ages. Marriage was rarely seen in stories that way in large part because of that. I have seen it well argued that "The West" was born from the development of that very idea and that because it has now gotten into the bones of our society we see its lack as alien and assume it has always been there.

And the whole single knight/married woman also was being upheld for the pinning knight's devotion as well. Alot was about the interplay between social duties and recognizing the emotions....what could or could not be allowed. (Sure the knight being a knight was certainly freer to indulge elsewhere in the meantime but that is not what the STORIES were about)

[Dienekes]

Your last passage is especially interesting too, yeah. If marriage is overwhelmingly an economic institution, and arranged by the family, not the partners (and especially not the woman), Romance takes a far backseat. (It's also interesting how many of the medieval courtly romances are never consumated, or are even between single knights and married women. A cynical look at them might be "sure you can pine after some gallant knight instead of your noble husband, as long as you don't do anything about it".)

So this is a fun thing I studied awhile back. And it's a bit more complicated. Basically, to get into history a bit in medieval times. There was a really weird struggle for control between early germanic marriage practices and church edicts. Basically early medieval marriages were supposed to be entirely based on the authority of the father. Daughters were more or less a bargaining chip for economic and social agreements. The church essentially tried to push the idea of vows being between the husband and wife as opposed to between husband and father. There were even medieval church writers all the way back in the 8th century claiming that marriages not based on the consent of the newlyweds was invalid (and this reasoning was used in cases for divorce a few times, and brought up by Henry VIII before basically everyone shouted him down saying they all heard him say the vows) and that verbal agreements between lovers without father's consent was good enough for a marriage.

However, the tangible benefits of marriage still retained their historic economic and social aspects. And since families still had a huge influence over their children often times pressures to marry for the good of the family became arguments for marriage. But this did give females (and males) an out. Essentially, they could refuse and if pressures to marry became insurmountable could choose to take up residence in a nunnery. And then leave if they so wished. One of the more amusing stories of this is Judith and Sir Roger. Essentially Roger was a landless knight, while Judith was the niece of the English king. They fell in love. Roger promised to win lands to be worthy of her, and she refused to marry the freaking heir to the French throne and took up in a nunnery until Roger returned.

What's even more fascinating, is that these events predate the chivalric romance by centuries! This is incredibly important because it actually changed people's ideas on the development of the emotions of love as we see them in the modern day (emotional history is really cynical guys, you have no idea). Which gets into the chivalric romances. Frankly a lot of them are based on two things. 1) A woman falling in love with someone she met after her marriage and how "painfully beautiful" their tragedy is. But honestly, mostly just stands up as a reason why divorce laws grew laxer over time. 2) A knight not of the proper rank falling in love with a woman of higher standing and working very hard to win her hand.

Now what I find interesting, but probably not all that surprising. Is the historical (not fictional romantic) stories of women refusing powerful people's hands in marriage actually becomes less prominent over time. As noble holdings were consolidated through the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period, plus the rising of absolute monarchies (which weren't really a thing in the medieval period) and the pressure the lords had became greater refusal of the lord declined. But, so too did the chivalric romance in basically everywhere but England.

Edit: I should probably actually say something relevant to the thread.

Ugh. Finn from New Star Wars was never kidnapped as a child. He lied about it to get sympathy from people who had no idea what he was talking about. That's why he doesn't act anything like a child soldier.

[Rogar Demonblud]

The only stories I remember about killing off kings usually has them doing something to lose the Mandate of Heaven first. Which means they're also cautionary tales telling the monarch not to get too far out of line.

[Fyraltari]

Ugh. Finn from New Star Wars was never kidnapped as a child. He lied about it to get sympathy from people who had no idea what he was talking about. That's why he doesn't act anything like a child soldier.

How come his file seen in TFA has a picture of a small child then?

