Once upon a time without artificial insemination, there lived a queen who desperately wanted a child.

"Oh, what shall I do?" she moaned, wringing her hands in desperation because there were no doorbells available. "I would so dearly love to have a child! But how do I get one?"

"Well..." The queen's chancellor cleared his throat. "According to the information our wise men have been able to gather on the subject, the process works like this: the birds and the bees..."

The queen listened carefully while the chancellor explained to her the collective wisdom of the enchanted kingdom on this particular matter. When he had finished, she frowned and said, "Well, that's of no use to me! I'm not a bird, and neither am I a bee!"

The chancellor considered how he could best answer this diplomatically. Then he decided he couldn't.

"Go and find some fellow, and screw him until his balls fall off," he advised his most revered monarch.

The queen's expression brightened. "Oh! Well, if that's all, that—that's no problem! We have thumbscrews down in the torture chamber, and I'm sure they could be applied to the appropriate part of the male anatomy—"

It took a few more days of careful explanation, but finally, the chancellor was able to convey the basics of the necessary procedure to his honored queen. Soon, she found an unfortunate victim to experiment on, and not long after that, a little baby girl was born. The queen was ecstatic! True, the little brat wailed like a siren and leaked like a rotten ale barrel, but to the queen she was beautiful, and she loved her with all her heart. In fact, she loved her so much, she wished she were able to grow a second heart to store all the excess love in!

"Isn't she wonderful?" the queen beamed, gazing down at her child, who was busy whacking a rattle against the chancellor's knee.

"Absolutely—ouch!—delightful, Your—ouch!—Majesty."

"How do you think I should bring her up? How can I make her into a young woman who is just as intelligent and resourceful and independent as I am?"

"Um...well..."

"I know!" The Queen snapped her fingers. "I'll give her everything she could possibly want and pamper her beyond imagination. That's sure to make her always happy, and she will grow up to be a strong, cheerful, independent young girl, right?"

"Well..." The chancellor cleared his throat. "I'm no expert in education, Your Majesty, but..."

"Get me a golden cradle encrusted with diamonds! And a golden potty! And silk diapers!"

"Silk diapers?"

"Why not? You said the other day our country's silk industry could do with state subsidies."

"Yes, I did, but—"

"And get me toys! Thousands of toys! Millions! And cute little pets, and playmates and servants for the princess to obey her every command—"

"She can't even speak yet."

"Well, then they'll obey her every screech. Get going!"

And did the queen's plans work? Did the princess grow up into a strong, cheerful, independent young girl?

Well, not quite.

"Catch!" The princess called as she threw her golden ball. Her little pet dog jumped after it, eagerly—straight out of the window she'd hurled it out of. There was a surprised howl, followed by a splat. The princess giggled. "That's the third time in a row that has worked. Dear me, those pets are stupid."

"Um, princess?" The chancellor cleared his throat. "Don't you think you should maybe not do something like that?"

The princess laughed. "Why not? I'm the princess. I can do whatever I want!"

Guided by this admirable philosophy, the princess grew into one hell of a little monster, firmly convinced that the whole world was her plaything. When she grew older and the day arrived when the queen suggested she might want to marry, the princess was quite intrigued. She had played many games in her life, but never this "marriage" her mother was going on about. After she had gone through the list of eligible suitors her mother had given her, the princess smiled and said, "Marriage sounds like fun! Should I marry all of them at once, or one at a time? And when I'm done with them, what execution method should I use?"

Needless to say that despite her beauty, not very many princes showed a great interest in courting the princess.

"Oh Lord," the queen sighed one day, after the princess had chucked one of her few suitors out of a tower window to see if he would bounce, "what did I do to deserve such a willful, disobedient child?"

"Um...well..." The chancellor cleared his throat. Off the top of his head, he could list quite a few things the queen had done. But if he mentioned those things off the top of his head, said head might soon no longer be attached to the top of his throat. "I couldn't say, Your Majesty."

"But you're my adviser! So advise me! What should I do?"

"Well..."

The chancellor considered. What was the right way to deal with the beautiful princess? Forced labor? A lunatic asylum? Exile to the pits of hell? All admirable suggestions, except for the little problem that the queen loved her daughter and would cut off the head of anyone who suggested them. The chancellor was rather attached to his head, and would like to remain so.

What could he do?

What could he do?

Finally, it came to him! He could do what all politicians did when they couldn't solve a problem: unload it on someone else.

