KHM 001: The Frog King, or Iron Henry

I didn't realize until about half way in, but this is essentially the story of what I knew to be "The Frog Prince". You know the story: a princess has to kiss a frog and the frog turns into a prince and they fall in love.  The main difference between the version I knew and this version is that instead of kissing the frog, the princess picks up the frog and smashes it against a wall - for whatever reason, this causes the frog turns into the prince.

Anyway, the story starts out with the princess playing with her favourite ball by a pond.  The ball falls into the  pond so the princess starts crying.  The frog sees this, and being the nice frog that he is, tells the princess that he can get the ball if she promises to let him follow her around, eat off her plate, and sleep in her bed.  The princess agrees, gets her ball back, and then runs off like a princess.

Later in the evening, the princess is eating supper with her father (the king) and the frog has finally tracked her down.  He begs and pleads with the princess that she keep her promises.  The king finds out what happened and, like a good father, tells the princess that she should keep her promises.  So the princess does this until she and the frog are in her bedroom (and out of her father's sight), when at this point she breaks her promise and makes the frog sleep in the corner.  When the frog asks again to sleep in the bed, she picks up the frog and throws it against the wall.  The frog then turns into a prince, they leave the castle together the next day, and live happily ever after.  The ending didn't really make a whole lot of sense.  There was also a part that I didn't really care for where one of the prince's servants, named 'Faithful Henry', was in love with the prince.

Overall, I think that the story would have been better if she decided to let the frog sleep in her bed.  If this was the act that caused the frog to turn into the prince, it would reinforce the idea that by keeping your promises, good things will happen to you.  Of course, perhaps the point is that people don't need to be completely honest all the time.

Moral of the story:  Keep 2/3 of your promises and you will be kidnapped by strange frog-men.