To whom it may concern,

My name is Madame Consuela Estelle March. I am writing to you with a complaint. You and the rest of the world may know me as 'The Wicked Stepmother' from the fairytale you title 'Cinderella' I have been exiled in a secret location in Europe for centuries while untruths about my moral standings and personality have been globally spread.

I believe it is time for me to set the record straight and tell my side of the story in the hope that people with refrain from pelting me with rotten fruit and old boots.

I will start at the beginning. A few thousand years ago, I was happily married with two daughters, who in my eyes, were absolutely beautiful, when my stupid husband up and died. Turns out he was having it off with his brother's wife and during a midnight tryst, the carriage they were occupying, rocked itself off a cliff. I was left a widow with a house and two daughters to raise.

So, I did the sensible thing and married my dead husband's brother, who also had a daughter, Ella, the same age as my daughters, Laura and Sophie. Well, I didn't have much luck with that family, my new husband dropped dead at dinner two months later. Nowadays I guess he could have been diagnosed with a heart condition. We ate a lot of bacon and cream and he always was clutching his chest.

So, I gave up on men and concentrated on raising my three children. Ella was beautiful, but deceitful, an absolute nightmare to take care for. She would sneak out of the house at night to drink wine and dance with her friends. As her guardian, I was very concerned for her safety and was forced to lock her inside for protection. She was very pretty, far prettier than Laura and Sophie, and she taunted them for it. I hear that in the 21st century, people are encouraged to believe that beauty is only skin deep, and it's what is on the inside that counts. Ella knew she was beautiful, and used it to her advantage.

She didn't have 'cinders' on her dress from sleeping in the fireplace at all. It was because the chimney was one of her favourite escape routes from the house. And you can only guess who had to clean the soot off her clothes twice a week.

She tamed household pests, mice of all things, and trained them to fetch keys for her and push them under the keyhole. I hear that these days those disease carrying rodents are poisoned or squashed upon sight. Vermin.

As it happens, they managed to help her break out the night of that fateful ball. I had locked her in because I caught her in the hay loft with the neighbour's groom the day before. Then that meddlesome 'Fairy Godmother' showed up. Fairy Godmother my big toe, she was a witch in disguise and an annoying one at that. She was the same who turned the prince into a frog, and gave poor Priscilla that haunted talking magic mirror. Luckily she was banished 374 years ago for misuse of Magical Properties.

The glass slipper is a complete fallacy. Ella left her underwear in the Prince's bedroom and when the Queen was informed, she ordered the Prince contact Ella and demand her hand in marriage. There was no search, he knew where she lived. All the boys did.

Anyway, after that ball, our family was basically stuffed and as soon as Ella had her talons firmly in grip of the Prince, Laura, Sophie and I were exiled.

So there you have it. The truth. I beg you to end the madness.

Yours faithfully,

Madame Consuela Estelle March.