The Wizard King

The Wizard King is a French fairy tale collected in Les fees illustres. Andrew Lang included it in The Yellow Fairy Book. It is also a comic book trilogy by Wally Wood.

Clipper ship Wizard King

Synopsis

A king was lord over many lands and had mastered magical secrets. He married a princess, and they had a son. The queen set out to seek her fairy godmother, as soon as the baby was strong enough, because she had been warned that her husband was a wizard, and wizards and fairies had long feuded. Her fairy godmother gave him the gift of pleasing everyone and of learning quickly. A few years later, the queen died, instructing her son to do nothing without consulting that fairy.

The king was grief-stricken. Finally, as his familiar settings continually reminded him of his queen, he set out to foreign lands, using his arts to shapeshift into animals and so move about freely. As an eagle, he saw a far country where the queen had a single daughter, astoundingly beautiful. He carried her off and pleaded with her to marry him. Although he installed her in a beautiful castle, with fine servants and a charming parrot for her pet, her capture had ensured that she would never be won over. He kept her from his court, but one day thought that she might have heard of the charms of his son. Fearing he was a rival, the king sent him on a journey.

The prince traveled until he came to the kingdom where the princess had been stolen from. He was deeply moved by the story and resolved to rescue her, and went to the fairy for aid. She declared that he could not reach the enchanted castle where the princess was, and the only expedient she could think of was to capture her parrot. When the prince did this, the fairy turned the prince into an identical parrot. In his new form, the prince reached the princess and, after seeing that she disliked his father the king, told her why he was there.

The fairy created a chariot, drawn by eagles, and had the captive parrot direct it to the castle. There, the prince and princess escaped on it. The king followed them to her mother's country, but when he tried to cast a magical potion on them, the fairy threw it back on him. This allowed them to capture him and so strip him of his powers. The prince asked for the king to be pardoned, and it was so. As the king took to the skies he vowed never to forgive his son or the fairy.

gollark: This is NOT true. I have not in any way been sponsored by pizza companies. There have been no advertising agreements whatsoever with any companies producing pizza or otherwise to have me subliminally advertise pizza, as my profile picture is not a pizza. Since it is not a pizza, this is obviously not pizza advertisement whatsoever. No monetary exchanges or otherwise have occurred with companies engaged in pizza production for any reason relating to my profile picture. You are clearly engaged in libel and attempting to discredit my non-pizza-advertising status. It is IN NO WAY subliminal pizza advertising because I DO NOT work for pizza companies in any form. It's not pizza. There were no deals, under-the-table or otherwise, with pizza companies. No pizza companies pay for any kind of subliminal advertising involving me. People make that mistake, but I am not working for pizza companies doing subliminal advertising; that is not in any way what I am doing. I am NOT being sponsored by ANY pizza companies to display subliminal pizza advertising OF ANY KIND.
gollark: No.
gollark: I had a longer version, but it was lost when <#878032706015993937> ceased to exist.
gollark: Inductively.
gollark: Prove it.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.