"Snow, Glass, Apples
" is a short story by Neil Gaiman. It is a Fractured Fairytale of "Snow White" that flips the script.
A nameless queen doesn't know what to think when her stepdaughter bites her hand and sucks blood. When she realizes the girl needs prey, the queen sends her to be executed to save the kingdom. Unfortunately, taking out a vampire's heart is not enough to kill them.
Compare "Red as Blood" by Tanith Lee, another Grimmification of "Snow White" featuring the titular princess as a vampire.
A graphic novel adaptation was released in 2019 illustrated by Colleen Doran, which won the 2020 Eisner Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium.
Tropes for this story include
- Achey Scars: As a young girl, Snow White bites the queen’s hand and drinks the blood from it, leaving a wound that heals quickly but leaves an old scar. This scar throbs painfully every time the queen is in the presence of Snow White.
- Adaptational Heroism: Instead of a jealous, vain Wicked Stepmother, the queen is a Seer attempting to kill her evil, vampiric stepdaughter to save the kingdom from the ruin she knows she will bring.
- Adaptational Villainy: Instead of a kind, innocent young girl, Snow White is a cold-blooded vampire seductress whose only concerns are finding her next meal and removing any threats to her power.
- Alien Blood: Well, not blood exactly, but a black liquid trickles down Snow White's thighs every time she drinks someone's blood. In the graphic novel, the queen also has an Imagine Spot of Snow White's severed head and hands, and the spears and arrows used to slay her, all covered in black blood.
- Alternative Character Interpretation: In-universe, the queen's stepdaughter is a vampire and she preys on victims until they've lost all her blood. The queen kills her to save the kingdom, only to fail when a prince saves Snow and sees the power in her, executing the queen. Snow and her Prince tell the story so that the roles are reversed.
- Animal Motif: In the graphic novel, the king is visually and implicitly compared to a deer, represented by his crown being shaped like antlers and by a stag's head mounted between his throne and his wife's. A proud and noble animal, but ultimately prey — to his own predatory daughter.
- Antagonistic Offspring: Snow White tries to feed on her stepmother and only manages to get one bite. She successfully manages to drain her father dry until nothing's left of the man he was. It's all but assumed she would've probably feasted on her birth mother, if given the chance.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Snow White marries her prince, takes over the kingdom and makes a public spectacle out of roasting her stepmother alive in a giant oven at her wedding. Guess "happily ever after" isn't for everyone.
- Beat Still, My Heart: Snow White’s heart continues to beat and pulse even after being cut from her chest. Hanging in the queen’s bedchamber, it stops beating after Snow White eats the poisoned apple, and returns to life after the prince’s kiss washes the poison away.
- Blood Countess: Just like in the original story, Snow White is a princess, but she's also a vampire with skin white and cold as snow, who, in the course of the story, seduces other men - including the Seven Dwarves - to drink their blood. She kills her own father by drinking his lifeblood and, following the traditional sequence with the poisoned apple, allies herself with a creepy prince to oust her step-mother (who, in reality, was the heroine of the story).
- Blood Magic: The queen uses some of her own blood as an ingredient in a spell to create the poisoned apples that will tempt Snow White.
- Carpet of Virility: The monk that Snow White meets in the forest has "a body as hairy as a bear's."
- Charm Person: In addition to being a vampire, Snow White seems to have some level of supernatural ability to bring people under her control by drinking their blood. Even as a little girl, the king is unable to stop her from slowly draining him until he's a lifeless husk, and the queen is similarly unable to stop Snow White from biting her hand (though she has the sense to put iron bars over her windows and door after the first time it happens).
- Chocolate Baby: For unspecified reasons, Snow White does not look like either of her parents. Her dead mother (only seen in a portrait) is brown-haired and brown-eyed, while her father has red-gold hair and blue eyes.
- Cold Iron: After the first time Snow White bites her, the queen has a smith forge iron bars and hammer them over her window and door to keep her stepdaughter out.
- Cooked to Death: This is the fate of the narrator, Snow White's stepmother. She is being roasted alive in an oven, explaining to the reader How We Got Here in the final moments of her life, and stubbornly trying not to scream. It's a nasty Call-Back to earlier in the story, when she had told young Snow White about the winter tradition of cooking a pig in the same manner.