[Mightymosy]

No, the reason why many girls have such severely messed-up ideologies how life and "being happy" is supposed to work is patriarchy. The same patriarchy that enables men to murder women with impunity.
The only reason this way of thinking isn't a good survival mechanism anymore is that, very recently, women get to decide if and whom to marry. Girls who think they can change a man for the better are a bit like hostages with Stockholm Syndrome who got freed and still haven't gotten rid of Stockholme Syndrome. A hundred years or so ago, the hope of being able to change their horrid husbands was all that kept some women from jumping out of the window.

Sure, it's a thing that was culturally transmitted, but Fifty Shades of Grey is a much better example for that than Shehezerade.


Shehezerade wasn't messed up in the head, she just didn't have a choice. Some stories frame it as her father not having been able to find yet another girl for the king to murder, so his life was in danger, some frame it as her wanting to save the girls of the realm. In any case, I never read an edition where she had romantic notions about loving the king. She was quite aware he was a rapist and mass murderer. Changing him simpy was the only option.
And it is not even really framed (in most of the versions I know) as her thinking he can be changed, it is mostly her stalling for time, saving another girl each night.

And if you look closely, no kings ever get killed in European fairytales, either. Even those kings who are really horrible villains. In the original of Sleeping Beauty, the prince rapes her, but the villain isn't he, it's his actual wife, who is understandably angry when his rape victim and illegitimate children turn up at court.
And then there's the king who wants to have his wife executed for crimes that were invented by his mother - guess who the villain is here. Not the king. He's totally innocent.


It may have to do with people seeing kings as being blessed by god ... or with simply not wanting to be known as that person who tells tales in which kings are killed. Wouldn't have been good for their survival.


A genderswapped version of Shehezerade wouldn't work. No queen would take a series of male strangers who know they will be murdered in the morning to her bedroom and send her guards away. I mean, sure, men would complain a lot about this guy who married a mass murderer and didn't immediately kill her, but I don't think you could make the original premise work, even.

I think we agree that patriarchy was the overarching problem, but I disagree with a couple of your statements here.

1. Sheherazade having no choice.
In the version I read she married the king completely voluntarily. She easily had a free pass, given there were enough women for the king to slay, and she was the vizier's (of minister or whatever official) daughter.
So, she was clearly depicted as voluntary hero of the story.
MY problem is what the patriarch writers of the time chose to depict as "victory" for this female hero.
Wikipedia seems to agree with me on her entering voluntarily, although different versions may well exist.
2. I don't Quite remember kings being as immortal as some of the guys here and you.
Quick Google finds this gem:


Duban/Douban (Arabic: دوبان‎) appears in The tale of the vizier and the Sage Duban and is a man of extraordinary talent with the ability to read Greek, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Byzantine, Syriac, Hebrew and Sanskrit, as well as a deep understanding of botany, philosophy and natural history to name a few.

He cures King Yunan from leprosy. Duban works his medicine in an unusual way: he creates a mallet and ball to match, filling the handle of the mallet with his medicine. When the king plays with the ball and mallet, he perspires, thus absorbing the medicine through the sweat from his hand into his bloodstream. After a short bath and a sleep, the King is cured, and rewards Duban with wealth and royal honor.

Yunan's vizier, however, becomes jealous of Duban, and persuades Yunan into believing that Duban will later produce a medicine to kill him. The king eventually decides to punish Duban for his alleged treachery, and summons him to be beheaded. After unsuccessfully pleading for his life, Duban offers one of his prized books to Yunan to impart the rest of his wisdom. Yunan agrees, and the next day, Duban is beheaded, and Yunan begins to open the book, finding that no printing exists on the paper. After paging through for a time, separating the stuck leaves each time by first wetting his finger in his mouth, he begins to feel ill. Yunan realises that the leaves of the book were poisoned, and as he dies, the king understands that this was his punishment for betraying the one that once saved his life.


Notice an example of a KING WHO DIES, even as result for doing injustice done to his underlings!
Notice also that this is an example way of how Shehezarade could have done it, by poison! Many murders done by women are done with poison, because physical violence often wouldn't work as men are often stronger.

And know what? Appearantly this story is ONE OF THE 1001 Nights stories!

