By A. N. Roquelaure
Erotic fairy tale of submission and desire
Subject
Themes
A young Prince, reckless and purposeless after his father's death, cuts through the enchanted vines surrounding a cursed castle and finds Sleeping Beauty asleep on a velvet bed. He awakens her through physical possession, then immediately establishes the terms of their relationship: she is his slave, she will obey without question, she will remain naked, and she will think of nothing but pleasing him. Her father, who once served in the Prince's great-grandfather's castle under similar conditions, accepts these terms as the price of his kingdom's restoration. Beauty is taken, weeping and stunned, into a life she did not choose and cannot escape.
A young Prince, reckless and purposeless after his father's death, cuts through the enchanted vines surrounding a cursed castle and finds Sleeping Beauty asleep on a velvet bed. He awakens her through physical possession, then immediately establishes the terms of their relationship: she is his…
Published in 1983 under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty emerged at a specific moment in American literary culture when erotic fiction was testing the boundaries of what could be explicitly published by mainstream houses. The novel appeared from Dutton and later Plume,…
One of the most distinctive features of the world described in this novel is its systematic theory of pain. Pain is not presented as simple punishment, retribution for disobedience, or cruelty for its own sake. It is presented as a tool, perhaps the primary tool, for producing a specific interior…
The castle operates as an elaborate social machine built to produce and sustain a specific hierarchy of power. At its apex sits the Queen, whose authority is unquestioned and whose personal preferences shape the entire apparatus. Below her, the Prince and the Lords and Ladies exercise power over the…
One of the novel's central projects is the systematic dismantling of the identity Beauty arrived with. She was a Princess, the only daughter of a restored king, raised in a life of careful protection and modest purpose. The Prince announces his intention to erase this identity explicitly: she has…
The novel announces its revisionary project in its title. Sleeping Beauty is one of the most familiar stories in the Western tradition: a cursed princess, a hundred-year sleep, an enchanted castle, a prince who braves all obstacles and wakes her with a kiss. The story is about rescue, restoration,…
Desire in this novel is not something that happens to the characters from outside. It is where they live. Every character in the castle is driven by it: the Prince by his desire for Beauty, which exceeds the limits his position requires; the Queen by a fascination she intended to suppress and…
Beauty enters the story as a cipher, literally asleep for a century before the Prince awakens her. Her identity before the curse was one of comfortable passivity: a pretty, obedient Princess with nothing particular to do, drifting from room to room in a castle that held no mystery. The dream she has…
The Prince is young, black-haired, lean, and entirely sure of himself in the way that people who have never been crossed tend to be. He is eighteen when he cuts through the enchanted vines, and his entry into the castle is characterised not by heroism but by conquest: he came because he could,…
Prince Alexi is introduced as a contradiction: a slave who maintains a composure that masters and mistresses find both admirable and impossible to fully claim. When Beauty first sees him in the Great Hall, he has just been paddled publicly for dropping a wine pitcher. He rises, takes up another…
Lady Juliana is everything Beauty is not: clothed, free, pink-cheeked, and constantly in motion. She enters every scene with an animation that seems excessive for the shadowy castle she inhabits, braids threaded with ribbons and pearls, gown swirling, silver-heeled slippers dancing. She is cheerful,…
Lord Gregory is the castle's institutional intelligence, the man who knows how the system works and enforces it without personal feeling. He is tall, gray-haired, angular-faced, and dressed in the fine miniver-lined boots that mark his rank. His voice is cold when he speaks to slaves, not from…
Leon is Beauty's personal groom and the one genuinely kind figure in her life at the castle. He is somewhat older than the Pages, fair-haired, with hazel eyes and gentle hands that know their business without any uncertainty. His function is to bathe, oil, adorn, and prepare Beauty for whatever the…
A young Prince, reckless with grief after his father's death, cuts through the enchanted rose vines surrounding a cursed castle and enters alone. Inside, the entire court sleeps beneath a century of dust and cobwebs. In the topmost chamber he finds Sleeping Beauty, a girl with long golden hair lying…
