How Snow White and Her Queen came about

I was on the train home from my day job one evening when some article about true stories behind classic fairy tales popped up on Facebook. It took my mind into that place my fellow commuters never get to go and suddenly it dawned on me that the wicked Queen in the Snow White story sounded really fishy. Obsessing over another woman’s appearance, hunting her down, giving her gifts, going mad when she gets married, all because you’re jealous of her looks? Unrealistic. I’ve never seen a woman behave that way when envious of another. In real life, a woman only gets that sort of crazy when afflicted with a bad case of crush. Right?

I sought the original version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and more gay possibilities came up between the lines – “From that hour on whenever she looked at Snow-White her heart turned over inside her body… until she had no peace day and night.” “At first she did not want to go to the wedding, but she found no peace. She had to go and see the young queen. When she arrived she recognized Snow-White, and terrorised she could only stand there without moving.”

Of course, the Grimm Brothers cited vanity as the explanation for her behaviour – “From that hour on whenever she looked at Snow-White her heart turned over inside her body, so great was her hatred for the girl. The envy and pride grew ever greater, like a weed in her heart, until she had no peace day and night.” – but it made me wonder, what if their male heteronormative gaze simply misunderstood the Queen or whoever it was that served as inspiration for that character?

I arrived at my stop, got off the train and began to write the story from a completely different perspective. My kind of perspective with my understanding of what truly makes a woman that jealous. That’s how Snow White and Her Queen came about.