The Tale of Ermingard

Many Years Ago

Princesses in stories have issues. Lots of them. Either they’ve lost their mother, or they’ve lost their father, or they’ve lost their father and their mother, or they pretty much lose their entire extended family right down to their second cousin twice removed on their mother’s side whom they normally only see around Thanksgiving. Then there’s the inevitable kidnappings, the arranged marriages, the evil stepmothers, the enchanted poisonous apples etc, and sometimes one wonders why anyone would want to be a princess. (In fairness, being a prince isn’t always that ducky either; to paraphrase the late Terry Prachett, princes are supposed to venture out to slay monsters and rescue damsels in distress; no one ever asks the prince if he wants to.)

Princess Ermingard was no exception. True, she had the happy fortune of possessing a complete nuclear family: her mother and father were very much alive as was her younger-by-two-seconds-and-so-technically-not-twin sister Roberta. Little Ermie, however, had grown up with a pessimism verging on the Marshwigglian, which was perfectly understandable for two reasons. One: her kingdom’s motto was the very uninspirational “Splat is coming.” No one knew what “Splat” was, why it was coming, or what it would do once it got there, but everyone agreed that it wasn’t the greatest success as a motto.

Even worse than that, though, was that Ermingard had been cursed at birth. Her father, King Phil, had invited the kingdom’s resident local malevolent enchantress to Ermingard’s first birthday celebration not wishing to repeat the ill-mannered mistake of whatshisface in Sleeping Beauty. Unfortunately, the enchantress brought her pet ferret along to the party, and Ermingard’s mother was deathly allergic to ferrets. One thing led to another, words were exchanged, harsh insults flew, parentage was remarked on and suggestions were made about the best places to stick uncomfortable objects, and the passive voice was beaten nearly to a frazzle, and next thing you know Ermingard had been horribly cursed. Upon her seventeenth birthday, she was doomed to have an unfortunate encounter with a chamber pot and fall into an enchanted sleep, from which she could only be awakened by the traditional Love’s First Kiss.

King Phil, being a savvy monarch, made two plans almost at once. First, he sent a message to the next kingdom over asking if they had a kid they could volunteer to be Love’s First Kisser when the time was right. They sent a reply message that yes, they did, and they were quite happy to betroth him to little Ermingard, and so the king checked that off the list. Second, he ordered every chamber pot in the kingdom to be smashed. But when King Phil’s advisers informed him that the peasants would almost certainly revolt over the order, King Phil reconsidered. He didn’t want to be responsible for igniting the Chamber Pot Revolution. So he decided that he didn’t really need to smash all the chamber pots; after all, they wouldn’t have any effect on his daughter anyway until her seventeenth birthday. It was a loophole no one had considered before, and there was much rejoicing.

To make absolutely sure his daughter would be safe, however, King Phil made the hardest decision of all: he sent his little daughter off to be raised in secret by a tribe of paranoid dwarves in the southern mountains. They were to return her on the day after her seventeenth birthday and not a second before. He assumed that would circumvent the spell.

So Ermingard grew up happily using chamber pots like everyone else, and being raised in mountain caves underground rather unlike anyone else, until her seventeenth birthday drew nigh. On that long-awaited morning, the dwarves finally told her that she wasn’t, in fact, a dwarf herself, and that she was really a princess. (She’d worked out the first half of that herself, funnily enough, but she was surprised about the second, and no mistake). They explained that she had to wait another day to go and see her true parents until her birthday was over. There was a curse on, they explained.

Ermingard accepted this with apparent equanimity. She asked if she could go back to her room and begin packing her things. Of course, they said. After she’d gone, they realized they’d forgotten to mention the key point of the curse. They rushed back, aghast at their failure.

Meanwhile, back in her room, Ermingard had begun glumly packing up as she’d said when she realized she needed to use the facilities. So, without thinking, she did.

There was a blinding green flash and a horrid smell. Ermingard choked. “What?” she gasped, with her last conscious thought. There was a sudden thud.

Present Day

“and that is why 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything!”

“Your learning amazes me, Princess Catrina! Explain again how strawberry tarts may be deployed to prevent waterspouts!”

Catrina sighed. “Perry, I told you that five minutes ago.”

“Well, yes, but I don’t think the readers caught any of that.”

“Well, of course they did, they’ve been reading this whole time, haven’t they?”

Perry suddenly wished he hadn’t said anything. “Are you familiar with the term flashback?”

“....what.”

“Yeah. On the bright side, we know a bit more about Princess Ermingard.”

“A flashback. I had the greatest philosophical breakthrough the world has ever seen, and I got preempted by a flashback. Wonderful. Do we at least know how to wake her up?”

“No. Didn’t say.”

“Terrific. Well...” Catrina had a feeling she shouldn’t say what she was about to say next, but then again, so much had already happened that really, it was true...”at least things can’t get w-”

*smash*

“I KNEW IT.”

They ran outside, past the Long Beard of History, up the very long tunnels, through the church of St. Bob’s, and into the open air. The sky above Kumquat City was full of attack helicopters, blades knifing the air and guns chattering like really angry militant squirrels. Through the windows of the helicopters she could see their terrifying pilots. “Holy Hannah in a hailstorm,” Catrina gasped. “It’s Velociraptors in Apaches!”

“Actually,” Perry interjected importantly, “that’s not entirely accurate. Real Velociraptors were about turkey-sized and covered in feathers. Those appeared to be examples of the Deinonychus genus, so that would make them...Deinonychuses? Deinonychi? What’s the plural on that?”

“Perry. We don’t need to know the plural, or the proper name right now. I think we have a little more serious problem. Like the dino-whatevers in helicopters who’re about to blow us up with heat-seeking missiles!”

“Oh. Right. Good point. So, princess, what do you suggest we do?”

“Hm....” Catrina considered this for several critical seconds. “Well, we could open a dialogue with them and try to achieve peace and mutual understanding. Or, failing that...”

She slashed out her lightsaber. Somewhere in the distance, Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries began playing. Catrina smiled, a slight half-smile, before hurling herself bodily at the approaching helicopter, loudly screaming her newly improvised theme song to the Wagnerian tune. “I’m Catrina, I’m a princess, I don’t kill wabbits, that’s not what I doooo! I’m Catrina, this is my theme song, I don’t like Susan, neither should youuuuu!”

To Be Continued.

Notes from 2026: Apparently when I first heard this, I had also heard Ride of the Valkryies on the radio recently, so that lent inspiration. Also Terry Pratchett was alive then. Good times.