"Ehem." He cleared his throat. "Hear my advice, oh queen. This mighty problem is beyond mere mortals to solve. But in the black mountains on the other side of the great wasteland, there lives an old fairy who is wiser than any mortal. If anyone can help you and your daughter, it is she."

"Oh, chancellor!" Springing up, the queen seized the chancellor by the hand and squeezed. "Thank you! You are such a clever man!"

"You're welcome, Your Majesty. I was only doing my duty."

"Have a horse prepared at once! I shall set off across the great wasteland to find the fairy within the hour. She will be able to tell me how I will get my daughter to stop throwing princes out of the window and to start marrying them instead."

"That would be niiiiiiiiice!" came a quickly descending scream from outside the window, followed by a splat, and a girlish giggle from above.

"You know," the queen sighed, "maybe I won't wait an hour. Maybe I should just go right now."

"An excellent idea, Your Majesty. You are the font of wisdom."

So the queen had her horse saddled and set out across the great wasteland towards the black mountains, where the old fairy lived. Long, long days she travelled until she finally reached the edge of the wasteland and entered a valley at the bottom of the Black Mountains.

"At last," she sighed. "I have arrived safely!"

In that exact moment, a pack of lions appeared from the rocks around her and started advancing, their maws opened hungrily.

"Oh dear." The queen cleared her throat. "You aren't by any chance cowardly lions?"

"No," the leader of the pride told her.

"Ah. Then maybe you are the sort of lions who let little girls ride on their backs and save whole enchanted kingdoms and selflessly sacrifice themselves for the good of all?"

"No," the leader of the pride said. "We're the sort of lions who eat people."

And the lioness sprang, teeth bared.

♔👶♔👶♔👶♔👶♔👶♔

It so happened that in the very same region where the screeching queen was being chased about by lions, there lived an old dwarf, called the yellow dwarf because he jumped into a vat of yellow paint every morning.

Hey, everyone has to have a hobby, right?

This yellow dwarf used to live in the great goldmines under the Kingdom of Midas, but he had retreated to this faraway region of Fairyland to finish his life's work, a book called Perfect Parenting: How to bring up your children to be strong, happy, independent little gold-mining goblin killers.

It was a very important book that would, he hoped, one day set new standards in dwarf-parenting all across and especially below Fairyland. So he wasn't pleased at all when his work on chapter four ("How to properly clean chain mail diapers") was suddenly interrupted by some female screaming "Argh argh argh, I'm going to do die I'm going to die I'm going to diiiiieeee!"

"Yes, yes," the yellow dwarf grumbled. "Get on with it, will you?"

"Please, no! Help! Anyone, please help! Argh, argh!"

Sighing, the yellow dwarf put aside his goose feather quill. Humans! Simply no appreciation for the importance of literature and education, the lot of them!

"Aaaargh! Help, please!"

"Yes, yes, you already said that." Sighing, the yellow dwarf got to his feet, put on his helmet, grabbed his ax, jumped into a vat of yellow paint to make himself presentable, and marched towards the stairs, leaving yellow footprints in his wake.

When he reached the exit to his private little mine, he saw a human female wearing something sparkly on her head clinging to the lower branches of a tree. Lions were circling around her, jumping up to try and nibble at her ample butt.

"Help! Help, please, anyone!"

That sparkly thing on her head—was that a...

By Odin's beard, it was. She was wearing a crown. Which meant that she had to be...

"Oh no!" Groaning, he covered his eyes with one hand. "Not her!"

"Hey you! Yes, you little yellow fellow there! Help me!"

"Me? Help you?" He snorted. "Whyever would I do that?"

"Because I'm about to be chewed on by lions!"

"Poor lions. Do you think I should make a dentist appointment for them, or get some digestion pills?"

"You...you...!" One of the lions made a leap, and the queen squealed, clambering farther up the tree. The yellow dwarf leaned on the butt of his ax, watching with an interested expression. This might be more fun that he had thought.

"You know," he said, "it occurs to me..."

"Help! Help, please! Argh!"

"...it occurs to me that this is the perfect moment for us to have a little chat."

"A chat? Now? Oh no! Down, you overgrown pussycat! Down! Don't eat me, I taste horrible, and—argh! No, don't! Someone help, please!"

"Yes, Your Majesty. A talk about your parenting methods. You see, I'm something of an expert in the field, and I make it my business to keep informed about the parenting of all the queens and evil stepmothers and dragons and fairy godmothers and similarly important personages in Fairyland. Of course, the evil queens are nothing to write home about, but at least they want to do a bad job on purpose. In your case, though..." He shook his head, sadly.

