"Stonecrossed is Woodborn owed."
The Queen and the Woodborn is a lesbian romance webcomic by Stjepan Šejić, drawing from Serbian folklore, and was originally published on WebToons before being taken down following a misunderstanding regarding the site's Terms of Service, now only being available via Sejic's Patreon.
Queen Danica was married to the king of a small kingdom on the border of the Shimmerwood, an enchanted forest inhabited by gods, demons, and assorted spirits. Adoring her son Andrew, Danica raised him for twelve years despite opposition from her husband's advisors, especially Cyril — an antagonistic acolyte of the god Stribor. Tricked by Cyril into entering the Shimmerwood, Danica encounters the Woodborn — a goddess tasked with guarding the Shimmerwood from intruders and punishing any who trespass. Thus begins a fairytale romance between a Queen and a Goddess.
The Queen and the Woodborn has examples of:
- Altar Diplomacy: In the second chapter, Danica narrates that her marriage to King Peter was politically motivated and opposed by her husband's advisors — especially Cyril, who resented that a foreigner would have even greater influence over the king than himself. However, she notes that she came to love her husband for his kindness and willingness to suffer through the same fertility rituals as her.
- Back from the Dead: Morana resurrects Danica after she dies from her terminal illness, though she has to trade a part of her essence — her dominion over ice — to the death-god Smorodina to do so.
- Berserk Button:
- Morana reacts negatively to being called a witch, threatening to take away Danica's firstborn child the first time she does it, and almost unleashing her divinity the second time.
- Baba Roga hates when people state or even imply that Crnobog isn't Morana's one true love, and even her sister Baba Yaga isn't immune to her rage. Just the thought of Morana sharing her bed with Danica is enough to infuriate her.
- Black Eyes of Crazy:
- When Morana yells at Danica for tricking her in "The Grand Bargain of the Gods", her sclerae turn black to accentuate her menacing death goddess appearance, highlighting just how powerful and dangerous she is when angry.
- Baba Yaga's left eye has a black sclera and yellow iris, one of the few outward clues that she's an anthropophagic hag rather than a reclusive old women. Ironically, she's more rational than her hot-tempered sister, Baba Roga, who abuses her status as Morana's honorary aunt to meddle in her business.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Baba Yaga assumes the reason Morana threatened Baba Roga was because the latter interfered with her purpose, scolding her sister for having done so.
- Divine Date: Mortal queen Danica is romanced by Morana, a goddess.
- Don't Go in the Woods: Crossing the boundary of the Shimmerwood is strictly forbidden, as the forest is the domain of gods, spirits, and monsters; and guarded by a being called the Woodborn, whose duty is to punish intruders.
- Enchanted Forest: The Shimmerwood is a mystical forest populated by gods, demons, monsters, spirits, and other supernatural beings from Serbian folklore. Entry is strictly prohibited for humans, and risks incurring the wrath of the goddess known as the Woodborn.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Danica's husband is usually just referred to as "the king" or "your father" (when speaking with their son). She calls him "Peter" during her Freak Out after experiencing hallucinations of their son calling her, but it's pretty easy to miss.
- Exact Words: Danica swears an oath to serve Morana until she dies, which happens almost immediately after she's done saying it because of her illness. Morana is both angry and impressed because of her Loophole Abuse, bringing her Back from the Dead to thwart Danica's ploy.
- The Fair Folk:
- The Woodborn is a woman with wings on her head and pointed ears, seen by the people who live near the Shimmerwood as a fae being or witch that executes mortals who stray into the enchanted forest. In truth, however, she is the ancient and powerful goddess Morana.
- The Shimmerwood is home to spirits and beings from Serbian folklore — rusalka are shown relaxing near a river, and the anthropophagic witches Baba Roga and her sister Baba Yaga being Morana's honorary aunts. These supernatural beings are bound by any oaths they make, which Danica exploits to trick Morana.
- Familiar: Morana has Iskran, who serves as her "eyes and ears" in the forest. Danica calls him "the Ember Bird", and he's apparently legendary to mortals.
