#i feel like i say the same things about the lindworm pretty often but i think them pretty often soooo

[canonkiller]

thinking about king lindworm again from the perspective of the lindworm. to be born something different from your family, to know it deeply, innately; to be cast out or hidden away from the people you were meant to know because of it, because of the shame that you were born something monstrous, a blame that will rest on your shoulders; to demand what you would have been given if you were like them and to have your efforts fail because you are monstrous; having to make yourself vulnerable - equally vulnerable, from an outside perspective, but to open yourself to such great potential for harm, being more fragile than others because of how much it takes to reach vulnerability of the same intimacy - to be seen as something worth loving. the lindworm desires his birthright as the eldest prince, not as a monster; him being the eldest prince does not keep others from only seeing him as something inhuman, something cruel and terrifying.

and I do think in the lindworm tale that there is an expression of this kind of violent grief of self acceptance, a literal shedding of the protective layers of the self until you are presenting your innermost being, raw and bloody, and saying, this is what I have to protect. this is what others do not believe i am. many versions have the shedding and subsequent night with his wife as being painful and visceral; shedding skins too deep, lashed with cloth and the wounds cleaned with milk before they can be held gently. the lindworm rarely expresses a desire to remain vulnerable, wanting instead to keep his shed skin, to return to it when the night is over and they are no longer alone. to be loved as he is in the daylight requires a sacrifice of dignity that he has never been granted the safety, the luxury of; the love does not come for the public self without exposing the private self, and that is something he has been kept from expressing because he is a monster, forced into isolation where none who see him are willing to meet on that intimate and vulnerable ground, because he is not human like they are, does not look human like they do.

with the lindworm specifically, as the story goes, this exposure is a mutual vulnerability. the maiden on her wedding night, instructed to wear extra clothing to coax the lindworm into shed, is baring herself as well, to the extent she would a human lover; there is an angle to be taken here, with her extra layers being an order from others, that these are layers of reservation that have been taught, and in shedding them she is opening her own self to the lindworm rather than believing those teachings, rather than believing the lindworm is a dangerous monster. there is also the angle that this is a risk she would choose to take with others like her, that the lindworm is specific in being something she is requested to be vulnerable with, that the action would not occur otherwise. is there pity in this love? maybe. I think there has to be, somewhere, that or sorrow, a quiet mourning for how much had to be hurt to reach this, how much had to be lost.

king lindworm is not beauty and the beast, where the monster was a human cursed to a different form. the lindworm was born a lindworm, and has never known anything else; when he returns for his birthright as thd eldest son, the privilege of being we'd is given to him, though the human brides he takes see only a monster. I do not think the lindworm is a tale meant to empower the maiden: it is not a story about revenge, or about the cruelty of kings, or about justice. in king lindworm, two people are vulnerable with each other. the maiden does not re-dress herself in false layers; the lindworm does not desire being human, only to be king - as he is, as he has always been, in isolation or in exile for being born the way he was. i think the lindworm is grieving himself.