Ileana Simziana or Ileana Sînziana (also translated to English as The Princess Who Would be a Prince or Iliane of the Golden Tresses and Helena Goldengarland) is a Romanian fairy tale collected and written down by Petre Ispirescu between 1872 and 1886. It tells the story of an unnamed youngest daughter of an emperor, who dresses up as a man, goes to serve another emperor and rescues the titular princess Ileana. The protagonist later goes on a quest to obtain the Holy Water and is hit by a monk's curse that causes her to transform into a man, Făt-Frumos, a Prince Charming figure. Făt Frumos then marries Ileana in the happy ending.
Synopsis
The tale introduces an emperor with three daughters, who is sad that he didn't have a son. The oldest daughter goes to the emperor and asks him what problem he is having and tells him that she will go to serve another emperor as a soldier only to make him happy. Then the emperor makes a copper bridge and turns into a wolf. The oldest daughter gets scared and goes back to the palace. The same happens with the middle daughter, who also gets scared of the wolf.
The youngest daughter goes on a journey with her father's old horse, and defeats him on three bridges, first as a wolf, then as a lion, then as a twelve-headed dragon. The girl arrives at the court of a "great and strong emperor" and he tells her to rescue Ileana Simziana, his daughter, who had been kidnapped by the giant.
The youngest daughter rescues her, and the emperor asks her to retrieve his herd enchanted mares, the girl succeeds in this spree. Then Ileana Simziana asks the emperor's daughter to bring the Holy Water kept in a small church above the Jordan and guarded by nuns who neither slept in the day nor in the night. The girl succeeds but the monk who takes care of the church prays to God and asks him if the thief is a man to make him a woman and vice versa, so that the princess becomes a prince: Făt-Frumos. Now a prince, he marries Ileana Simziana and they live happily ever after.
Analysis Tale type In the Aarne–Thompson–Uther folktale classification system, the story and its variants count as tale type 514, "The Shift in Sex".Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 182. Scholars often interpret them as tales of transgender identity and transition.
Rainer Wehse, in an article in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, recognized that the tale type shows great variety in motifs and in narrative sequences, but they gravitate around a common core: the transformation of a woman into a man.Wehse, Rainer. "Frau in Männerkleidung (AaTh 514, 880, 881, 884, 884 A u.a.)". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens. Band 5: Fortuna – Gott ist auferstanden. Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Lutz Röhrich; Rudolf Schenda. De Gruyter, 1987. pp. 168-169. . Similarly, Stith Thompson stated there is great variety in the tales indexed as this type.
In that regard, according to Richard MacGillivray Dawkins, a more general outline of the story is that a king has three daughters, and the third is the most valiant. She disguises herself as a man and joins the army in her father's place. She displays great acts of bravery and marries a princess. Eventually, someone tries to unmask the heroine's gender, until the heroine is sent on a mission where she transforms into a man by the curse of a magical being.Dawkins, Richard McGillivray. Modern Greek folktales. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1953. p. 299.Ashliman, D. L. A Guide to Folktales in the English Language: Based on the Aarne-Thompson Classification System. Bibliographies and Indexes in World Literature, vol. 11. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1987. p. 112. .
Variants Distribution According to mid-20th century scholarship, the tale type is found in Europe, and most of its variants appear (in descending order) in Finland (17 tales), Turkey (13 tales), Ireland and Lithuania (10 tales), Denmark (9 tales), Greece and Poland (6 tales), Romania (4 tales).Pino Saavedra, Yolando. Folktales of Chile. University of Chicago Press, 1967. p. 262. Variants were also "sporadically" collected in Asia (Indonesia and Malaysia), in Iberian tradition (Spain, Portugal) and its former colonies (Cape Verde Islands, Mexico and Chile).Pino Saavedra, Yolando. Folktales of Chile. University of Chicago Press, 1967. pp. 262-263.Pino Saavedra, Yolando. Cuentos folklóricos de Chile. Tomo II. Santiago, Chile: Editorial Universitaria. 1961. pp. 404-405.
Europe Romania A variant of this story, entitled The Girl Who Pretended to be a Boy, was published in 1901 in Andrew Lang’s The Violet Fairy Book, and was an English translation of a tale from the 1894 Romanian Sept Contes Roumains (Seven Romanian Stories), edited by Jules Brun and Leo Bachelin."Jouvencelle-Jouvenceau". In: Brun, Jules & Bachelin, Leo. Sept Contes Roumains. Librairie de Firmin-Didot. 1894. pp. 286-339.
In a variant collected by from Harbachtal with the title Das tapfere Königstöchter ("The Valiant King's Daughter"), the Red Emperor, now a frail and 99-year-old man, receives a letter from his friend, the Green Emperor, summoning him to war. The Red Emperor laments the lack of male heirs, but his three daughters offer to take his place. The elders dress in male clothes and cross the bridge, but an iron-toothed wolf frightens them back to their kingdom. The third daughters disguises herself in masculine clothes, rides her horse and avoids an encounter with the wolf. Some miles later, she finds a golden swine rib on the floor, but her horse warns her against it. She reaches her destination, and the king sees the swine rib, demanding the knight to retrieve its owner. Later, he has to find a maiden with golden hair and the Sword of God. On this third task, the she-knight steals the sword, and God Himself and Saint Peter decree that she is to become a man, since she was already dressed in masculine clothes.Schullerus, Pauline. Rumänische Volksmärchen aus dem mittleren Harbachtal. Bukarest: Kriterion, 1977. pp. 409-416.
