“The Frog King” or “Frog Prince” refers to a German fairy tale that was first published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. It is one of the best-known fairy tales depicting characters typical to the genre, such as the stern king, the beautiful princess, and the enchanted prince.
In this tale the princess has a golden ball that she very much enjoys playing with, but one day her ball falls into a well. A frog nearby offers his help to regain it from the depths if the princess promises to be his friend. Eager to get her toy back, the princess agrees. However, she breaks her promise by returning to the castle without the frog. He then pursues her into the castle and the king forces the princess to hold true to her word by being the frog’s friend. After agreeing to several of the frog’s demands, for instance letting him eat from her plate or drink from her cup, the princess gets so infuriated with his request to sleep in a bed like hers that she throws him against the wall. Upon impact, the frog transforms into a beautiful prince. He asks the princess to marry him, she agrees, and they live happily ever after.
The original fairy tale includes one part that is usually left out or deemed not important in most adaptations: the prince’s faithful servant Henry (Heinrich in German). He arrives in the prince’s chariot to take the newlyweds to the prince’s castle. While on the road, they hear loud crashing noises, and the prince exclaims that the chariot will break. Henry calmly responds that it is not the chariot but the three iron rings he had put around his heart to keep it from breaking while the prince was enchanted. Now that the prince was human again and had found a bride, the iron rings shattered from Henry’s heart, making it sound as if the chariot was falling apart.
This initial setting of a prince in disguise has been modified and adapted into popular media over the years, and the original fairy tale was changed during the process. In modern versions the princess does not throw the frog against the wall but must give him a kiss, which incorporates the common fairy-tale device of true love’s first kiss. This version has led to the expression that girls sometimes have to kiss more than one frog to find their handsome prince. The concept of true love’s first kiss conquering evil spells is a modern interpretation, however, and is not common in the original tradition as told by the Brothers Grimm.
The motif of the enchanted prince as a frog is a popular theme in the fairy-tale world and is used in contemporary television and film adaptations of classic folktales. The idea of a prince or princess being enchanted and having to be rescued by their true love’s kiss is, for instance, seen in the DreamWorks Animation SKG film Shrek (2001), where Princess Fiona transforms from human to ogre after her true love, Shrek, kisses her. Even the original frog king concept is used, yet slightly changed, in the movie’s backstory with Fiona’s father, King Harold, who was transformed from a frog into a human by a spell of the fairy godmother. When she ceases to exist in Shrek 2 (2004), the spell is broken and Harold becomes a frog again. In later Shrek movies it is explained that Harold was born a frog but asked to be transformed into a human by the fairy godmother so he could be with Queen Lilian, who sealed his human form with a kiss until the fairy godmother died.
Walt Disney Pictures took up the theme of the frog king in their 2009 film The Princess and the Frog, but instead of using the Brothers Grimm version, they were inspired by E. D. Baker’s children’s novel, The Frog Princess (2002). In that version, Emma tries to run away from her duty of marrying a prince whom she does not like and instead finds a frog in a swamp who tells her he is an enchanted prince. Emma reluctantly kisses him, only to be transformed into a frog herself. They go on a quest to find the witch that enchanted them in order to reverse the spell. Disney’s version uses the same grounding principle except the princess, Tiana, is not running away from another prince when she kisses the prince-turned-frog Naveen, but merely hiding from an exhausting party.
Contemporary novels and films that feature the frog king character are an important mechanism for sustaining—but also creatively reworking—the content of fairy tales in the modern era. As storytelling moved from oral performances to printed literature to animated films, the frog king and other folktales offered engaging subjects with enduring appeal, which demonstrates the resilience, adaptability, and ultimately the cultural relevance of the folklore tradition.
Annekathrin Sölter
See also Babes in the Woods; Beauty and the Beast Folklore; Bunch of Laurel Blooms for a Present; Folklore and Folktales; Storytelling
Further Reading
Ashliman, D. L. 2013. “Frog Kings.” Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts website. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/frog.html. Accessed November 2, 2015.
Baker, E. D. 2014. The Frog Princess. New York: Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children’s Books.
Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. 2011. The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales. San Diego: Canterbury Classics.
Murphy, Terence Patrick. 2015. The Fairytale and Plot Structure. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sax, Boria. 1990. The Frog King: Occidental Fairy Tales, Fables and Anecdotes of Animals. New York: Pace University Press.