The horrifying truth about the fair tale snow white

Snow White" is a 19th-century German fairy tale that is today known widely across the world. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection Grimms' Fairy Tales and numbered as Tale 53. The original German title was Sneewittchen, a Low German form, but the first version gave the High German translation Schneeweißchen, and the tale has become known in German by the mixed form Schneewittchen. The Grimms completed their final revision of the story in 1854.

The fairy tale features such elements as the magic mirror, the poisoned apple, the glass coffin, and the characters of the Evil Queen and the Seven Dwarfs. The seven dwarfs were first given individual names in the 1912 Broadway play Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and then given different names in Walt Disney’s 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Grimm story, which is commonly referred to as "Snow White" should not be confused with the story of "Snow-White and Rose-Red" (in German "Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot"), another fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm.
In the Aarne–Thompson folklore classification, tales of this kind are grouped together as type 709, Snow White. Others of this kind include "Bella Venezia", "Myrsina", "Nourie Hadig", "Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree "The Young Slave", and "La petite Toute-Belle".

Maybe the fairy tale we grew up reading isn’t the magical world everyone wanted to live in.

Snow White is a Disney movie that's inspired by a seriously dark story, courtesy of two famous folklorists. Based on centuries of real folklore, the Brothers Grimm catalogued "Snow White" and several other stories into Grimms' Fairy Tales in 1812, and they were far darker than what we're used to. So when it came time for Disney to make their movie, they were forced to deviate a bit from the original tale. So if you want the grisly details, here are the messed up origins of the Disney's classic take on Snow White.

In the Disney film, there's no explanation for why Snow White gets that name, other than her being, well, white. It's just one of those fairy tale names, it doesn't have to make sense, right? But it turns out that the Brothers Grimm's original version of the tale actually gives her name an origin story.

Originally, Snow White's mother is sewing while watching snow fall at the castle when she accidentally pricks herself with her needle. The drops of blood lands on the fresh snow (apparently the window — said to have a frame of ebony wood — was open, which sounds sort of uncomfortable if it's snowing) and causes her mother to say, "If only I had a child as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and as black as the wood in this frame." That's a pretty creepy thing to say out of nowhere, but hey, fairy tale parents are weird.

This scene doesn't appear in the Disney version at all, but they do refer to it. The Magic Mirror, when first describing Snow White, says she has "lips as red as rose, hair as black as ebony, skin as white as snow." As you might have noticed, they skip over the whole red as blood part, making it much tamer with the whole flower analogy.

Disney's version completely leaves out any mention whatsoever of Snow White's biological family. She has her evil stepmother, the Queen, sometimes known as Queen Grimhilde, and that's it. If there's a queen, who's the king? And just who was Snow White's mother, since she definitely has one in the fairy tale?

Well, in the Grimm Brothers' story, Snow White's mom is the original queen, meaning Snow White is indeed a princess by birth. Unfortunately, the mom dies during childbirth, and the king remarries a year later. It's a bit surprising Disney didn't mention this, since nowadays they're notorious for hitting you in the face with dead parents in many of their films. But the original queen is simply a non-entity in the film.

The king in the fairy tale is mentioned exactly once, when he marries the evil queen. He doesn't come up again in the Grimm Brothers' version, and he isn't in the Disney version at all. But there are some variations out there (remember that the stories came from real folklore) in which the evil queen is either implied to be, or is outright named as, the king's killer. The Snow White and the Huntsman movies with Chris Hemsworth are based on this variation of the story, for example.

THE QUEEN IS A LEGIT WITCH IN THE FAIRY TALE
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While Disney's evil queen performs magic and even turns herself into an old crone, this is never implied to be anything other than typical fairy tale evil magic. The only character who ever refers to her as a witch is Grumpy, and he literally calls all women witches in a line just before that, so it seems pretty clear we're not supposed to take him literally on that point. Let's just say that they call him Grumpy for a reason.