- Crown of Horns: In the graphic novel, the king's crown resembles the stylized antlers of a stag.
- Death by Childbirth: Snow White "killed her mother in the birthing."
- Didn't See That Coming: Almost literally. For some unexplained reason, despite being able to see future events in dreams and mirrors, the queen never foresaw Snow White before meeting her.
- Dirty Old Monk: Living in the forest, twelve-year-old Snow White encounters a monk who is all too pleased to respond to her sexual advances. (He doesn't survive the encounter.)
- Disease Bleach: Drained of all life by Snow White feeding on him, the dying king's hair and beard, once a magnificent shade of red-gold, are "faded and lustreless and limp."
- Downer Ending: The queen is burned alive in an oven, knowing the kingdom will fall to ruin under Snow's carnivorous rule.
- Driven to Suicide: People call the queen a wise woman, but she thinks to herself that if she were wiser, she would have killed herself before she ever met the king or Snow White.
- Everyone Has Standards: We are reassured that the queen didn't eat Snow's heart; she's not a monster! Instead, she hung it up with garlic to protect her from its evil influence.
- Face Death with Dignity: In the final moments of her life while being roasted alive in a giant oven, the queen decides not to scream and give her tormentors the satisfaction of hearing her in agony as she dies.
- Fille Fatale: While living in the forest, young Snow White seduces unwitting travelers to prey on them and drink their blood. In the magic mirror the queen sees her seduce a traveling monk and then drain him dry. It's implied that this is how she, er, "persuades" the seven dwarves to let her stay with them.
- Fractured Fairy Tale: Played for horror rather than humor, but every element of the traditional story of Snow White is given a deconstructive twist.
- Girl of My Dreams: Long before becoming queen, our heroine had been seeing the king's face in her dreams and in reflections for sixteen years.
- Glamour: The queen uses one to disguise her poisoned apples as rosy and lush ones. She also casually mentions that she used a glamour to enhance her own appearance when she met the king.
- Good Is Not Soft: The queen thinks about how instead of simply cutting out Snow’s heart or poisoning her, she should have had the girl’s head and hands and arms and legs chopped off and every part of her incinerated until she was reduced to ashes and scattered to the cold winds. She strongly regrets not doing this.
- Good Princess, Evil Queen: Inverted—the queen is a wise woman trying to protect the kingdom from her evil, bloodthirsty stepdaughter.
- Grimmification: An extremely dark version of the old fairy tale, this one turns Snow White into not just a ruthless vampire, but also an incestuous abuser of her own father (who ends up dying from her draining of his blood).
- Groin Attack: Snow White drains her father of all his blood, turning him into a withered husk of a man and eventually killing him. When he finally dies, he has scars all over his body,
including his genitals. - Guile Heroine: The queen isn't physically strong. She has to use her wits to poison Snow when the heartless girl starts preying on those in the forest.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: The original story does not mention the queen's hair color, but the graphic novel chooses to portray her with beautiful blonde hair as a contrast to the dark-haired Snow White.
- I Love the Dead: The prince is a necrophiliac who swiftly loses interest in the living queen and falls in love with Snow White, a vampire with cold skin.
- Idiot Ball: The queen takes steps to protect herself from Snow White after the girl bites and drinks from her, but doesn't think to do the same for her husband. Even if they don't share the same rooms, she doesn't even try to warn him. Inevitably, the king falls prey to his daughter's thirst. The queen herself lampshades this looking back, realizing there were a lot of things she should've done differently when dealing with her stepdaughter.
- The Loins Sleep Tonight: The prince tries to spend a night with the queen, but is frustrated because he's a necrophiliac who doesn't find living women arousing.
- Monstrous Humanoid: Snow White. The story never confirmed what she exactly is. While she has the basic shape of a human, many of her traits are just off - like a typical vampire, she drinks blood and has cold, unnaturally pale skin (but she can grow up, unlike conventional undead creatures). She also can survive while having her heart cut out of her body.I do not know what manner of thing she is. None of us do. She killed her mother in the birthing, but that’s never enough to account for it.
