Mirrors of Ice Inspiration

Hello everyone! In celebration of Mirrors of Ice releasing, I’ll be talking about the inspiration behind the book. Some spoilers ahead if you haven’t read Mirrors of Ice yet! (You can get a copy here!)

We’ll start with the Snow White aspect! Alright, let’s be honest, how many people consider Snow White their favorite Disney princess? Don’t get me wrong, I like the story of Snow White, I wouldn’t have done a retelling otherwise, but even though she’s the first Disney princess, she isn’t quite as popular as some of the others. (I’m sure there’s plenty of reasons behind for that that people smarter than me can figure out.) (Also, for those of you who do like Snow White the best, it means you’re unique!)

Anyway, there’s actually quite a few Snow White variations out there, like a lot! My researching phase was a while ago, so forgive me for not remembering them all, but as I read I made a list of the hallmarks of a Snow White story for me:

• “Skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood…”
• A new queen, beautiful, vain, and maybe a little magical
• A magic mirror that assists the evil queen
• A huntsman is supposed to kill Snow White, but spares her
• There’s a group that takes Snow White in and helps her (Seven dwarves, robbers, fairies, etc)
• Poisoned apple
• Snow White falls into death-like coma

 

You can give or take a few details. For my version, I decided to stick with a prince as the love interest, but there are lots of retellings that ditch a prince as Snow White’s love interest (very valid, by the way. The prince in some of these original versions is pretty creepy). But I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want to pair my Snow White with the huntsman because I wanted my huntsman to double as my male Beauty/Hunter/Woodcutter in the Beauty and the Beast/Little Red Riding Hood book coming up next. I also did not want to use dwarves, but I definitely wanted to keep with the number seven so the reader would understand what they represented, so I decided to go with seven royal siblings, and have the best of both worlds by getting a prince as the love interest who is also one of my seven “dwarves.”

Now, for my Snow Queen list:

• A magic mirror that is broken
• The shards of that mirror amplify the bad in the world
• The mirror shard in Kai’s eye makes him cruel, aggressive, everything he sees is bad and ugly. The only beautiful things to him are snowflakes/ice etc.
• A Snow Queen with ice magic who can use her powers to make people forget things
• A frozen lake
• A kiss and the power of love frees Kai

 

There’s a lot of detail in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, but honestly, most people could just have a royal woman with ice powers and call it a retelling of The Snow Queen. (Which is perfectly valid, I mean, isn’t that kind of what Disney did with Frozen? It’s a very loose adaptation, and I by no means am discrediting the team who worked on it, but the Kai and Gerda aspect is loosely applied to the sisters, and there’s a queen with snow magic, and trolls, and that’s it.) (Although, if you think I’m wrong and you noticed some more subtle Andersen aspects in Frozen feel free to let me know!)

Of the other details Andersen had in his story, there’s lots to choose from, like the little robber girl, the princess who helps Gerda, etc. I decided to just pick one, the summer sorceress, or in my case, the Summer Witch, due to the rules of magic in the Bewitching Fairy Tales world. (I really wracked my brain to try and use a little robber girl since one of the Snow White variants has robbers instead of dwarves, but ultimately it just didn’t work out for what I had planned for Prince Sterling.)

So, I had my elements, and it was time to combine them.

I knew from the start my Snow White and Gerda would be the same girl, and my Snow Queen and my evil queen/stepmother would be the same person, and my Kai and prince would be the same person as well.

I knew my Snow Queen would be my antagonist, in a way, because I also really liked the idea of my heroine also having snow and ice powers and becoming a sort of Snow Queen in her own right. And then, I remembered there’s some variations, or at least some debate in some of the Snow White stories about the fact they don’t specify whether or not the evil queen is a stepmother or Snow White’s actual mother, and that fascinated me and horrified me at the same time.

So, I latched onto this idea of my evil queen being related to my Snow White, but I knew it couldn’t be her mother. That’s too dark and intense even for me, but definitely a family member which would explain how both characters can use snow and ice magic. That’s how my evil queen became both my Snow White’s aunt and stepmother at the same time.

Of course, if Snow White and the evil queen are actually related, then she needs a really good reason to try and kill Snow White, and I’m sorry, but a mirror telling her Snow White is prettier just wasn’t going to cut it for me. That’s where The Scholar and the threat of invasion came in. A cold, pragmatic, power-hungry woman could definitely justify killing her husband and niece/stepdaughter to herself by saying Esmea is the greater evil, and she’s just trying to protect Glaciar.

I also knew from the start the mirrors were crucial to the story, particularly the mirror shard in my Kai. The challenge of writing Prince Sterling’s POV is getting its own post, so I’ll just say for now, I decided to have two mirrors, a wall mirror the evil queen could use to locate Snow White, and a hand mirror Snow White stole that’s broken and has missing shards, but that functions enough she can use it to keep an eye on the evil queen. Which honestly helped a lot to keep the reader informed as well what our villain was up to since my Snow White and my evil queen don’t actually share a lot of scenes together by virtue of the queen trying to kill her.

Since I was layering the fairy tales over each other rather than the staggered act one, two and three approach I took with Stalks of Gold, I ran into a few issues. I feel that the poisoned apple is crucial to Snow White retellings, but with my ice magic aspects, I knew it didn’t make sense for my very powerful Snow Queen to try and trick my Snow White, also an ice sorceress, into eating a poisoned apple. I much preferred utilizing the Snow Queen aspect of people turning into ice/freezing over. I slid the poisoned apple into the story, but it wasn’t nearly as big of a point as it could have been in a Snow White retelling. But, honestly, I’m very happy with how that turned out.

When it comes to combining fairy tales into one story, I feel like it can be really easy for one story to over power the other. Stalks of Gold definitely leant into the Rumpelstiltskin aspect just a little more than Rapunzel simply because my Rumpelstiltskin was the main antagonist and those plot points took up the first act and influenced the Rapunzel aspects. In my opinion, I don’t think Mirrors of Ice leans more to one side than the other. Maybe Snow White a little just because of the structure of the plot beats, but not by much.

There’s a lot that went into this retelling. (If I ever want to do a retelling that has a specific number greater than 5 anything, stop me, please. It killed me coming up with seven royal siblings, not just because of names, ages, personalities, and inter-personal dynamics, but I just hate extraneous characters. Sorry Phanes and Aiolos, your personalities just weren’t relevant this time.) So, if you’ve got any questions about anything in particular, leave a comment or else I’ll talk all day! But I’m more than happy to answer questions!

I hope you enjoyed this peek into my process! I had such a blast working on this project, even if Sterling’s siblings made my want to tear my hair out (particularly Cynrik). I’ll see you all next time!