Disclaimer: I did not create Rapunzel and her prince, although I did tweak their story a bit to write this epilogue and I definitely can claim Anton. He's a sweetie. Muchas gracias to my wonderful beta Qai, as always. I don't know what I'd do without you.
The tower stood in a sunny clearing, covered in moss and vines. A number of stones had tumbled down and lay scattered around the base of the building. Doves were nesting in the rotted, fallen roof.
Anton sat on a smooth log, contemplating the tower. It didn't look particularly special. In fact, it could have been any old ruin, slowly being overtaken by the forest.
A loud snort echoed through the clearing. Anton listened as his groom calmed the restless horses. They had been waiting in the forest for hours as the newly crowned King sat and thought. He wondered if the servant was as impatient as the beasts he tended. Even if he was though, he would never to dare to voice his complaints to his new monarch.
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Rapunzel was never a good queen though she tried her best. She had no skill in matters of diplomacy nor even, often enough, in matters of etiquette. She couldn't handle large gatherings of people and the rare times when she could be coaxed—or bullied—into attending a royal ball she turned into a mouse, trembling in corners and stuttering when she spoke.
The prince was always eager to tell the story of their meeting to anyone who would listen, though he tended to gloss over Rapunzel's origins and passed her off as a lady of high birth rather than a peasant's daughter taken by the witch.
At first, the members of the court were tolerantly amused by their prince's quaint, pretty bride. They giggled at her strange accent and the way she stumbled over certain words. The young ladies were appointed to attend her smiled politely when she interrupted to ask odd questions, not just about the complicated manners of court but even about simple matters. They learned to scrupulously remind her of the names and titles of her dinner companions as well as the correct usage of the various table utensils. The trend-setters in court declared her short, wild locks de rigueur and soon every fashionable lady in court had her own short hair rumpled in carefully planned disarray.
No one could say that she didn't try; Rapunzel threw herself heart and soul into learning to fit in. But her curtseys were always clumsy and the few remarks she made were halting, quiet, and never very witty. Every so often, frustrated and frightened by the press of people and expectations, she would disappear into one of the more remote castle towers. There she would sit in an open window, staring at the sky, or singing, until her husband finally hunted her down and coaxed her out for a ride or into their rooms. No matter what happened, the prince adored her and did what he could to keep her happy. Still, he was the heir to a kingdom and constantly busy.
Soon the court's willingness to make allowances for their strange princess faded. Some people enjoyed her abrupt honesty, but a few peers of the realm and more than one ambassador were offended by her blunt manners and seemingly willful ignorance of the ways of the world. She managed to inadvertently alienate a number of servants who felt that a lady should know her place and duty just as surely as they knew theirs.
A few of the haughtier, more conservative matrons went so far as to hint to the Queen that the prince should consider setting aside the girl and finding a more appropriate bride. His Highness's first response on learning of these conversations was to demand that the interfering old witches be banished from his presence. Once he was calmed into a more reasonable temper, he decided that Rapunzel should give a performance for the court. Always enchanted by his wife's voice, he was sure that if anyone could hear and see her as he first had, they too would be permanently captivated.
His plan failed miserably. Faced with an audience, Rapunzel quivered fearfully, sang a few shaking notes, and then dashed out of the room and hid in a tower that only the oldest servants even remembered existed. The prince tried to arrange a few smaller events, but the terrified and humiliated girl pleaded, cajoled, and finally outright refused to have anything to do with the idea.
Not long after, it was announced that the princess was expecting. For months, the entire kingdom held its collective breath. When Rapunzel gave birth to a healthy boy, the mutters of a more suitable wife for the prince died down. Setting aside a dowerless stranger with no family connections was an entirely different matter than setting aside the mother of the Royal Heir. Besides, the more malicious gossips whispered to each other, as long as she continued to pop out healthy children, it would be easy enough to isolate and ignore the princess and her inadequacies.
Over the years, Rapunzel did have more children: three daughters and another son, all healthy and handsome scions of the Royal line. They were raised and tutored to be everything princes and princesses ought to be—confidant, intelligent, and competent in all the various arts of governing a kingdom, court, and royal household.
Rapunzel, though not a particularly good monarch, was a good wife and mother. And though her husband and children did not always understand her, they did always love her.
When they were still in the nursery, the children would listen to her sing for hours; old ballads and cheerful little nonsense songs to entertain them during the day and gentle lullabies as they drifted off to sleep. They would follow her on her trips into the various castle towers, sitting at her feet and listening to her quiet songs. Her oldest son, in particular, completely adored her, and even after he left the nursery, he would occasionally sneak out of his lessons in order to listen to his mother's songs.
