Week 5 Storytelling: The Perfect Match

Once upon a time in a very large and prestigious kingdom live three mighty men. Each one of the men possessed a quality that challenged even the greatest men in the kingdom. The queen who had just turned fourteen was in search of a suitor. Her father had passed away when she was a child and her mother had recently died from the bubonic plague leaving her two children with out parents or relatives. This made the eldest daughter the Queen of the kingdom and the youngest daughter princess. The royal council gave the queen two months from her coronation to find a husband. So the queen set out on her mission to find true love and find herself a husband.

The queen called a kingdom wide competition for her hand in marriage. She staged the competition to be the most competitive competition the world had seen and to demonstrate the talents she thought would lead to the perfect husband. These talents would be demonstrated by two different events and each event would be taking place on a different day.

The first event she choose was a test to demonstrate strength, for only a man with strength would be able have her hand in marriage. To test strength the queen set up a quiz. Whom ever had the highest score on the quiz would win this challenge. The men competing were perplexed.

“What is the purpose of a quiz?” They questioned the queen, “This does not demonstrate our strength... we should be lifting stones are fighting each other.”

“I am not interested in your physical strength.” The queen responded. “I am looking for a husband who has strength of mind; for only someone with a strong mind will be able to hold my attention for life.”

Irritated by the queen’s deception the men agreed to take the quiz. They took their seats in a great reading hall and began their test of strength. Before they began the queen was curious about how the men would test against her own strength of mind so she too took the exam, but in secrecy. When they finished the exams were scored and the winner of the event was sealed in an envelope and would not be announced until the final day. The next day the second event began at noon. The event was to take place in a large open field outside the castle gates. When the sun was highest in the sky the competitors lined up to take their positions in the field. In front of each of them men sat a five foot rope and an egg. The queen arrived on horse back and looked at the men.

Empress Elizabeth of Austria

“This is an event of endurance. If you are to have my hand in marriage then you must be able to demonstrate both patience and endurance. For this event you will hold each end of the rope in each or your hands. I will come and place the egg in the center of the rope and the man who can balance the egg the longest on the rope shall be the winner of the competition!”

The men began the challenge, but no winner was declared. None of the men were able to hold the egg longer than a second after the queen placed the egg on the rope.

“This is an outrage, no one would be able to complete this task!” The men exclaimed!

The queen upon her horse took the rope in her hands and asked her maiden to place the egg as she had upon the rope. For twelve hours the queen rode around the castle with the egg in perfect balance.

 When the time came to announce who would have the hand of the queen and become the king of the kingdom the queen stood up in front of her loyal subjects and announced the winner of the competition.

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Who was the winner of the competition?

~ ~ ~

The queen announce that she had won the competition and would not be married to any of the men. She was the perfect match for herself. 

Her sister on the other hand choose to marry the strongest women in the kingdom because that is what she was attracted too. Go figure. 

The Three Delicate Wives: So I was originally inspired by the story of the Three Delicate Wives as described below, but I ended up adding many more elements to the story. Once I really got started writing I enjoyed the story to much and didn’t want to limit it to the one story. I would like to think of the final product as a nice mixture of many of the stories from this unit. 

This story begins at a distant land where there is a king with three wives. When the king saw his first wife a lotus flower landed in her and she was severely bruised by this instantly. The second wife was lying in bed with the King and when the moonlight shone on her skin she was severely burned! Crazy, I know Right! It gets better. The third wife is walking down a corridor an hears the pestles and the sound alone gave her bruises. OMG IKR?! So that is the story, of the three delicate wives and when the Goblin asked the King who was the most delicate the King answered The one who was bruised by the sound of pestles for she was the only one that was hurt by something that was not physical.