Story Saturday: Dwarf Love, Elf Love (Exploring the Dietrich Cycle, IV)

As I am working on the Dietrich cycle, a full storytelling show is slowly taking form, pieced together from different parts of the sagas. It has to do with King Dietrich and his court, and their relationship with the Dwarven realms under the mountains.
Some of these relationships are fairly personal.

I have gotten several messages and opinions about the question I posed last week. While most people are comfortable with the idea of a Dwarf queen, some of them expressed worries that she would not make a good love interest for a human (let alone a human king).
Here is the thing: The storytelling show, as it looks now, includes not one, but two inter-species relationships. One of each: Dwarf king - Human princess, Human king - Dwarf queen.

I am the storyteller, therefore I have to make some decisions of how I tell these stories. And I have the same responsibility of representation as any other form of media would.

Here are some things I do NOT want to do:
1. Have an Elf queen rule over the mountains because she is prettier than a Dwarf.
2. Abduction and rape. That trope is just not happening on my watch.
3. Make one of those couples OK, but not the other.
4. Twist the original legends completely out of shape.
5. Completely rely on the Tolkien/pop culture images of Dwarfs.

Female Dwarf concept art
for The Hobbit movie

Here are some things that I DO want to try:
1. Expand ideas of beauty. There seems to be a huge debate on the Internet (thank you, LotR fandom) about what Dwarf women look like, and whether they can be attractive to human men or not. I think most of the debate is fairly dumb, and it mostly hinges on beards.
2. Explore inter-cultural relationships. For me, neither relationship has their most potential in physical Dwarf-Human compatibility. Rather, they come from very different places, and very different cultures, and they have to navigate the transition from one to the other (a human princess living in a Dwarf kingdom, a Dwarf queen running a human court).
3. Explore the male-to-male and female-to-female connections of these two related families. Laurin and Dietrich talk quite a lot, king to king; but I also want to find connection points where the Dwarf Queen can talk with the human princess. Put the two ideas of femininity and royalty next to each other. Make the saga pass the Bechdel test.
4. Play off of pop culture why staying close to the original sagas.

Gender-bent Thorin,
because Rule 63

Here are some things I know:
1. Dwarf-and-Elf love has been done in pop culture, with ambiguous results.
2. A lot of people are still bothered by the idea of a shorter man having a relationship with a taller woman. (Look at all the Kiliel fan art, they keep hiding the height difference)
3. A lot of people are still bothered with a woman having a stockier body type than a willowy Elf.
4. NO ONE in folklore ever had a problem with fairy maidens marrying human men.
5. Dwarf women are treated as mostly nonexistent, both in pop culture and in folklore. (My favorite counter-example, of course, is Terry Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant.)

Also, I should be writing a take-home exam.
We'll see how this goes.

D is for the Dwarf Princess

Today's princess is once again brought you from Hungary. I'm Hungarian, deal with it.

Also, I am not being insensitive here. She is actually a Dwarf.

The story, this time, does not start with her. It starts with a prince called Palkó, who has two handsome brothers, but he is as short as a child, and his mother is so aad about this fact that she gets ill and dies. Of course the king blames his son for all of this.
(Tyrion Lannister much? You know you already love him.)

According to the queen's dying wish, a lily-of-the-valley has to be planted on her grave and guarded day and night. The king sees an opportunity in this to keep his son occupied. Prince Palkó and the old woman who brought the shining flowers sit by the grave together, day and night in quiet awkwardness.

Enter the princess. Whut?

As soon as the old lady falls asleep, a long-bearded Dwarf springs up out of the blue and tells the Prince a secret: the lily-of-the-valley is in fact a Dwarven princess, turned into this shape to be smuggled out of the kingdom of the Fairy Queen. Who is evil, by the way, and jealous of the princess' beauty.
(I can hear Legolas getting a stroke in the background)

The only way to turn the flower back into a beautiful Dwarf maiden is to break the Fairy Queen's ring. The opportunity offers itself when the Queen and seven of her witch-fairies (!) show up to get the flower back. After a couple of tries Palkó manages to get a hit in on the ring, and suddenly, he is presented with a princess just his size.

The lovers have to flee now. Fortunately for them the princess can call upon a chariot drawn by butterflies that takes the across the sky and back towards the Dwarf kingdom. But the Fairy Queen is hot on their heels astride a horse with seven legs, clearly bought for a discount price in Asgard, and she almost catches up to them when they finally round the Sun, and that is the border where the power of evil ends.

Palkó becomes a prince, marries the Dwarf princess, and all is well in the world.

This story has been turned into a cartoon and is available on YouTube here.

I personally have always loved the idea of a Dwarf princess, beard or no beard. The fact that her beauty beats Ilona the Fairy Queen just makes the whole thing better. Fae can't be the best at everything all the time, right? There is not much to know about dwarfs in Hungarian folklore at all, fairies are much more popular. This story is a rare exception. It is also interesting to note that apparently the Dwarf princess was a ward in the Fairy court until they grew jealous of her beauty. Talk about politics.