Why Rumpelstiltskin and Rapunzel?

Hey everyone! In celebration of Stalks of Gold releasing, today’s post is about why I decided to do a retelling that combined Rumpelstiltskin and Rapunzel.

If you’re unfamiliar with the original stories, you can read them for free here for Rumpelstiltskin and here for Rapunzel. (There’s lots of versions, but these are the ones I used the most.)

I had the idea for this book back in 2017 when I first started to get really interested in fairytale retellings. I’d read a couple, and I became very intrigued by the idea of combining fairytales into one retelling. I didn’t see many of those, there were a few books I saw that listed a few fairytales or myths as inspiration, but they weren’t quite what I was hoping for. So I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I also really didn’t want to do one of the more popular fairytales like Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty. Don’t get me wrong, I love those tales and will do them, but I wanted to start with something else.

So when I was looking at fairytales, I kept my eyes open for fairytales that shared important elements, and that was when I noticed that Rumpelstiltskin and Rapunzel actually have quite a few similarities for tales that feel very different and have very different plots.

Both fairytales include: a young woman (commonly with blonde hair), that woman being trapped in a tower, and a couple’s first-born child being the price demanded by a magical creature or person.

So, the question I started with was, what if the miller’s daughter from Rumpelstiltskin was Rapunzel? If that was true, what does that change?

And that was where the idea started.

So, with the premise that the young woman was the heroine of both tales, I asked myself what elements were essential? (Which I will be discussing in a future post.) Then, what had to change?

I knew that if the story were to work, I had to start with the Rumpelstiltskin part. That was going to be how she became the Rapunzel figure. And, the third part of the story was going to be the fallout of those events, the two fairytales merging into the climax. When I was originally planning out the story, I had a hard time figuring out where all my pieces were going to fit as I wrangled the two tales together, but it all worked out in the end!

I really fell in love with this idea, this challenge of taking two stories, finding where they crossed over and spinning something out of it. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to do a whole series of fairytale retellings that are all combinations of two tales!

So, that’s why I chose Rumpelstiltskin and Rapunzel for my first fairy tale retelling, well, all of that, and it doesn’t hurt that I do really enjoy both of the stories. They’re well known but not nearly as popular as others, (I’m looking at you Beauty and the Beast) and I have such a soft spot for things like that. Rapunzel gets adapted some, and Tangled is one of my favorite Disney movies, but Rumpelstiltskin gets so little love. Although, to be far, there are probably some good reasons for that, but I’ll be going into more detail on that in my next post.

If you haven’t picked up a copy of Stalks of Gold, you can do so here. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you all next time!