"Could we maybe discuss this at a later point? Down, boy, down! No, don't bite, please!"

"On the contrary, I think this is the perfect time to talk. You can't leave, and there's really nothing else important to hold your attention."

"Argh! Argh! Bad lion! Let go! That's my dress! Let go!"

"So, to begin with: the first important thing any parent needs to remember, and especially you, is: set limits. You can't just let your child run around and do whatever it wants. Otherwise, you'll end up with some soft-hearted ninny who spends their days singing and dancing through the forest. No, you need to teach to teach your child the difference between right—like killing goblins—and wrong—like donating to charity."

"Please! Please just get rid of these lions! Pleaaase!"

"Ah yes. That needs me to another important lesson in parenting: you can't just simply give people, especially children, whatever they want. Sometimes it is better if you withhold what they want—"

"Pleaaaase! Get me down from here!"

"—to teach them a valuable lesson. For instance, if I had helped you right away, I'm sure you would not have learned how to climb a tree so quickly, would you?"

"You're crazy as a soup sandwich!"

"Thank you for the compliment, Your Majesty. Now, where were we..."

"I'm going to kill you! Do you hear me? Kill you!"

"Ah yes. Controlling your emotions is also very important for a parent when trying to turn your child into a vibrant, loving, happy little goblin-killer. As a loving parent, you must be able to switch your berserker rage on and off as needed. Now, you seem to be very good at switching berserker mode on, but in regards to switching it off—"

"I'm going to kill you! Kill you very dead and stuff you and hang you over my mantelpiece as a trophy, you nasty little yellow imp!"

"—I think you still have a few little problems. I suggest you work on that if you survive."

"Ouch! No! Bad lion! Bad lion! Not my foot!"

"You can offer him your hand instead," the dwarf suggested, helpfully. "I know that one. He likes fingers."

The queen considered hurling a few more threats, curses and insults at the yellow dwarf, but thought, all things considered, that might not be the wisest approach.

"Please! Please, I'm sorry for what I said. Will you please help me?"

The dwarf considered for a moment—then sighed. "Oh well, since you ask so nicely..."

"Yes?"

"No." And he turned and marched back towards his mine.

"What? Please! Please, I'll give you anything! I'll give you my daughter's hand!"

The yellow dwarf snorted. "Her hand? Ye gods, woman, what would I do with her hand? I'm no CrunchyBrats® customer! I prefer a nice slice of roast beef over roast human any day."

And he started towards his mine again.

"No, no! I mean you can marry her!"

The yellow dwarf stumbled, and nearly fell.

"Marry the brat? Yuk! Thanks, but I think I'd rather eat a roasted hand."

"She's the most beautiful princess in all the lands, and—"

"—the most spoiled and irritating one." Glancing back at the queen, the yellow dwarf raised an eyebrow. "You're a piece of work, aren't you? First you ruin your daughter's upbringing, and now you want to sell her to save your own skin."

"It's—" A lion lunged for the Queen's feet again. She yelped and managed to pull herself one branch higher just in in time. "It's established fairytale tradition!"

"You can take your tradition and stick it up your big royal butt. Don't make too much noise while you're getting eaten, will you? I've got important work to do."

"No! Don't leave me hanging, please! I'll do anything! Anything!"

The dwarf stopped. "Anything?"

"Yes!"

"Well..." Slowly he turned around again and let his gaze wander over the figure of the queen. Hanging upside down in a tree as she was, she was not presenting herself to her best advantage, but still... "Okay. I'll take you."

"Pardon?"

"I'm three-hundred forty-seven. Your daughter is a bit young for me. But you...you're not bad-looking for your age."

"For my age?"

"And ye're not too big, either. After we've put you in the wash a couple of times and you've shrunk down a bit, you'd make a decent dwarf."

"Put me in the...I beg your pardon, Sir?"

"Ye have it. Yes, you could become a nice dwarf. And besides, you're a queen. If I marry you and become king, I could have an impact on the educational system far beyond my little literary exploits. Yes...yes, I like that idea very much."

"I don't!"

"Oh, well, if that's how you feel about it..." Shrugging, the yellow dwarf turned away again and opened the trapdoor to his mine.

"Nooo! Wait!"

"Can't. I've got important work to do. Besides, that lion over there is preparing for a jump, and I wouldn't want to disturb his concentration."

"All right, yes, yes! I'll marry you!"

