This is the last time I read a “King Thrushbeard” retelling.

The folktale as the Brothers Grimm rendered it is very disagreeable regardless of whether you look at it literally­—as most people will—or metaphorically, as scholars and folklorists do. The reason is that everyone in the tale is obnoxious in some way: the king, the princess, the courtiers, and Thrushbeard. But despite everyone being pricks, only the princess both draws the short stick and gets a redemption. She’s proud, haughty, tactless, superficial, has no value by herself other than as “the king’s daughter,” and humiliates and is verbally abusive to others.

Unlikable person, this princess. It’s left to the men to teach her a lesson in humility through complete humiliation because she does nothing to better herself, which is the part no one likes. The Grimms passed on the version of the folktale in which she’s married off to a beggar against her will as punishment (there were other versions, including one in which she was responsible for this marriage, not her father, and the groom wasn’t a beggar), and their version’s ending puts her father and her beggar-king husband in a bad light as it’s implied they might have schemed together to teach her a lesson, which she does learn.

It’s not a folktale anyone can like, it’s one of two B&B-type folktales that I don’t care for. Not so much for the misogyny of her humiliation ritual as the fact that the princess isn’t innocent and her character did ask for comeuppance but got it from bigger bullies. It’s like a bully getting punished by bullies.

I’d have preferred the Grimms included in their collection the version in which the king doesn’t parade her to all and sundry and the princess alone is responsible for being married beneath her station (to a minstrel) because she attempts to be disloyal and break trust and her word out of petty pride. In that context, it makes sense that she needed to learn to tame her pride and haughtiness. But the Grimms chose what they choose, and we inherited a tale in which everyone sucks.

I was hesitant to try this book also because I never found a retelling of this tale that I liked. Authors tend to make the tale’s plot worse by desperately trying to actualise it for modern sensibilities and, invariably, end up making excuses for and whitewashing the princess (or Thrushbeard, never the father). That’s not acceptable to me, because regardless of what you think of the tale, the princess does have character flaws she never made any effort to change on her own, and you don’t fight sexism and misogyny by whitewashing women into blameless little doves, which in itself is also sexist and infantilising. Women have flaws and do wrong, too.

But since my aim is to showcase some of the best adjacent folktales for my Beauty & Beast project, this should get a fair try. Also, there was an advance praise quote from Kate Stradling, one of my favourite fairy tellers.

So I read Lady Agatha Speaks Her Mind to discover this retelling does three things: make excuses for the princess and shift the blame, villainise the father and folktale-Thrushbeard by portraying them as worse people than they are in the tale, and insert a retelling-Thrushbeard character that’s a Cinnamon Roll existing both to humble her and reward her.

I presume the positive early publicity this book got was because it was judged as a comedy romp, all banter and bickering on a trip and fun romance. And if correct, then I can see why this was so liked.

But as a fairy tale retelling . . .

Goodness, I loathe to be the Lone Ogre and speak negatively of stories written for escapism. But a Lannister always pays her debts, and my first duty is to critically analyse retellings.

Lady Agatha Montberger is insufferably perfect, she sees herself as a prize and is therefore treated as such by her family, especially her weak-willed and dissolute father. She’s a lookist, wishing the richest Duke marries her because she deserves it and laments he’s not handsome. None of her qualities and physical beauty are her own merit but are all Gifts from her fairy godmother, who has been giving her one Gift a year until she turns 21. She’s an empty-headed collection of superfluous “virtues” that have gone to her head and made her full of herself. But none of that is her fault.

Her fairy godmother is a scatterbrained and capricious old bat that has been absentmindedly giving Agatha all these Gifts to make her the perfectest perfect trophy wife in Glen Violet and nearby kingdoms, so it’s no wonder everyone wants her as their trophy. But when it’s time for the trophy to fulfil the purpose the fairy created her for, the fairy suddenly grows a feminist bone and decides Agatha is too perfect and needs to learn to speak the truth. She forces the girl to drink a truth potion without telling her what it is. And thus Agatha starts “speaking her mind” by suddenly becoming cruel to people. But it’s not her responsibility, you know?

“Oh yes, Father.” I look up at the trees looming above me. “Melusine gave me …” I try to say “the traditional Gift,” but instead my traitorous lips say, “the most useless and idiotic curse of free speech.”

She is rude and insults others needlessly. Having no filters is “telling the truth,” being insulting is “free speech.” How exactly could we see this twist as better than the folktale when all it does is strip the woman of responsibility for her own mistakes?

