Once upon a time, there was a handsome King who lived in an equally handsome kingdom. He and his queen were renowned for their exceeding good looks and bad attitudes. 

One day, an old woman knocked on the front gate of their castle.

“Please, my King,” said the old woman. “My house is wiped away by the hurricane. I’m very sick and I don’t have a place to stay for the night. Can I please sleep in the castle for one day?”

The King was beyond disgusted by the old woman’s warts and wrinkled face. He didn’t like to see her dirty feet inside his marble floors and he certainly didn’t like the way she smelled. He refused her and demanded her to go.

“Leave, you filthy old hag! I will not have your grimy old rags soiling my beautiful castle!”

The old woman was offended and revealed that she was actually a witch. From behind her back, she withdrew a wand and she hissed a terrible, awful curse:

“You have such a blackened heart, my King. You might look beautiful, but you’re as rotten as the dead. Your child, who is now inside your wife’s belly, will be the ugliest child in the world. As ugly as your heart, no less.”

Before the King could apologize, the old woman staggered out from the castle. As soon as she reached the front bridge, however, her heart died on her because of her last spell.

-

At first, the Queen wouldn’t believe at the curse. After all, she was the most beautiful woman on the kingdom, and her husband the handsomest. How could she bore the ugly child with their good genes?

But then when the baby came out, she screamed so lout the windows cracked. The midwife who helped her deliver the baby dropped dead in shock of seeing the baby’s face. The Queen and the King could only cry in despair, for they couldn’t bear the thought of actually having such an ugly creature in their ethereal kingdom.

-

The Princess grew up lonely and depressed. She had no friends because people had always been surprised and scared to see her face. The Princess always looked far from her window, which was big and covered most of her walls, because that was as far as she could taste freedom.

Since she was so lonely, the Princess grew up with a poor attitude. She never treated anyone well, because she that was not how she was treated. She never trusted anybody and she always tried to groom her hair, her body, and judged everyone by their appearance.

It was after all, how people judged her.

-

Finally, at her fifteenth birthday, the King gave her a fantastic gift. It was a gift that he’d prepared for years, a gift that required a small fortune and tons of talented artists. It was a set of a hundred masks. The mask will cover her whole face, there is a mask for each of her emotions. Sadness, joy, apathy, and even jealousy. That way, the Princess would be able to cover her whole face while still not sacrificing her facial expressions.

The Princess accepted the gift happily and started wearing the masks all the time. But because of that, her attitude worsened, because she actually looked good with her mask. Her body was thin and willowy, her hair was shiny and cascaded down her waist. Her judgement turned mean and toxic, especially to people she considered below her. She gained notoriety because of her mean words and mean attitude, she no longer the quiet Princess.

-

One day, a letter of invitation came from the neighboring Kingdom. It was an invitation to a ball. The handsome prince from the neighboring kingdom was looking for a bride, and he invited every blue blooded women to come to his eighteen birthday party. Princes were also allowed to come to celebrate.

The Princess was so excited about this. She had never met fellow blue blooded people because her parents always excluded her from meetings and visits, but with her masks, she could now participate. She had been waiting for her true love, and now the chance might come. Unfortunately, the King and Queen wouldn’t allow her to come in fear of her would embarrass them with her bare face.

-

The Princess, however, couldn’t care less about what her parents said. She wanted to meet the prince. She wanted to dance with boys and very possibly meet the love of her life. So she set out at the night with a few of her masks, and went to the neighboring kingdom.

The road was hard, but her desire managed to win, and as she gave out the invitation to the host, she found out that the party was actually a masquerade. Such a fortune that she always wore masks!

-

When she stepped into the ball, everybody stared at her. She knew she was stunning, because she never failed to groom her hair and her body, because she always made sure that she wore the best of dresses. In no time, she became the star of the show, and the handsome Prince showed interest at her.

