Once the Queen met her Prince Charming she set about living her very own Fairy Tale life. She lived it for many years, sharing her abundant love with the Prince, who lavished her with sparkling jewels, love, and riches beyond belief. At first the Queen first somewhat stifled by her life with the Prince, as if her light was slowly being snuffed out by some malevolent force. But little by little she overcame her fears and melded her life to his, delighted beyond belief that they shared the same 'everything.' How could she have been so lucky to find someone so much like her, someone whose only desire in life was to make her every dream come true?! Life in the Fairy Tale was good indeed.
Then suddenly, Prince Charming started acting very strange. Instead of being filled with love and generosity toward the Queen, he began to snap and get angry for the silliest reasons. He began to leave the castle more and more and stay gone longer and longer. The Queen felt baffled by his behavior, but not particularly concerned because after all, he was her Prince Charming and this was a Fairy Tale. Everyone knows Fairy Tales only have one kind of ending. So she simply went about her life, trying to treat him with extra love and compassion in the hope that soon he would feel better about whatever was troubling him.
But one day, quite unexpectedly, Prince Charming went out hunting and never returned. The Queen tried asking all his friends, but no one knew where or why he had gone. All at once the Queen found herself sunk into a pit of despair so deep that she couldn't leave the castle. She was more alone than she'd ever been in her life, for truly, the only person who really knew or loved her had been Prince Charming. She tried to leave and make new friends, but everyone ran away from her, because she was the Queen, and she had head-chopping power. No one knew what a loving, compassion person she truly was, for she had never ventured far enough into the world to show them. She told herself that now she must try or else be forever trapped in an empty castle with no Prince Charming--in truth, with no one at all.
So the Queen opened the castle as a guest house. She took in people from far and wide; she cooked and waited on them; she showered each individual with the full measure of her love and compassion. All the while she prayed that someday the Prince would return and love her again. She knew now she was perfectly capable of handling the details of her daily routine--which meant running a large castle and seeing to its visitors--but she still wanted to share her life with the person who knew her better than anyone. She wanted to understand what she had done to drive him away from her.
The Queen didn't realize it wasn't anything she had done at all. She had been bewitched during her youth by an evil sorcerer who wanted all women to believe they needed men to take care of them, to make them feel 'whole.' As she began to give her gifts to others, day by day the spell lifted, until finally the Queen could feel her true glory.
But the Queen would not be truly released from falling back into her spell, until she knew and accepted the Truth about the Prince. It had been living there in her heart all along, but she had chosen to ignore it, wanting to believe in the Fairy Tale more than anything in the World. The Prince was little more than a mirror, and when the Queen looked at him, the only thing he had to reflect back were images of her Self. When the news finally came that he was living in another Kingdom, with another Queen, whom everyone said he loved beyond anything they had ever seen, the Queen knew the Truth at last. She was freed from the Fairy Tale and cast into Real Life.
She had always been told that Real Life wasn't a place you ever wanted to be. But once she got there, she discovered that truly, it is the only place you ever can be. The Queen didn't know what the future might have in store for her, but she knew that whatever came, it would be Real. And after spending most of her life in a Fairy Tale, Real seemed like it might be worth checking out. Maybe she would never find another Prince Charming, but at the end of the day, at least she would know she had found her Self.
PS--And while she didn't always live 'happily' in Real Life, she did Really Live.
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