Moldova Author and folklorist published a Moldavian tale titled Prince Theodor and the Magic Stag. In this tale, a king and a queen have a daughter named Theodora. When she is of age, the king prepares to marry her to a prospective suitor, but does not seem to find his ring. He hangs down his head in shame, for, if he had a son, he would go to the other world and get the royal signet from his grandfather. Theodora offers to journey and get her grandfather's ring, so she dresses up as a man and departs. She goes to the north, to a deep, dark forest, and finds a dragon about to devour a white stag. Each animal beseeches Theodora to help one or the other; she chooses to help the stag and kills the dragon. Soon after, the white stag helps her in a chain of quests (ATU 550, "Bird, Horse and Princess"): to get her grandfather's ring from the Evil One, the King of Darkness, she has to get the white horse Cudalbul, which belongs to the Red King; to get the horse, she has to find a bride for the Red King, a maiden named Leonora Goldenlocks, who lives in a kingdom 33 kingdoms away and beyond 44 seas, kept inside a hazelnut and guarded in a castle of witches. After taking the hazelnut from the witches, they curse Theodora to become a man, Theodor. At the end of the tale, Theodor gets the horse and his grandfather's ring, and marries Leonora Goldenlocks.Botezatu, Grigore. Moldavian Folk-Tales. Kishinev: Literatura Artistika, 1986. pp. 188-199.
North Macedonia In a Macedonian variant collected from Ohrid by Bulgarian folklorist Kuzman Shapkarev with the title "Девойка, престорена на юнак" ("A Girl, Pretending to be a Boy"), the king wants a male heir, but the queen gives birth only to girls. So she disguises the youngest as a boy to appease her husband. His parents marry him to a princess, daughter of an Emperor. On their honeymoon, the disguised prince puts a sword between him and the princess. The Emperor invites his son-in-law to take part in a challenge to jump over a ditch and to tame his wild boar. Impressed with his abilities, the Emperor sends his son-in-law for a magical water and a pumpkin hung on a chain between heaven and earth. With the help of a talking horse, he obtains the items and is magically transformed into a man.Shapkarev, Kuzman. Сборник от български народни умотворения [The Bulgarian Folklore Collection]. Vol. VIII: Български прикаски и вѣрования съ прибавление на нѣколко Македоновлашки и Албански [Bulgarian folktales and beliefs with some Macedo-Romanian and Albanian]. 1892. pp. 147-149.
Albania French scholar Auguste Dozon collected an Albanian tale in his book Manual de la langue Chkipe,Dozon, Auguste. Manuel de la langue chkipe ou albanaise: grammaire, vocabulaire, chrestomathie. Paris, Ernest Leroux, 1878. pp. 71-75. which he translated to French as La fille changée en garçon.Dozon, Auguste. Contes Albanais. Paris: Leroux. 1881. pp. 109–120. Albanologist Robert Elsie translated the tale into English with the title The Girl who Became a Boy. In this tale, a king with three daughters is called to war. Each of the princesses asks him the reason why he is worried, and he tells them about the war. The two elder princesses ask to be married off, but the youngest decides to wear masculine clothes and go to battle. She goes to another kingdom and releases a king's son from a dangerous kulshedra, and asks for a horse as reward. Later, she rides to a third kingdom where the king has set a suitor challenge: if anyone can jump over a moat and fetch a golden apple, they shall marry the princess. The girl, still masqueraded as a boy, rides the horse over the moat and grabs the apple, and marries the princess. However, on the wedding night, since both are girls, nothing happens, and the princess complains to her father about it. The king and the courtiers decide to get rid of "him": first, by sending "him" to take food to some woodcutters in a forest where a kulshedra lives; next, by sending "him" to be devoured by a wild mare (which is "his" horse's mother); lastly, to go to a church full of snakes to collect unpaid taxes. With "his" horse's help, the "boy" goes through the three tasks and avoids the danger. After the third task, the snakes curse their tax collector: if a boy, they shall become a girl; if a girl, they shall become a boy. The girl realizes he has become truly a man and goes to live with the princess he married.Elsie, Robert. Albanian Folktales and Legends. Dukagjini Pub. House. 2001. pp. 51-56.
Greece The tale type registers 19 variants in Greece, according to the Greek Folktale Catalogue.Angelopoulou, Anna; Kaplanoglou, Marianthi; Katrinaki, Emmanouela. "ΚΑΤΑΛΟΓΟΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΩΝ" Vol. 4: ΕΠΕΞΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ ΤΥΠΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΛΛΑΓΩΝ AT 500-559". Athens: ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΝΕΟΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΕΡΕΥΝΩΝ Ε.I.E., 2004. pp. 203-212, 238-239. .
Norway Scholar , in his book The Types of the Norwegian Folktale, located a single entry in Norway, classified as type 514, Jenten som tjente soldat, og ble gift med kongsdatter. In this entry, the heroine disguises as a soldier, marries a princess and eventually is transformed into a man by an old couple's curse.Hodne, Ørnulf. The Types of the Norwegian Folktale. Universitetsforlaget, 1984. p. 121.
Latvian The tale type is also registered in Latvia, as type AaTh 514, Māsa karā ("The Sister in the War"): the heroine replaces her brother in the army and is promoted to the rank of a king's general. The king sends the general on difficult tasks and a sorcerer changes her into a man.Arājs, Kārlis; Medne, A. Latviešu pasaku tipu rādītājs. Zinātne, 1977. p. 111.
Lithuania