AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER…?

AUDIO QUACK

Like all children, I was brought up on Disney. Snow White was the favourite; it’s a story of how a woman escaped her evil step-mum (whom her father would have married for the wrong reasons) just to find herself cleaning up after seven men in a remote cottage.

Things were ok for Snow for a while (I mean, she seemed delighted with a life of cleaning and no sex, me not so much). But then she was poisoned by her step-mum with a granny smith and fell into a coma. The prince came along, kissed her awake, and thankfully, she fancied the guy who saved her life and married him.

And then they lived happily ever after… or so Disney wants you to believe.

Let’s face it – there is a greater possibility for a bitter step-mum to poison her stepdaughter than to live happily ever after with an entitled prince.

When you ask any married couple above the age of 40 how is their happily ever after going – the response will most likely be: “We have our moments, but we get by, don’t we Steven?” Or they avoid any possible occasion where they have to converse 1 on 1 by inviting anyone to fill the inevitable silence or the inevitable murder.

“Do you want to come to dinner with me and Steven? In fact, you should come on holiday with us this year.”

Take Megan and Harry; they lived happily ever after – minus the court cases, moving to Canada, moving to LA, a tell-all Oprah show, a tell-all biography, and falling out with the entire British monarchy…hmmmm.

I reckon Snow White’s marriage to Prince Ferdinand – (his actual name, according to Google) would have seen a similar rocky start; she had, after all, adopted 7 other men.

“Well, I can’t just leave them here, Ferdinand!” Snow White blubbered.

“Snow!” Ferdinand shouted, slamming his fist against the wall. If you want them, you’re going to have to look after them.”

So, Snow was left with eight men to clean, cook and match socks for—eight men who all yelled in the morning that they couldn’t find their keys. Ferdinand soon grew tired of not getting enough attention and started disappearing on his horse for days on end. Snow, meanwhile, was left with seven ageing men who had all turned a little spoilt after years of nurturing.

“Snow, why aren’t you whistling when you work anymore?” Doc will ask from his armchair. Snow mutters some curse words into the dishwasher. “What was that Snow? I didn’t quite hear you.”

Other favourite fairy tales would follow suit.

Rapunzel found early on that her husband was a man who liked big gestures but was actually pretty damn shallow. She cuts off her hair soon into their marriage, a pixie cut (she had PTSD from the lock-up and so was advised by the doctor to cut it all off).

After the trim, her husband insisted on having the lights off. Eventually, he had an affair with some red-headed mermaid down the road, who actually couldn’t do a lot – but enough to keep him happy.

“She can have him!” Rapunzel slurred to her friends at a bottomless brunch, “he was always selfish in the bedroom anyway!”

Cinderella found the pressures of the royal life too much to bear, and her prince, now king, didn’t have the patience for her lack of etiquette at public events. They couldn’t divorce as it would shame the family, so they lived separate lives in the palace, only seeing each other now and again at breakfast. They would sit on opposite sides of the table. Cinderella munched her Special K whilst King Philip read The Times. Every time he turned a page, he would clear his throat in a way that made Cinderella feel sick.

“MUST you clear your throat like that EVERY TIME?” She snapped one day.

King Philip didn’t even look up when he replied, “When is that bloody pumpkin going to come and take you away?” He aggressively shook his newspaper straight and cleared his throat one last time. And that is how a Disney marriage ended up as a Netflix true crime documentary.