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Oct. 26th, 2010 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsOnce On a Time is a sort of fairy tale, except it's the sort of fairy tale in which the author is constantly explaining that he knows noted historian Roger Scurvilegs would disagree with him on this point in his seventeen-volume history, but honestly Roger Scurvilegs, while very well-intentioned, is nonetheless a bit stuffy and anyway the author suspects him of plagiarizing that bit from King Merriwig. Besides Roger Scurvilegs, it features the following principal characters:
Countess Belvane: The villain of the piece, except the author is totally in love with her, and is not afraid to admit that he thinks everyone else should be also. The Countess is scheming to marry the King of Euralia, and also duping the kingdom out of quite a lot of money through various bureaucratic schemes such as pretending to administer to a nonexistent army, but this is mostly because she is addicted to the habit of throwing large bags of money out of carriages at passersby. She also writes poetry in multicolored ink.
The Kings of Euralia and Barodia: AT WAR. The King of Euralia once encountered a wicked fairy, but got out of it by being placidly cheerful as he was turned into various small animals until the fairy threw up her hands and wandered off in disgust. The King of Barodia has very impressive ginger whiskers, and has to manufacture a temper to go along with them. They both have magic swords and capes of darkness, and both very cunningly once impersonated swineherds while out walking the battlefields at night and were able to fool a REAL SWINEHERD. (Spoiler: neither of them actually encountered a real swineherd.)
Princess Hyacinth: Seventeen years old, beautiful, etc. She wouldn't mind the Countess Belvane being evil and cheating her out of money so much, if it wasn't that the Countess Belvane also made her feel like a twelve-year-old who has turned in her homework late. "I feel like this myself," explains our narrator sympathetically, "when I have an interview with my publishers, and Roger Scurvilegs (upon the same subject) drags in a certain uncle of his before whom (so he says) he always appears at his worst. It is a common experience."
Wiggs: Princess Hyacinth's handmaiden; approximately twelve years old. She has a magic ring that she would like to use to wish to dance like a fairy! But in order to activate it she has to spend a day being either ALL GOOD or ALL BAD, and apparently making Countess Belvane an apple-pie bed does not cut it.
Woggs: Smaller and less refined than Wiggs; calls everybody 'Mum'. The entirety of Countess Belvane's Army of Amazons. The narrator finds her difficult to explain, and is sulky about it: "it is a terrible thing for an author to have a lot of people running about his book without any invitation at all."
Prince Udo: Princess Hyacinth calls him in to be properly heroic and to help her deal with Countess Belvane. Countess Belvane finds out, which leads her to magically wish, with a terrible smile in her eyes, that something very humorous will happen to him on his journey. Something does.
Coronel: Prince Udo's Designated Wingman, Praise-Singer-Of, Etc., and rather tired of it.
In the introduction, A. A. Milne says that whenever people complimented him on his books, he would automatically respond "BUT YOU HAVEN'T READ THE BEST ONE!" And this is true for most people, because Once On a Time is a weird not-quite-children's-book that has very rarely been in print and is now emphatically out of it. But it is available on Project Gutenberg! And, I mean, either you're going to trust A. A. Milne when he tells you which book is his best one, or you aren't, but personally I grew up on it, and I suspect it had a lot to do with forming my taste for fairy tale satire and witty pseudo-history, and on a reread last week I still love it passionately.
Countess Belvane: The villain of the piece, except the author is totally in love with her, and is not afraid to admit that he thinks everyone else should be also. The Countess is scheming to marry the King of Euralia, and also duping the kingdom out of quite a lot of money through various bureaucratic schemes such as pretending to administer to a nonexistent army, but this is mostly because she is addicted to the habit of throwing large bags of money out of carriages at passersby. She also writes poetry in multicolored ink.
The Kings of Euralia and Barodia: AT WAR. The King of Euralia once encountered a wicked fairy, but got out of it by being placidly cheerful as he was turned into various small animals until the fairy threw up her hands and wandered off in disgust. The King of Barodia has very impressive ginger whiskers, and has to manufacture a temper to go along with them. They both have magic swords and capes of darkness, and both very cunningly once impersonated swineherds while out walking the battlefields at night and were able to fool a REAL SWINEHERD. (Spoiler: neither of them actually encountered a real swineherd.)
Princess Hyacinth: Seventeen years old, beautiful, etc. She wouldn't mind the Countess Belvane being evil and cheating her out of money so much, if it wasn't that the Countess Belvane also made her feel like a twelve-year-old who has turned in her homework late. "I feel like this myself," explains our narrator sympathetically, "when I have an interview with my publishers, and Roger Scurvilegs (upon the same subject) drags in a certain uncle of his before whom (so he says) he always appears at his worst. It is a common experience."
Wiggs: Princess Hyacinth's handmaiden; approximately twelve years old. She has a magic ring that she would like to use to wish to dance like a fairy! But in order to activate it she has to spend a day being either ALL GOOD or ALL BAD, and apparently making Countess Belvane an apple-pie bed does not cut it.
Woggs: Smaller and less refined than Wiggs; calls everybody 'Mum'. The entirety of Countess Belvane's Army of Amazons. The narrator finds her difficult to explain, and is sulky about it: "it is a terrible thing for an author to have a lot of people running about his book without any invitation at all."
Prince Udo: Princess Hyacinth calls him in to be properly heroic and to help her deal with Countess Belvane. Countess Belvane finds out, which leads her to magically wish, with a terrible smile in her eyes, that something very humorous will happen to him on his journey. Something does.
Coronel: Prince Udo's Designated Wingman, Praise-Singer-Of, Etc., and rather tired of it.
In the introduction, A. A. Milne says that whenever people complimented him on his books, he would automatically respond "BUT YOU HAVEN'T READ THE BEST ONE!" And this is true for most people, because Once On a Time is a weird not-quite-children's-book that has very rarely been in print and is now emphatically out of it. But it is available on Project Gutenberg! And, I mean, either you're going to trust A. A. Milne when he tells you which book is his best one, or you aren't, but personally I grew up on it, and I suspect it had a lot to do with forming my taste for fairy tale satire and witty pseudo-history, and on a reread last week I still love it passionately.
