Riquet with the Tuft
An ugly prince with a gift for wit, and the clever princess who learned to see him clearly
Page 1
Long ago, in a kingdom with its own king and queen, a son was born who was so strange to look at that for a long time no one in the palace was certain he was shaped like other children at all. His head came almost to a point, with one small tuft of hair standing straight up from the top of it, which is why, from his first day, everyone called him Riquet with the Tuft. His mother wept over the cradle, more afraid for him than for anything else in her life. But a wise fairy had been present at the birth, as fairies often are at such moments, and she came forward to comfort the queen. She said the boy would grow up with so much good sense that his face would hardly matter to anyone who knew him — and more than that, she had given him one particular gift: he would be able to give as much of his own wit as he pleased to whomever he loved best in the world.
Page 2
In another kingdom, some years later, a different queen gave birth to a daughter so beautiful that the whole court gasped when they first saw her. The queen was so overcome with joy that her ladies feared the happiness itself might make her ill, and they had to beg her to rest. The same fairy who had blessed Riquet at his birth happened to be present again, for fairies travel widely, and she wished to balance so much beauty with a gift of her own choosing. But this time her gift was not a kindness in the way the queen hoped. She told the queen, gently but plainly, that the baby would grow up to be as foolish as she was lovely — she would have as little sense as she had beauty, and no more. The queen's joy turned at once to a different kind of grief, though she said nothing of it in front of the baby.
Page 3
Not long after, the same queen had a second daughter, and this child was so plain and awkwardly made that the whole court fell silent when they saw her, just as they had cheered for her beautiful sister. The queen could hardly keep her disappointment from her face as the baby was carried into the chapel to be blessed. But the fairy was there a third time, and she told the queen not to be so troubled. This daughter, she said, would have no beauty to speak of — but she would be given wit enough to make up for everything beauty usually buys a person, and more besides. In time, the fairy said, people would value her company above almost anyone's. The queen, remembering how little comfort beauty alone had brought her other daughter so far, took the fairy's words seriously this time, and held the plain little baby a bit more gently than before.
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The two sisters grew up side by side, and just as the fairy had promised, their fortunes went in opposite directions. At first everyone crowded around the elder princess wherever she went, drawn in by her beauty alone — but it never took long for people to grow bored of a companion who had nothing interesting to say, and little by little the crowds around her thinned. Her younger sister, meanwhile, was mostly left alone at first, because people assumed someone so plain could have little to offer. But those who did sit and talk with her found her so quick, so clever and so good company that word spread, and before long more people sought her out at every gathering than sought out her beautiful sister. The younger princess noticed all of this plainly enough — she had the wit for it — and it only made her feel her own plainness more keenly, even as her company grew dearer to everyone around her.
Page 5
One day, feeling heavier in her heart than usual, the younger princess walked alone out of the palace grounds and into the forest that bordered them, until she came to a quiet clearing far from anyone who knew her. There, with no one to be clever in front of, she let herself say aloud what she had been thinking for a long time: that she would have traded every bit of her wit for even a little of her sister's beauty, because wit, it seemed to her that day, had never once made anyone love her at first sight, while beauty always did, even if it faded afterward. She walked back and forth across the clearing, talking to herself about her own plainness in a way she would never have allowed anyone else to hear, since showing that kind of unhappiness aloud was, she thought bitterly, the one unwise thing her good sense should have stopped her from doing — and yet here she was, doing it anyway.
Page 6
As she walked on, still deep in her unhappy thoughts, the princess came out of the clearing onto a long straight avenue of trees — and there, coming toward her along it, splendidly dressed and clearly expecting to meet her, was the strangest-looking man she had ever seen in her life. It was Riquet with the Tuft. He bowed to her as though he had known her for years, and told her that he had traveled from his own kingdom only to find her, because he had seen her portrait and fallen so completely in love with her that he could not rest until he had asked her to be his wife. The princess, startled at first by his face, found herself more and more startled by how easy he was to talk to, and how quickly his conversation matched the quickness of her own mind — something almost no one else's ever had.
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Their conversation carried them all the way to a stream at the edge of the wood, where the trees gave way to open fields beyond. There Riquet explained his strange gift more fully: that he could give as much of his own good sense to anyone he chose to love, simply by wishing it so, if only she would agree to marry him. The princess did not doubt that he could do it — she already had plenty of sense of her own, after all, and could tell when someone was speaking the truth. What she doubted was whether she could love a man so plain to look at, however clever he turned out to be, and she told him so honestly. Riquet, far from being offended, said that was a fair thing to wonder, and asked only that she take a full year to decide, during which he would ask nothing more of her. She agreed, and watched him go, not at all certain what her answer would be when the year was over.
Page 8
Almost a whole year went by, and the princess, busy with her own thoughts about the decision ahead of her, lost track of exactly how many days had passed. Walking in the same part of the forest one afternoon, deep in thought, she was startled to see the ground itself seem to move — and then realized there was a trapdoor standing open among the tree roots, with light and noise coming up from below. She climbed down to look and found a vast underground kitchen, full of cooks of every kind hurrying about, roasting, basting and arranging an enormous feast, far bigger than any meal she had ever seen prepared. When she asked the head cook who all of this was for, he told her, a little surprised she didn't already know, that it was for Riquet's wedding — which, he added, was to take place that very day.
Page 9
The princess had barely climbed back up out of the kitchen when she found Riquet himself waiting for her in a flowering meadow nearby, where a pavilion had been raised for his wedding feast. He told her, gently, that the year was over, and asked whether she had come to keep her promise, or only to see the preparations for someone else's happiness. She admitted she still was not sure she could love him, however fairly he had treated her. But as they talked a little longer, about his patience and his kindness and everything she had come to respect in him over the year, something shifted in her — and she told him plainly that she was ready to marry him after all. The moment the words were out of her mouth, she looked at him properly for the first time since deciding, and found, to her own surprise, that she was looking at the best-made, handsomest man she had ever seen.
Page 10
So the wedding went ahead that very day, in the great hall of Riquet's own palace, with all the feast the cooks below the forest had been preparing for a year's end. The princess's mother and her beautiful older sister came too, delighted that she had found so devoted a husband, whatever he looked like, and even the fairy who had blessed both of them at their births came to see how her two gifts had finally met. Some who were there swore afterward that Riquet looked, from that evening onward, like the handsomest man at his own feast; others said he looked exactly as he always had, and that it was only the way his new wife looked at him that made him seem so. Either way, the two of them were married that evening, and by every account that followed, they were as happy together as any two people in either of their kingdoms had ever been.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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