In the Grimm Brothers' story, however, the Queen is explicitly described as a witch and her magic as witchcraft. They don't mince words about it at all. The Queen is specifically noted to understand witchcraft and is familiar with it, which is how she creates the poison apple, among other things. Coming from a time and place where the fear of witches was still a pretty real thing, it makes sense not to pull punches in that regard.

In fact, unlike Disney's villain, the fairy tale queen doesn't need to turn herself into a witch because she already is one. She just wears ordinary disguises when she approaches Snow White instead. She's not an ugly old crone style witch — even the fairy tale casts her as being beautiful but proud and arrogant — but she's a witch nonetheless. Presumably, Disney toned this down to avoid scaring children and potentially upsetting religious people.

THE HUNTSMAN'S PROOF IS WAY CREEPIER
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When the evil Queen orders the Huntsman to take Snow White and murder her in the Disney film, she requests proof that he did the deed by asking him to bring back Snow White's heart in a fancy box. It's actually pretty gruesome compared to later Disney movies, which usually shy away from getting too detailed about violence. The Huntsman does kill and slaughter a pig, bringing its heart to the Queen instead, which is enough to fool her into believing Snow White is dead until the Magic Mirror tells her otherwise. At least the movie is tame enough that it never actually shows what's in the box.

But the fairy tale version is way more heinous. It's not Snow White's heart that the Queen demands. Instead, she specifically requests something far more disgusting. She asks the Huntsman to bring her Snow White's lungs and liver. It's pretty stomach-turning and way more graphic than the movie. While downgrading her lungs and liver to her heart is still way more extreme than what Disney films usually feature, it's actually a lot more mild than the fairy tale.

And yeah, the Huntsman does bring the Queen a pair of lungs and a liver, but these are from a wild boar that he killed. Since he killed a pig in the movie, this part, at least, does match up in both stories. Both versions of the Huntsman also get away with their deception. Considering how powerful the Queen is, that's pretty lucky. Well, lucky for the Huntsman ... not the poor pig.

DISNEY SKIPPED OVER WHAT HAPPENS WITH THOSE ORGANS
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In this Disney version, the Queen asks for Snow White's heart, but it's never stated that it's for anything other than proof of Snow White's untimely demise. She seems to just kind of ... hang on to it, presumably because she's an evil monarch and that's just what evil monarchs do. After the Magic Mirror calls it out as a fake, though, it never comes back up in the rest of the movie. Presumably she disposes of it before heading out to try to kill Snow White herself.

However, the fairy tale version of the Queen wants Snow White's organs, her lungs and liver, for a far more disturbing reason. She intends to cook them and eat them. Yes, really. The Queen wants to kill Snow White, then cannibalize her remains, which is pretty monstrous, even for the Brothers Grimm.

The Huntsman delivers the lungs and liver, and the Queen has the castle cook boil them with salt, and then she eats them. Yeah, she thinks she's consuming her stepdaughter's insides. The fact that the organs came from a boar is really just incidental. The Queen, conscientiously and with premeditated thought, planned to eat an innocent girl's entrails just because she was prettier than her. That is next-level messed up, and it makes an already evil bad guy absolutely barbaric.

THE PRINCE NEVER MET SNOW WHITE BEFORE SEEING HER DEAD
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The film version of the story has Snow White singing while doing chores, which the Prince joins in on. The Prince moves on after the song, but later, after Snow White is put into a magical sleep by the poison apple, the Prince comes across her coffin in the woods and recognizes her, at which point, he gets all kissy and breaks the curse. It's like a meet-cute that pays off at the end of the movie and gives things some closure and finality.

The Brothers Grimms' version of things doesn't have Snow White and the Prince even interact before he comes across the dwarfs' house and stays the night, at which point the dwarfs tell him Snow White's story. What's more, it's not even all that soon after the Queen's poisoning. The fairy tale says that it's a "long, long time" before the Prince stumbles across her. Even weirder is that the Prince, seeing the undecayed corpse of this stranger for the first time, somehow convinces the dwarfs to let him take her because he can't live without looking upon her beauty. That's a creepy thing to request. The dwarfs agree, for whatever reason, and the Prince has his servants pick up the coffin and carry it behind him. Weirdo.