Not only ARE kings dying in Arabian/Indian stories, not only are they dying as mere punishment, not only are they being murdered by people below them. No, this story IS EVEN TOLD BY SHEHEZARADE HERSELF.

So the argument that killing a king was simply not imaginable for people of that time (as someone else wrote before your post) feels very silly to me.

I read lots of stuff when I was younger, and never ever did I get the idea that kings couldn't be killed (which is what makes it soooo much different to Greek myths involving gods).

3. Genders wrapped version:
Interestingly, other cultures made it better.
Read the Greek myth of Eos, if you want.
The Greek writers were not much better regarding women, but still. A little.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Darths & Droids is canon. This is actually how all the Star Wars movies played out.

[Mightymosy]

Darths & Droids is canon. This is actually how all the Star Wars movies played out.

There is one similar photo story for Lord of the Rings which I find even funnier :-)

[comicshorse]

Notice an example of a KING WHO DIES, even as result for doing injustice done to his underlings!
Notice also that this is an example way of how Shehezarade could have done it, by poison! Many murders done by women are done with poison, because physical violence often wouldn't work as men are often stronger.

The sage/doctor working in his laboratory on a medicine is perfectly normal, the woman who just got forced into marriage with the expectation of imminent execution asking for a laboratory to work on a medicine is not going to fly.
Killing a king is not just the matter of killing a man its killing all the people who exist to protect him. Wether they are protecting him because they feel its the will of the gods he rule, they are protecting their own power or just reckon his heir will have them all executed for failing in their duty is irrelevant. Everybody in court, probably literally everybody the queen meets is watching for a threat to the King

There is one similar photo story for Lord of the Rings which I find even funnier :-)

DM of the rings. Brilliant stuff

https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612

[Tzardok]

I remember an European fairy tale about an antagonist king who got cursed in the end to eternally ferry people over a river: The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

The sage/doctor working in his laboratory on a medicine is perfectly normal, the woman who just got forced into marriage with the expectation of imminent execution asking for a laboratory to work on a medicine is not going to fly.

Another and quite possibly more important difference: Duban only gets away with poisoning the king because wait, he doesn't, he's already dead. Sheherazade presumably doesn't want to die. So those are not quite the same stories. (She also presumably doesn't want to see a civil war break out or such, because that would still bring suffering to many of the young women she's trying to save with her storytelling. I have no idea if Duban had any similar moral qualms.) ((As stated before, I'm not saying she's right to not want that. With the king being such a monster there's a decent case to be made that a few years of full on anarchy could actually be the better option.))

Darths & Droids is canon. This is actually how all the Star Wars movies played out.

I wouldn't go that far. But I definitely believe that the DM's as of yet unrevealed name is George. Or Lucas.

[Mightymosy]

The sage/doctor working in his laboratory on a medicine is perfectly normal, the woman who just got forced into marriage with the expectation of imminent execution asking for a laboratory to work on a medicine is not going to fly.
Killing a king is not just the matter of killing a man its killing all the people who exist to protect him. Wether they are protecting him because they feel its the will of the gods he rule, they are protecting their own power or just reckon his heir will have them all executed for failing in their duty is irrelevant. Everybody in court, probably literally everybody the queen meets is watching for a threat to the King




DM of the rings. Brilliant stuff

https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612

AGAIN, she is NOT forced into marriage!!!!!

She does it voluntarily!

And she doesn't even need to prep the poison herself.

Guess where she got the 1001 nights stories from?
Her sister helped her.
The same sister who could presumably also obtain poison (from outside the palace walls, mind you).
Heck, have her God damned FATHER help her purchase some poison!!
She had 1001 days to somehow obtain poison, she had 1001 nights to give him said poison, and she had someone who could help her.

Nothing in the story says it couldn't have worked.
The author simply didn't think that she should do it, and so she didn't.

Nothing about kings that can't ever be killed.

People argued that back then people couldn't even Imagine a king could be killed, and that is why killing That king wasn't ever an option.
To this I object because the very same story has a king that is indeed killed in a way that fits VERY well with a method that Sheherazade could have tried, if the author(s) had wanted her to.