At the foot of the Prince's bed, Beauty waits for his next command and studies him covertly while her eyes are cast down. His face is beautiful to her; his hands enthrall her. She searches herself for faults, anxious that she has not pleased him well enough. She tells herself with something…
After the feast, the Prince confronts Beauty in his bedchamber about what he noticed in the Great Hall. She stared openly at Prince Alexi. He dismisses Lord Gregory, admits to himself that he may be too enamoured and too jealous, but the sting is genuine. Beauty throws herself forward and kisses his…
Near dawn, while the Prince breathes heavily in sleep, Beauty slips out of bed on all fours and creeps to the top of the staircase. She planned this small act of stealth, hoping to reach Alexi on his stone pedestal and give him the relief Felix was ordered to withhold. What she finds stops her…
Lord Gregory leads Beauty through the castle to the Training Hall, a large chamber open to the garden where male slaves are being conditioned for permanent physical readiness. Pages work on them simultaneously with paddles and with stimulation, teaching their bodies to remain aroused even under…
Beauty is brought to the Prince while he finishes his supper in the library, ministers nearby with scrolls. She eats from a plate on the floor, laps wine from a bowl, and kisses his boots spontaneously before he speaks. After the long day of Lord Gregory's cold instruction, being near the Prince…
Festival Night transforms the castle. Torches blaze through the Slaves' Hall and every slave is being elaborately prepared. Leon fits Beauty with high leather boots studded with horseshoes, braids her hair with black leather thongs and small brass bells, rouges her nipples and eyelashes, and oils…
Lady Juliana arrives in rose pink, braids threaded with pink rosebuds, dancing into the Queen's chamber and kissing her hand with easy affection. The Queen, settled in a throne-like chair with Alexi kneeling at her feet, instructs her to use her imagination and proceed as she wishes. Lady Juliana…
In the hidden servant's room, pressed against Beauty in the straw, Alexi tells her how he came to the Queen's court. When his father chose him as a Tribute, he ran rather than comply. The Queen's soldiers found him in a field writing poetry, netted him, stripped him, and threw him over a saddle. The…
In the days following her night with Alexi, Beauty settles into a new routine. The Queen has approved her, and the Prince keeps her in his quarters. Lady Juliana runs her on the Bridle Path each morning; she serves wine at noon and attends the Prince each evening. Alexi's hold on her imagination has…
Beauty enters the story as a cipher, literally asleep for a century before the Prince awakens her. Her identity before the curse was one of comfortable passivity: a pretty, obedient Princess with nothing particular to do, drifting from room to room in a castle that held no mystery. The dream she has…
The Prince is young, black-haired, lean, and entirely sure of himself in the way that people who have never been crossed tend to be. He is eighteen when he cuts through the enchanted vines, and his entry into the castle is characterised not by heroism but by conquest: he came because he could,…
Prince Alexi is introduced as a contradiction: a slave who maintains a composure that masters and mistresses find both admirable and impossible to fully claim. When Beauty first sees him in the Great Hall, he has just been paddled publicly for dropping a wine pitcher. He rises, takes up another…
Lady Juliana is everything Beauty is not: clothed, free, pink-cheeked, and constantly in motion. She enters every scene with an animation that seems excessive for the shadowy castle she inhabits, braids threaded with ribbons and pearls, gown swirling, silver-heeled slippers dancing. She is cheerful,…
Lord Gregory is the castle's institutional intelligence, the man who knows how the system works and enforces it without personal feeling. He is tall, gray-haired, angular-faced, and dressed in the fine miniver-lined boots that mark his rank. His voice is cold when he speaks to slaves, not from…
Leon is Beauty's personal groom and the one genuinely kind figure in her life at the castle. He is somewhat older than the Pages, fair-haired, with hazel eyes and gentle hands that know their business without any uncertainty. His function is to bathe, oil, adorn, and prepare Beauty for whatever the…
By A. N. Roquelaure
Subject
Themes
A young Prince, reckless and purposeless after his father's death, cuts through the enchanted vines surrounding a cursed castle and finds Sleeping Beauty asleep on a velvet bed. He awakens her through physical possession, then immediately establishes the terms of their relationship: she is his slave, she will obey without question, she will remain naked, and she will think of nothing but pleasing him. Her father, who once served in the Prince's great-grandfather's castle under similar conditions, accepts these terms as the price of his kingdom's restoration. Beauty is taken, weeping and stunned, into a life she did not choose and cannot escape.