Given sufficient time and compassionate training, Rapunzel had learned to interact with people in a private setting. Sitting in her lonely tower with only her own voice and the books the witch gave her to entertain herself with, Rapunzel had become far more widely read than many aristocrats. In spite of her shyness, she was able to provide wise advice and gentle support to her husband, but she was never comfortable or competent with groups of people. And she always maintained her habit of disappearing to remote, high places for long periods of time. As the children grew, the young princesses learned to assume many of their mother's duties.
Every year, in the summer, Rapunzel would return to the tower where she had grown up.
The witch who had bought her from her parents for the price of a few stolen cabbages was gone. After throwing the prince into deadly thorns and Rapunzel into a harsh and lonely winter, she had disappeared. Still, the tower stood, its only opening a high window under which grew a patch of blackberries.
Her family went with her on these trips, because they could not bear the idea of her going alone, but they never understood why she insisted on returning. Rapunzel never spoke of her own history, not even to her family. The only version of her story was that told by the prince, who had known the old witch only as an evil sorceress who had imprisoned the girl. He found the tower creepy and depressing, and he assumed that the reason Rapunzel returned, year after year, was in order to celebrate her freedom. He never tried to stop her from visiting the tower and he went with her whenever the kingdom could spare him for a fortnight. As they left, he would tell her that she was free now and that he would never allow anyone to imprison her again. She would always smile at him, but she never replied to his reassurances.
Once there, she would spend hours in the clearing, staring up at the lone window. Sometimes she would sing, usually melancholy tunes, but she never spoke during those visits. Sometimes, she would pick flowers and throw them into the brambles. Sometimes, she would cry. When they were younger, the children would play in the meadow and make up wild stories about the witch. As they grew older, hearing only the prince's version of their mother's life, they began to resent and fear the visits.
One summer, when her first-born son was old enough to accompany her alone, he saw her reach into the blackberries and place something on the ground, as close to the base of the tower as possible. When she pulled back, he was horrified to see that her hand and arm were covered in vicious scratches. He insisted they leave right away, to tend to the wounds. As they exited the clearing, he thought he saw a glint of gold stretching from the blackberries to the window of the tower, thin and silky as a spider's web or a strand of hair.
The young prince spent the next few weeks shadowing his mother everywhere, much as he had when he was a child. Every time he caught a glimpse of the bandages under her long-sleeved gowns, he felt like crying. He wanted to ask her about the tower; why did she always return to it and why did she look so sad when she left it again? Somehow, he could not bring himself to ask any of his questions out loud.
Years later, when her children were nearly all full-grown, Rapunzel fell ill. The doctors assured the royal family that it was simply a normal spring ague, but by summer she was no better. She begged her oldest son, Anton to take her to the tower. She didn't have the strength to sit a horse by herself. For the first time, the King forbade the trip, worried that the journey would do too much damage to her weakened body.
Late in the summer, the King also caught the fever, which had started sweeping through the castle soon after Rapunzel's first decline. Where his wife lingered, dying inch by inch, he raced towards a chaotic death. Within a week, the King was gone. Anton was swept into a whirlwind of grief and affairs of state.
The day after he was crowned, Rapunzel died in the bed she had not left for five months. Her dying wish was to be buried in the shadow of the forest tower. Anton's siblings were convinced that request was born from the delusions of the high fever that had plagued their mother. Rapunzel had loved her husband and children. She had devoted her life to them. Surely she wouldn't want to be parted from them, even in death, and especially not to go back to that lonely tower where she had been confined. In late summer, weeks after his mother would have normally made the journey, Anton left for Rapunzel's tower.
Sitting on a log, staring at the tower, Anton remembered his mother. His memories showed a gentle, loving woman, full of songs and laughter in private and shy smiles and downcast eyes in public. He remembered the way her eyes had shone when she gazed out tower windows and how strange and beautiful her smile had looked when, long ago, she had pulled her bleeding arm out of the clinging brambles.
Sitting in the clearing, Anton found that for the first time, the forest filled him with a sense of peace and safeness. His mother had been loved in the castle and protected by his father—but perhaps she had once been loved and protected in this tower too.
Anton's father would want to be buried with Rapunzel.
Rapunzel wanted to be buried near her tower.
Anton stood up and brushed off his breeches. Once, Rapunzel had left her home to go with her beloved to a strange and frightening world where she had never quite fit in. Perhaps it was time that he returned that act of love.