The Frog
deuteragonist · frog
A cursed prince living at the bottom of a well, who negotiates his own rescue in one conversation and then executes the contract line by line.
What they are like
- Kind
- 5/10
- Brave
- 8/10
- Clever
- 9/10
- Honest
- 9/10
- Curious
- 6/10
- Patient
- 10/10
How we meet them
As a voice, before he is a shape. The first thing he does in the story is ask what is wrong, which is more than anybody else in the tale manages.
Personality
Polite, precise and entirely without shame. He does not plead and he does not threaten until the very last moment. He asks for exactly what he wants, waits, and then asks again.
What they want
Out of the well, and then all the way back into a life he can remember.
How they change
Goes from something the princess can look straight past to the only person in the room with a plan, and gets what he wants by being unbearable rather than by being loved.
How they speak
Terms. He names the whole arrangement up front, all of it, and never once asks for gold or a crown. What he asks for is a plate, a cup and a place to sleep, which is to say company.
How the story treats them
The princess calls him a water-splasher who sits with his own kind and croaks. The king takes his side within about a minute of meeting him. Nobody in the story ever asks him how he ended up down there.
One surprising thing
In some other early tellings he does not need to be thrown at all. It was enough for him to sleep three nights on the princess's pillow, and he changed back on his own.
If they were real today
He would be the one who reads the whole contract aloud at the table while everyone else is trying to eat.
Things they say
- “Youngest daughter of the king, open to me.”
- “Lift me up, or I shall tell your father.”
Key moments
The terms
He turns down her dresses, her pearls and her crown, and asks instead for her plate, her cup and her bed. He is asking to be treated as company, and she does not notice.
Knocking on the marble stair
He climbs the palace stairs a step at a time and knocks on the door of the hall, having remembered the exact wording of a promise she has already forgotten.
“Youngest daughter of the king, open to me.”
He said so
Restored to himself, he tells her that he had been waiting a very long time and had gone about it extremely badly. It is the only apology in the story.
Who they know
The Princessrescuer
A contract, agreed in about eight seconds by someone who did not believe it counted, and then enforced clause by clause by someone who did.
Iron Heinrichservant
A man who was turned into a frog, and the servant who had his own heart bound in iron so it would hold until the man came back.
The Kingally
A king who takes the side of a frog he met four minutes ago, against his own daughter, twice.
Characters like The Frog
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