Then her father marries her off to a beggar by mistake when he was supposed to marry her to the Duke as both men had agreed upon. But the father was drunk and besides he shouldn’t have had power to marry them himself (in this world, a father signing a paper is considered marriage), but because this story is thin on worldbuilding and inner narrative consistency, Agatha becomes a bigamist by mistake due to this (nothing is ever her fault, mind you). Curiously, the Prince doesn’t think to contest the validity of being saddled to this rude stranger who calls him pathetic and foolish (why is marriage forced on men never questioned in Fantasy?), and they go back to the Prince’s realm, pursued by the Duke looking to reclaim his prize.

What follows is a long trip through the forest and countryside that only serves for Lem and Agatha to get acquainted as they trade barbs, some singing at an inn to check the “minstrel” box, and an adventure in the Duke’s dungeon. This would’ve been fine as slapstick comedy, but I found the travelogue boring, and the Duke was a caricature of every macho man convinced that you must abuse a woman to make her into a good wife. All this reads like a parody of every hallmark in the folktale, and yet somehow we get a romance on top.

Which happens because Lem is too oblivious to realise that Agatha doesn’t pretend to like him because she literally cannot. The Gift made her abrasive towards him, but this bloke goes “She cussed at me! I’m in love!” All because Lem isn’t a real Prince and is so sick of two-faced court flattery that he’ll fall for the first person to call him a pathetic worm. Cue the laugh track.

Everything is wrapped up so HEA-compliantly. The fairy godmother steps in, and gives them the choice she should’ve given them in the beginning. Agatha is able to break her curse so very properly because . . . Uh, because. Yes, I read the passage explaining how the Gift was lifted. Yes, I know why it happened. No, fixing a curse isn’t self-improvement. It turns out “King Thrushbeard” in this retelling is just a comedy of errors in which everything is the fairy’s fault, Agatha never had anything to atone for or improve on because she did nothing to deserve anything good or bad, Lem is a victim of the fairy’s clumsiness, her father is merely a weak bon-vivant, the Duke is an Evil LOLz cartoon, and . . . did I mention that everything is the fairy’s fault? No lessons learnt, no resolving one’s personal flaws by hard work and effort.

So not “King Thrushbeard” at all. Merely following the Grimms’ version’s story beats whilst ignoring the symbolism and theme of the folktale.

If my assessment of this as a retelling is negative, what can be said of it as purely a story without taking the tale into account? Ah, now we can talk positively!

Lem is the reason this book was at times enjoyable, and the reason for the rating it gets. At first, I was wondering if this would be a Thrushbeard + Frog Prince/Iron Henry mashup because of the initial chapters, and groaned inwardly. König Drosselbart und Der Froschkönig together? Please no, I’ll cease putting on a Bayrisch accent to pester my folks and I’ll take back everything uncharitable I’ve ever said about the Grimms, but don’t punish me with a retelling of my two most loathed Beauty & Beast-adjacent folktales!

Turns out there was no frog to kiss, vergelt’s Gott, only Lem (and loyal Henry). If I didn’t laugh with Agatha, I did laugh with Lem. He made the story bearable, and if this hadn’t been meant to be a retelling, I’d have given this better marks as a Fantasy comedy of manners with a lovable hero.

Lem is sensitive and upstanding, all that Agatha isn’t, and without meddlesome fairies sculpting him into a Mary Sue like Agatha. I wish we had got more of his side of the story as well as his past, because the backstory of how he became a prince and why he no longer wants to be a royal are interesting. But we only get a few lines about his past, and it’s all presented a bit too mockingly. He shouldn’t have been used to service Agatha’s story so much, he deserved his own story to shine through more.

In conclusion, Lady Agatha Speaks Her Mind should be judged either as a retelling or as an independent story, and how much you like it or not will depend on which approach you go with. If you only want a bit of fun and laughs and can ignore the source tale, then this might be a nice read for you. But if, like me, you’re here for the fairy tales, I’d not recommend this for you.

I’ve said this before and will keep saying it until more writers get the memo: forcing a story to be a retelling does it more harm than good; not every fairy tale needs to be retold for the modern audience because they do carry their time’s mindset (and the Grimms weren’t neutral, they tinkered with the versions they gave us), and fairy tales aren’t literal so you can reimagine them thematically without having to follow the plot beats. The theme of “King Thrushbeard” is archetypal and easily adaptable for today: learn to be humble and improve yourself, make an effort to put your pride aside and become kind. Do you need the plot from the tale to imprint this message in modern girls? No, not at all, the message can be passed on without resorting to “King Thrushbeard.” The plot and mores are outdated, the theme is timeless.

But so many go for plot/literalism and ignore the theme/message that there’s no faith left in me as regards authors handling this folktale. So this is truly my last one and I will no longer read or review retellings of “King Thrushbeard” again.