Once upon a time...
Many years ago there was a prosperous kingdom that reigned in a fertile valley amid the Northern Mountains. The king was stern yet fair in all his rulings and his queen was as kind and generous as she was beautiful. Together their reign was rich in wealth and happiness for all.
Well into their middle years, the royal couple was finally blessed with a son… a strong, healthy babe with a shock of bright golden hair and a cry that matched rolling thunder. As their only child, the golden prince was showered with love and so grew into a strappingly tall and broadly built young man. He wanted for nothing and so was given all of his heart’s desires… but his pride grew into arrogance along with his body’s strength and his temper and lusts burned brightly. Sadly, these traits of entitlement were to be his downfall.
When the now old king stepped down in his golden son’s twenty-first year, a great coronation celebration was held… but immediately following the golden prince’s crowning as the next king, the great doors flew open and in strode three figures. They threw their hoods back revealing themselves to be beautiful women… a brunette, a blonde, and a red head. They were the Weird Sisters, witches who lived deep in the mountain forest that surround the valley.
The raven haired sister, Karnilla, declared that the golden prince was no ruler… but a beast ruled by his own carnal desires and so she cursed him to be in his nature and the red head, Lorelei, cursed everyone within the castle’s walls as well… for their loyalty to serving the spoiled prince, they would serve their new beastly king for all time as objects rather than subjects.
But the blonde, Amora… the sister that the golden prince had tumbled into bed with, still felt a stirring of emotion in her heart for her wandering lover… so she took pity on him and gave a blessing instead of a curse. She conjured a golden rose bud and told the cursed new king that he must learn to love and be loved in return in order to become human once more.
For when he learned to love, the golden rose would blossom… but if in one turn of the moon his love did not return his feelings in kind… then he would die with the fall of the last golden pedal and all his cursed people would follow in his fate… forever frozen as the object they now took the form of.
The beastly king roared and raged at his fate, but he could not harm the witches for they vanished like the wind at the swipe of his fearsome claws and were gone forever. He treasured the rose bud and kept it safe, kept it hidden within his ruined chambers. Amora had gifted him a magical mirror after their first night together so that the golden prince could look upon her whenever he wished. Now, the beastly king used it to look upon his subjects who had not been cursed.
When they tried to come to the eerily quiet castle, they were chased away by the Beast… and they soon packed up their belongings and fled the valley never to return. Years passed and the forest that surrounded the valley quickly overtook it. The once wealthy kingdom was forgotten and peoples beyond the old borders spoke of sighting a massive beast unlike any other… golden furred with twisting horns and sharp claws… wearing a red cape. No one dared enter the forest lest they become the strange beast’s next meal.
Despair settled into the beastly king’s heart and sadness filled him as he was left alone. He masked it with his vicious rage… but it was clear in his understanding… for who could ever learn to love a beast?