Storytime: The Princess Bride

I hope you took my advice here and thought about a favourite story--or many--over the last few days. I wracked my own brain about which favourite I was going to mention first, but when the right one came to mind I knew it immediately.

It's The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's classic tale of true love and high adventure, the 'good parts' version by William Goldman, better known to the world as a movie that came out in 1987. And what a movie. As his Grandpa says to Fred Savage, it's got "Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles..." What else could you want?

So why do I think of it as a book, when most of the world knows the movie best? When I was 7 years old my Dad came home from a trip and said he'd seen a great film called "The Princess Bride." He told me a bit about it, and when I seemed interested he got the book from the library and read it to me. He read me the whole novel. Before I'd ever seen the movie, I was Fred Savage. Er, you know what I mean. And I loved it. Loved it loved it loved it.

Why is it one of my favourite stories? Well, the Grandpa was right: It has love, mysteries, narrow escapes and seemingly impossible odds. And it has a happy ending. Looking closer, it has everything I'd want to put into my own stories.

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya.
You killed my father. Prepare to die.

First of all, its characters are brilliant. Every one who appears on screen (or on the page) is memorable. Our princess is kidnapped, and the leader of the kidnappers (Vizzini) is a study in how you can be too smart for your own good. The giant (Fezzik) is simple and sweet, but also loves rhymes ("No more rhyming, and I mean it!" "Anybody want a peanut?") and is well loved by the swordsman (Inigo) who is on a lifelong search for a six-fingered man who murdered his father. None of them are the stereotype of the evil henchman. The evil prince himself (Humperdinck--take a moment to appreciate that name) is a whining coward who fools us for most of the film. To say nothing of the torturer, the Court Rugen, a scientist and sadist... who has six fingers on one hand.

Then there are the good guys. Farm boy Wesley, the Dread Pirate Roberts, and The Man in Black. Each of these would be something on their own. Together? What a hero. Buttercup is unfortunately the least interesting of the bunch, but if you're looking for a heroine look no further than Valerie, Mad Max's witchy wife, who assesses the situation and whips her husband into shape so our hero doesn't have to stay mostly dead any longer than necessary.

People make mistakes in this story. They lose hope and their friends have to prop them up for a while. People die, and sometimes the wrong people die. Their backdrop is a world that's part-fantasy and part-history, so it doesn't intrude on the plot--Of course we believe that the prince of Florin wants to murder his bride and frame Guilder to start a war. That just makes sense. There's magic of a sort without any wizard battles and at the end of the day it's difficult to walk well if you've been mostly dead most of the day. It's all very reasonable.

I would like to say that the happy ending is what makes this one of my favourite stories, but it isn't: it's the journey. Across the water and up the Cliffs of Insanity, through the Fire Swamp and into the Pit of Despair. At no point does this story stop to indulge the author's love with his own words, or the filmmaker's love of their own sets. It just continues, and the characters draw it forward until its brilliant, inevitable, happy ending.

I'd love to hear about your own favourite stories, though I'll also understand if you want to keep them to yourself. It's easy for me to talk about The Princess Bride because I know it's well loved. Some stories I adore are less known, or less liked. And those are just for me.