She didn't, not because it was unthinkable. She didn't, because the author found it to better to send the message he sent: "Woman should appease her violent husband and then all is well."

[Lvl 2 Expert]

the very same story has a king that is indeed killed in a way that fits VERY well with a method that Sheherazade could have tried, if the author(s) had wanted her to.

Except that guy is totally dead by the end of his story. That's the only reason he's not punished for the poisoning. Being dead tends to be almost as much of a bummer to a happy ending as being married to a murderous psychopath is.

[comicshorse]

AGAIN, she is NOT forced into marriage!!!!!

She does it voluntarily!

My bad

And she doesn't even need to prep the poison herself.

Guess where she got the 1001 nights stories from?
Her sister helped her.
The same sister who could presumably also obtain poison (from outside the palace walls, mind you).
Heck, have her God damned FATHER help her purchase some poison!!

Possible but still suspicious for a noble lady to be buying poison particularly ones in their position.
Also very dangerous for them.
And that's before we get to the point that its very possible the entire family is dead anyway if a close relative commits Regicide. Something it seems unlikely a woman who sacrificed her life to save strangers is going to want

She had 1001 days to somehow obtain poison, she had 1001 nights to give him said poison, and she had someone who could help her.

Difficult to obtain, difficult to administer (before we even get into tasters ) and then how much ? Too much and its taste will be obvious and the King won't eat and too little and you'll just make him sick
I'm not saying its not possible I'm just pointing out its a LOT more difficult to do than it appears at first glance

[Mightymosy]

I don't know why you people keep on discussing how "probable" or how "dangerous" things are.

We are talking about a fairy tale.
It is ABOUT things that are hard to believe.

At any rate, what do YOU call her ACTUAL plan???
Reasonable?
Likely to succeed?

Even If you buy into the author's reasoning (marriage to rapist and serial murderer equals to happy end), the entire point is that she did something very brave and risky, simply because she very much risked her life with her plan.

So I really don't understand any of your concerns with any poisoning plan.

She absolutely would not have been the first person who survived assassinating a king. There are often successors who appreciate that, are there not?
Especially in a Fairy Tale, where the author can simply say that there are......
There is simply nothing stopping the author from writing:
So she successfully poisoned the murderous king, but nobody but her sister, who gave her the poison, suspected anything.
Since the king was so mean, everyone secretly sighed for relief (especially people with daughters who were still alive. Oh and people with murdered daughters insta-fist-pumped, by the way).
One palace guard found an empty poison vial in the Queen's room, but you know what? He also had sister, who used to be wife 86, so he chose to stfu.
The vizier became king (remember, the king didn't have any heir due to murdering anyone who could theoretically produce him any :facepalm:)

And they lived happily ever after.

[comicshorse]

She absolutely would not have been the first person who survived assassinating a king. There are often successors who appreciate that, are there not?

I believe Kings tend to take the view that letting Regicides get away with it sets a very bad precedent for them.

" Do not rely on the gratitude of Kings "

[HandofShadows]

Also that 1997's Event Horizon movie takes places in the Warhammer 40K universe

Wait, that NOT canon yet?

[Beleriphon]

I also like the idea that the Archdemons in Dragon Age are the disappeared elven gods. Though I am not fully up to date with the series and don't know if this has been proven wrong yet.

But it should be true!

Spoiler

Show

The disappeared elven gods were just super powerful elf wizard jerk bags that Solas as Fen'Harel rebelled against. Flemeth apparently was holding part of Mythal's power/soul something which Solas retrieves/steals at the end of DA:I. Fen'Harel actually created the veil which ended the ancient elven civilization.

[Mightymosy]

I believe Kings tend to take the view that letting Regicides get away with it sets a very bad precedent for them.

" Do not rely on the gratitude of Kings "

As I said, daddy vizier can become the next king.
Or, she could rule herself as Supreme queen.
If it can happen in real life, why not in a fairy tale?
There have been queens, you know.