The yellow dwarf beamed, displaying two rows of teeth which, amazingly, were not yellow. "Right ho. Okay Rex, come here boy! Come here!"

He clapped, and the chief lion ran over to lick his face.

The queen gaped. "Wait...these lions are yours?"

"Aye, of course. You can't be too careful living alone these days. Who knows who might drop by? Goblins, elves, dwarf-eating gazelles... The list is endless."

"You tricked me!"

"Yep. Quite nicely done, don't you think?"

To judge by the hailstorm of curses that rained down on the yellow dwarf, the queen did not think so at all. But that was all right, since the dwarf didn't really care about her opinion. Calling off the rest of his lions, he pulled the monarch down from her perch in the tree, threw her over a horse and, his books and things loaded onto a second horse, set off towards his new kingdom.

"Wait! Wait, before we go, I have to see the old fairy of the Black Mountains! I need to ask her what to do about my daughter!"

"Don't worry." The dwarf lovingly caressed his most important educational instrument—his double-bladed battle-ax. "I'll take care of that."

♔👶♔👶♔👶♔👶♔👶♔

They returned to the palace only a few days later. When they entered the princess's quarters, she was just busy pushing a suitor out of the window.

"Aaaaaa—ng!"

Splat!

"Hm..." Thoughtfully, the princess gazed out of the window. "They still don't bounce."

"And they probably won't ever, sweetheart," the yellow dwarf said from behind her. The princess turned around.

"Who are you?"

"Your new stepfather."

"Do stepfathers bounce?"

"Why don't you try and find out?"

Grinning, the girl lunged at her new yellow toy.

In a move as swift as lightning, the yellow dwarf kicked her legs from out from under her, grabbed her by the hair, swung her around and dangled her out of the open window.

"Now..." He smiled a sweet, fatherly smile down at her. "Let's have a little heart-to-heart talk."

The Yellow Dwarf Parenting Method showed amazing results within a short amount of time. In a matter of days, the princess was turned from a murderous shrew into a sweet, kind, gentle-hearted, goblin-killing, gold-digging little berserker. The yellow dwarf made sure to send away all the lickspittles and sycophants that had been a bad influence on her, and invited only respectable, sensible people to the palace, like Coal Black, Grendel, Alberich, or Baba Yaga. Soon, she was ready to be sent to a dwarf mine for a real upbringing, and she and Coal Black became the best of friends and went gold-digging and goblin-killing together.

As for the Queen, a round in the wash wasn't quite sufficient to shrink her or her ego. To punish the woman for her atrocious parenting, the yellow dwarf made her head kindergarten teacher of the enchanted kingdom. After she had spent three weeks with the little buggers, the yellow dwarf came to her and asked, "My love, will you make me the happiest yellow dwarf in the world? Will you marry me?"

Instantly, the queen threw her arms around him and said, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, oh yes please! Anything! Just take me away from these little monsters! I can't bear it a moment longer pleaaaaase!"

After that heartfelt declaration of love, they soon got married and lived happily ever, and had lots of children, all of which were brought up to be perfect little murderous gold-diggers. And if they haven't died yet, the yellow dwarf is still jumping in a vat of yellow paint every morning.

And the moral of the story is: Lions make great pets!

Or, alternatively: Jump into a vat of yellow paint every morning and you'll be the best parent ever.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My dear Lords, Ladies and Butt-chewing lions,

I hope you've learned lots of important lessons about parenting from my latest story? ;-)

The above tale is mostly based on an old French fairy tale, the title of which is usually translated as The Yellow Dwarf. The original version of the story was written in the 17th century by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy. The lady with this wonderfully complicated name wasn't just one of the first-ever authors of fairy tales, but actually played an important role in inventing the genre, because Baroness d'Aulnoy was the one who came up with the term "contes de fees" (French for "fairy tales"), which she used to describe the tales she was writing, thereby giving the whole genre the name it still bears nowadays. The version of The Yellow Dwarf  which I consulted during my research for "The Yellow Dwarf Parenting Handbook" was a retelling of Baroness d'Aulnoy's original tale, written by Andrew Lang & published in his famous 19th-century fairy tale collection The Blue Fairy Book.

Oh, and by the way: in case you were wondering why the heck the dwarf in the tale you've just read is yellow—it's because that was his color in the original tale. Why exactly that's the case I haven't got a clue! ;-) Perhaps it was simply his favorite color.

NEXT WEEK: Lots of lies and long noses.... ;-) Any guess what that might be?

Yours Truly

Sir Rob