<sup>Cependant les Fées commencèrent à faire leurs dons à la Princesse. La plus jeune donna pour don qu'elle serait la plus belle personne du monde, celle d'après qu'elle aurait de l'esprit comme un Ange, la troisième qu'elle aurait une grâce admirable à tout ce qu'elle ferait, la quatrième qu'elle danserait parfaitement bien, la cinquième qu'elle chanterait comme un Rossignol, et la sixième qu'elle jouerait de toutes sortes d'instruments dans la dernière perfection. Le rang de la vieille Fée étant venu, elle dit, en branlant la tête encore plus de déit que de vieillesse, que la Princesse se percerait la main d'un fuseau, et qu'elle en mourrait. Ce terrible don fit frémir toute la compagnie, et il n'y eut personne qui ne pleurât.

Dans ce moment la jeune Fée sortit de derrière la tapisserie, et dit tout haut ces paroles

- Rassurez-vous, Roi et Reine, votre fille n'en mourra pas; il est vrai que je n'ai pas assez de puissance pour défaire entièrement ce que mon ancienne a fait. La Princesse se percera la main d'un fuseau ; mais au lieu d'en mourir elle tombera seulement dans un profond sommeil qui durera cent ans, au bout desquels le fils d'un Roi viendra la réveiller.

Charles Perrault, Contes de ma mère l'Oye (1697)</sup>




This is an illustration of Charles Perrault's fairytale : "La belle au bois dormant" (= "The Sleeping Beauty"). When I was a child, that was one of my favorite fairytales (with "Peau d'Âne")

Charles Perrault's fairytale
This is one of the many different versions of the same story. The Brother Grimm found a quite similar story intitled "Little Briar Rose". The difference with Perrault's story is that the story of the little Briar Rose ends when the prince wakes her up while in the story found by Charles Perrault, we can know what happened to the princess (who has no name) after her mariage with the prince who released her from the curse.

In Charles Perrault's version of the tale, the princess marry the prince and then comes to live in his castle with their 2 children : the little princess Aurore (in Disney's version, Aurore is the sleeping beauty's name) and the little prince Jour (="Day"). Then one day, the prince (who turned king...) has to leave his realm to make war with the emperor Cantalabutte (very funny name in French...) and his mother has to take care of the realm and of his wife and children. But the mother of the prince is of the race of the ogres and as soon as her son had left, she asked the cook to kill the little Aurore because she wants to eat her! She does the same another day with the little Jour and at last she wants to eat the "sleeping beauty" herself! But the cook did not killed them, he only hid them and gave to the queen : a lambs and a young hind. But the ogress discovers the trick and make preparations to kill her daughter-in-law and her grand-children but the prince comes back and this is the ogress who's thrown into the snakes and toads pit she had prepared for the queen and the young prince and princess.

Charles Perrault did not invented this story, in fact, he just re-wrote -in an aristocratic way- a fairytale told by peasants who lived at that time. He always added morals at the end of the tales, well, these tales were not really for children but more for teenagers or adults (just like the "Fables de la Fontaine"). The moral of this tale is this one:

<sup>Many a girl has waited long
For a husband brave or strong;
But I'm sure I never met
Any sort of woman yet
Who could wait a hundred years,
Free from fretting, free from fears.

Now, our story seems to show
That a century or so,
Late or early, matters not;
True love comes by fairy-lot.
Some old folk will even say
It grows better by delay.</sup>

Which is a very very very "misogyne" moral... >.>;;;; well, if you want me to put it in a nutshell, Perrault deplores that there are only a very few girls who are able to wait passively (="sleeping") until that one man (=the prince) comes to take them as his wife. But well, he wrote this at the end of the 17th century... But this fairytale deals with very important matters : sexuality, incest, oedipus complex and canibalism! So this tale has been considered as a very important tale for the developement of children's mental by psychanalysts who studied fairytales and children's "psyché" like Bruno Bettelheim.


About the drawing : inspiration and such...
Like I wrote before, "La belle au bois dormant" was one of my favorite fairytales when I was a child, so I decided to draw something to illustrate this tale. Since in the Brother Grimm's version of the tale, the little princess is called "Briar-Rose" I decided to draw roses (even though they do not look like real briar-roses...) on the dress. For the other parts of the dress I took inspiration from various Hime-lolita dresses. That was the same for the hair style and for the acessories.
I know that the sleeping beauty is supposed to be very beautiful... But I could not resist and added an eye patch... Because, well, for me, eye patches are beautiful in some situations! Moreover I wanted to add something "wicked" to this "all pink and sweet" drawing.
I also know that this is supposed to be the sleeping beauty, but I did not draw her sleeping... Just consider that this is a portrait of her just after she woke up! Moreover she's holding a staff and an orb of power which means that she turned queen!
For the cloth of the dress, I wanted to try a new style, that's the first time I try to draw stripes like this. (even if the scanner killed the colors!) I took inspiration from pieces of cloth I saw in a very interesting exhibition about Marie-Antoinette a few days ago. (there were books where various pieces of clothes were glued, these books were the ones where the queen could pick and choose the cloth she wanted the tailor to use to sew her dresses with).




Copyrights
-I do not own this fairytale --> it belongs to Charles Perrault and entire human race!
-I drew the illustration anyway!
-For the ones who are interested in the exhibition I talked about --> go to the museum of the "Archives nationales", Hôtel de Soubise, rue des Francs Bourgeois, Paris 3e and ask for the exhibition called "Marie-Antoinette, pièces à conviction"
-Tools : Photoshop 6.0, water color pencils, color pencils.