- Fast Tunnelling: After Morana threatens to cut off Baba Roga's arm unless she lets go of Danica, the witch indignantly storms off and disappears down a crack in the ground, later popping out of the earth outside Baba Yaga's hut still muttering under her breath.
- Freak Out: Danica has one in front of the entire court at dinner when she believes she's hearing her son calling to her, but it turns out to be a result of Nightmare-induced hallucinations.
- God of the Dead:
- Smorodina is the deity who presides over the Underworld, embodying the river of the afterlife, manifesting as a massive humanoid figure with a tangled mess of roots and skulls for a face. After gaining Morana's ice aspect, Smorodina's roots and skulls are encased in a layer of ice.
- Morana's aspect as a death goddess — turning her skin grey, hair white, and her avian head-wings into bat-like ones — enables her to barge into the underworld to reclaim Danica's soul, which angers Smorodina as Danica had already immersed herself in his waters.
- Gods Need Prayer Badly: Gods and other beings of the Shimmerwoods rely on, or at least consume, worship from mortals, with gods that are forgotten eventually fading away. Smorodina specifically mentions that Morana's sacrifices are worthless because there is "no faith left to drink".
- Hair Wings: The Woodborn, aka the goddess Morana, has avian wings extending from the side of her head. In her aspect as a goddess of death, the wings become skeletal bat-wings.
- Hallucinations: Danica is drugged by the clergy, who don't like her, with a potion made from the essence of a Nightmare. This causes her to halluciate her son's voice, making it seem like she's experiencing a mental breakdown, and exacerbates her hereditary terminal illness.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: In "Meddlesome Old Thing", Baba Yaga attempts to calm her sister by saying that there's no way Morana would be lonely enough to sleep with Danica. The very next panel shows Danica in bed next to Morana, mortified by the goddess' casual nudity.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: Danica is implied to be borderline infertile, struggling to conceive a child with her husband despite trying every fertility treatment under the sun. It's indicated that she only succeeds in having Andrew due to divine intervention.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Danica is a demure, elegant queen who's attracted by the goddess Marana and enters a relationship with her. She always wears her hair long and has on dresses, as does Marana (who is a bit more menacing, but still feminine).
- Living on Borrowed Time: Danica succumbs to a hereditary terminal illness immediately after swearing to serve Morana until her final breath. Annoyed by this, Morana barges into the Underworld and trades her aspect as a goddess of ice to the death-god Smorodina in exchange for Danica serving her for seven years. Noting Danica's strong resemblance to Vesna, Smorodina warns Morana not to get too attached to her since once those seven years are up he'll come to claim her again.
- Loophole Abuse: When confronted by Morana, Danica — suffering from a hereditary terminal illness — offers to serve her until her last breath. Morana accepts... and Danica promptly dies, leaving Morana both impressed by her cunning and furious at being tricked.
- The Lost Lenore: Morana, Smorodina, and Baba Roga note that Danica bears an uncanny resemblance to Vesna, a goddess of springtime who Morana was in love with and still pines for. Exactly what happened to Vesna is unknown, but trying to talk about her just makes Morana angry.
- Mage Species: Baba Roga and her sister Baba Yaga are witches, but they are decidedly not human. Baba Roga has a single horn jutting out of her forehead and a single eye — to say nothing of her ability to transform her mouth into a massive fanged maw. Baba Yaga is more human-looking, but has a large beak-shaped nose and one eye with a black sclera and yellow iris.
- Mama Bear: Hallucinating that Mora the Nightmare is her son Andrew, Danica bashes Morana upside the head with a rock when Morana manhandles the entity to save her. Morana is more annoyed than hurt, and unmasks the Nightmare's glamour to dissuade Danica from attacking her again.
- Meet Cute: Danica first meets the Woodborn while playing with her son near the Godsroad, glimpsing the Woodborn watching from just past the boundary of the Shimmerwood. Morana ducks behind a tree and peeks out at her, then disappears.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family:
- Mora the Nightmare has a massive vertical Belly Mouth full of fangs, which it tries to eat Danica with to reclaim the piece of itself possessing her.
