(en) Many fairy tales of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries take place in medieval courts and are plotted around questions of succession : the old king is about to die, the queen is sterile, the prince is looking for a wife, the fairies bend over the heir’s cradle. These dynastic matters are similar to those the real courts were concerned with; perhaps because most fairy tales actually come from this milieu?
Lecuppre, G., & et al. (2023). La cour des contes. Réminiscences des cours médiévales dans les contes modernes. Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes, 45(1), 239-373. https://doi.org/10.48611/isbn.978-2-406-15141-8 (Original work published 2023)