- My Greatest Failure: The queen regrets that she didn't have Snow White completely butchered and annihilated when she had the chance.
- Nameless Narrative: No one is actually called by name in the text, not even Snow White herself.
- Noodle Implements: One of the ingredients in the queen's poisoned-apple recipe is a brown dust made of "dried herbs, and the skin of a particular toad, and from certain other things."
- Nothing but Skin and Bones: The king is eventually reduced to this state by his daughter Snow White continuously feeding on him. When he dies, he weighs almost nothing, is covered in scars, and his hair is faded and limp.
- Nothing Is Scarier: It's never explained how or why Snow White was born the way she is. She just... is.
- Oh, Crap!: The queen is awoken in the middle of the night by Snow White's heart, which has been silent and inactive for years, suddenly pulsing and dripping blood on her face.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Snow White is actually born a vampire; whether she actually is living or undead is ambiguous (especially considering she grows up and matures), but she is capable of surviving having her heart cut out. She is extremely pale and cold, and seems to have some sort of Mind Control or Charm Person powers.
- The Quisling: The dwarves shelter Snow White in exchange for sexual services, allowing her to prey on the other forest folk and any travelers unfortunate enough to enter the woods.
- Rags to Riches: The queen was once a simple peasant lass who the king fell in love with after taking the best of what she had.
- Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Snow White has this look, and she's considered attractive (in her necrophiliac prince's opinion, at least). This trope is ultimately deconstructed, as this story shows how unsettling it would be to have a human (or human-shaped being) that's literally pale as snow.
- Red Right Hand: Snow White is very beautiful. From the outside, her only unusual feature is her sharp yellow teeth.
- Riddle for the Ages: Even in-universe, no one knows how Snow White, a vampire child, was born to two parents who by all appearances are perfectly normal people.
- Schmuck Bait: The apple, especially when prepared with blood and poison.
- Seers: The queen possesses magical abilities that allow her to see the future or the present in reflective surfaces, including glass and pools of still water. As a young girl, she told fortunes for fairgoers at the Spring Fair using this ability.
- Self-Made Orphan: When Snow White is just a little girl, she kills her father by slowly draining him of all his blood. She may have also killed her mother during her birth.
- Sex for Services: The seven dwarves let Snow White stay with them in exchange for...well, guess.
- Shout-Out: On one page of the graphic novel adaptation, there is a banner behind the queen's throne, a black stag on a yellow field that resembles the sigil of House Baratheon.
- Straying Baby: As a maiden, the queen found a lost child who had strayed from her mother by staring into her mirror.
- Stark Naked Sorcery: To create the poisoned apples, the queen has to perform the ritual in the nude at the top of a tower in the middle of autumn and is accordingly unhappy about it. At least she makes sure that no servants are anywhere near the tower during the ritual, preserving some of her dignity.
- Stupid Evil: Snow White kills her father by using him as a juice box, leaving no one to protect her from her stepmother the queen, who knows exactly what she is capable of (because Snow bit her earlier) and swiftly takes steps to have her removed as an active threat. Snow in fact never speaks during the story (aside from once saying "I'm hungry"), giving an animalistic impression.
- Teeny Weenie: The queen describes the manhood of Snow White's prince as "a tiny, slippery thing."
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: No one seems to catch on to the Princess embodying this trope except the Queen, who also takes her time making connections.
- Uncanny Valley: Unlike the original story, this version shows how unsettling it would be to meet someone literally as pale as snow with lips as red as blood.
- Undeathly Pallor: Though beautiful, the vampiric Snow White is as cold as a corpse, who finds her perfect match in a necrophiliac prince.
- Wicked Stepmother: Utterly inverted; the Queen is trying to save her kingdom from the ravenous vampire that is her stepdaughter. That being said, it is hinted that there were more people who were beginning to view her in this light when her inner dialogue revealed that rumors were flying around that she wanted to eat Snow's heart.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Queen tries to have Snow killed and her heart removed. In the radio-drama, the guards are disturbed because "she was only a child," only for the Queen to rebuke the notion that Snow is a harmless child.