- When Baba Roga catches Danica, she distends her mouth into a gaping maw with multiple rows of fangs and tries to swallow the former queen whole. When Baba Yaga angers her, she assumes an even more monstrous form with seven eyes and a huge maw lined with fangs.
- Moving Buildings: Baba Yaga and Baba Roga live in a cottage built on the back of a giant chicken, which is capable of moving around, and even gets spooked when Baba Roga gets angry, requiring Baba Yaga to calm it down.
- Nostalgic Narrator: The narration is framed as Danica writing a memoire to her son, looking back on her life with bittersweet fondness.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Cyril the acolyte and his fellows take an instant dislike to Danica because she's a foreigner. Then she doesn't follow their traditions, raising her son herself, and makes them hate her more.
- Reincarnation Romance: It's implied that Danica is the mortal incarnation of Vesna of the Spring, a goddess who Morana was previously in love with.
- Sanity Slippage: Consuming the Nightmare Mora's essence causes Danica to have hallucinations of her son laughing and crying, which combined with her loneliness caused her mental — and physical — health to deteriorate.
- Shared Universe: The comic takes place in the same setting as Fine Print, Sunstone, and Punderworld.
- Shipper on Deck: Baba Roga is a borderline Nosy Neighbor to Morana and thinks she should hook back up with Crnobog, flying into a rage in "Meddlesome Old Thing" when Baba Yaga smugly calls him a "passing fancy".
- Sinister Minister: Cyril is an acolyte of the god Stribor, and resented Danica for being a foreigner and for going against tradition to raise her son herself. As such, Cyril jumps at the chance to undermine Danica's authority, gaslight her into Sanity Slippage, and ultimately try to have her killed.
- Soap Opera Disease: Danica reveals that she suffers from an unnamed hereditary terminal illness, worsened by her loneliness over her son's absence and the toll inflicted on her mind and body by the Nightmare's curse. She succumbs to it after swearing fealty to Morana, who summarily resurrects and cures her.
- Speculative Fiction LGBT: The story is fantasy based on Serbian mythology, with a focus on the relationship between mortal Danica and goddess Morana. The latter was also previously in love with a fellow goddess.
- Super Mode:
- When Morana is particularly angry she unleashes her divinity, her arms and legs turning purple, her head-wings growing in size, her teeth turning into fangs, and the sigil of the gods appearing above her head.
- When Morana taps into her aspect as a death goddess, her skin turns pale grey, her hair turns white, her head-wings become skeletal bat-wings with patagium made of blue flames, and she switches to a waistcloth and chest cover armored by lots and lots of bones.
- When Baba Yaga angers Baba Roga, the one-eyed witch starts transforming into a towering purple-skinned Monstrous Humanoid with a gaping maw, seven eyes, and star-like specks appearing in her robe.
- To Serve Man:
- Mora, the Nightmare whose essence Danica is cursed with, tries to eat Danica when she's drawn to its lair, only to be stopped by the Woodborn.
- The one-eyed witch Baba Roga is more than happy to eat any humans she comes across, and promptly tries to swallow Danica whole when she finds her.
- Violently Protective Girlfriend: Morana is viciously protective of Danica, threatening to rip apart Mora the Nightmare and literally unhand Baba Roga when they try to eat her, and dragging Danica back up from the Underworld at great personal cost to herself. Baba Roga in particular is completely taken aback by Morana's behavior given that they're old friends and Danica is a mere human... at least until she gets a good look at Danica's face, prompting her to indignantly retreat.
- Wicked Witch: Baba Roga is a hag with one eye and a horn jutting from her forehead, and is feared for her tendency to eat any human she comes across. She's more friendly to the goddess Morana, coming across as a nosy honorary aunt who shows up uninvited and at inconvenient times... at least until Morana threatens to lop off her arm for trying to eat Danica, leading to Roga indignantly storming off to complain and gossip about Morana's love-life to her sister Baba Yaga.
- Winged Humanoid: Morana appears this way in her usual form, as a beautiful young woman with large wings.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Smorodina is unwilling to relinquish a soul, even in return for Morana's domain of ice, but he grants an extension on Danica's life for seven years; warning Morana not to get too attached since once that time is up he will come for Danica's soul.