But there were other princes too, and they were all attracted to her laughter, attracted to the naive way she danced, attracted to her blaring confidence. The Princess had never felt happier in her life. Usually she was dissed and looked at as if she was the ugliest creature in the world. For the first time ever, she became an object of desire.

-

But then, at the end of the party, the one that approached the Princess wasn’t the handsome Prince, but rather the dwarf one. The dwarf fell in love with her as she agreed to dance with him. He advanced towards her with a bouquet of flowers on her right hand, and his heart on his left. 

The Princess was so disappointed because she had absolutely no interest with the dwarf prince. She refused the flower, slapped it to the floor, and she humiliated him in front of the other guests by calling him a stupid midget.

Seeing this kind of behavior, the Prince’s thoughts of the Princess made a one eighty turn. He came up to her and reprimanded her for her rudeness, and the saddened Princess attempted to change her mask to match her emotions.

That was when her real face was revealed. A lot of people screamed to see her grotesque face. The Princess, mortified, ran away to her home, broken.

She didn’t see the regretful look that the Prince had when he was watching her run.

-

When the Princess arrived home, she met her parents, who only said to her, ‘We’ve warned you’.

She ran to her room and cried for days. She regretted everything, she regretted how reckless she was and how mean she was. She regretted her pride and bitterness. 

She also regretted for liking the Prince, who surely must be so disgusted by her.

Even after months after the incident, the Princess hadn’t fully recovered. The King and the Queen was pregnant with their second child, and that was when the Princess decided one thing.

She wanted to live outside the castle. She wanted to feel what it’s like to be a commoner. She wanted to help the poor to alleviate her pained heart.

The King and the Queen granted her wish, and the only thing she brought when she went away was her sadness mask.

-

For years, the Princess helped the poor and slept at the church. She never took her mask and no longer cared about her appearance. Living with the commoners, she realized the finer things in life. Love, family, crops, beloved pets. Appearance was something that these people didn’t care about, and she warmed up to them.

The Princess became a popular figure at the country. She was known as the Masked Woman who would treat the sick and accompany even the worst of them all.

Around that time, the neighboring Prince was also visiting the kingdom. He hadn’t been married, because he never did find the right girl.

When he was trampling on his horse, he saw someone with a familiar mask, and he recognized her as the Princess. Seeing how different she was, and how kind she had been to the poor and the sickly, his heart was moved.

This was the kind of Queen he was looking for.

-

The Prince tried his best to win back the Princess’s heart, but it was not an easy task. She was still hurt and from the incidents years ago. Finally, though, after months of persistence and support from the people from the town, the Prince managed to get the Princess inside the castle again. The King and the Queen was surprised to see the comeback of their daughter and embraced her, thanking her for her hard work.

But no matter what they did or say to her, the Princess still refused to take the sadness mask off her face. As a form of repentance, she said.  

It took the Prince a few more months and a few trips to the Kingdom before he managed to get the ring of marriage. The ugliest princess in the world was getting married with the most handsome prince!

-

Before the marriage, the Princess apologized to everyone she had hurt. She apologized to her maids, her parents, and even the dwarf prince that she had ridiculed years ago. They all forgave her, because they could see that she was now a changed woman.

As the Prince and the Princess were walking down the aisle, the Princess was so enraptured by happiness that she began to cry. As tears wet her face, her mask slipped off. The Princess gasped and began to cover her face, but the Prince held her hands and looked at her straight at the eye.

No longer she was ugly, for her face had turned to be angelic.

Turned out that the curse wasn’t strong enough to make the Princess’s face turn ugly forever. The curse only changed her appearance based on her heart. If her heart was ugly, then she would be ugly indeed, but the moment her heart turned beautiful, so would her face.

The Princess and the Prince were so pleased about this. When it was their time to rule, they ruled wisely and people loved them even more. When they had children, they’d look like cherubs. It was unknown if the curse still affected them, but even if it did, their beautiful hearts won.

Of course, they lived happily ever after.

The End.