The Six Swans

Illustration from a 1991 version, by Felicitas Kuhn.

The Six Swans (in German : Die sechs Schwäne) is a German fairy tale, collected by The Brothers Grimm . It's not the only one treating a similar story, however: there's also a similar version told by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen ("The Wild Swans" ), one by the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe ("Twelve Wild Ducks" ), other two similar Grimm-collected story (The Seven Ravens and The Twelve Brothers), a Northern African story ("Udea and her Seven Brothers" ), etc. All of them have a common plot at heart: a girl's older brothers are turned into animals, generally birds, and she must save them.

In this particular tale, six brothers from a King's first marriage are targeted by their Wicked Stepmother, a witch who forced her way into their father's life with help from her evil mother and fellow witch. As a consequence, the brothers are transformed into swans and can can only take their human forms for fifteen minutes every evening. There's still hope for them, however: their little sister hasn't been enchanted, so they tell her that she must make six shirts out of nettles and can't make a sound for six years or the spell will never be broken. The girl accepts this and hides away in a hunter's hut, focusing only on her mission.

Some time later, the young King of another country meets the girl in the forest, is taken by her beauty, and marries her despite his mother's objections to seeing a non-noble as Queen Consort, or how the protagonist keeps working on the shirts. When the girl, now Queen, has given birth to their first child, the wicked mother-in-law takes away the child and accuses the queen of killing and eating him; she cannot properly refute it, being unable to talk. She does this twice more to the protagonist, and her husband defends his wife as much as he can, but the third time is the limit and he can't do anything else. And all through her ordeals, the Queen stays quiet, and she won't stop knitting and sewing...

On the day of her execution, the Queen has all but finished making the shirts for her brothers. Only the last shirt misses a left arm. When she is brought to the stake, she takes the shirts with her and when she is about to be burned, the seven years expire and the six swans come flying through the air. She throws the shirts over her brothers and they regain their human form. (Still, since the last shirt's left sleeve is missing, youngest Prince's arms remains a wing.) The queen, now free to speak, can defend herself against the accusations, and she and her brothers tell the King and everyone else what's going on. The evil mother-in-law returns the babies she stole, and is burned at the stake as punishment. From then on, the Royal Family and the brothers live their lives in happiness and peace.

The Six Swans has been re-made in one way or another several other times. i.e. an episode of the Japanese series Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, the anime movie Sekai Meisaku Dōwa: Hakuchou no Õji (The Wild Swans: The Princess of the Swans, which mixes elements of both this and Andersen's versions), Juliet Marillier's book Daughter of the Forest (the first one in The Sevenwaters Trilogy), etc. 

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Provides examples of:

• Adult Fear :
  • The King has a Gut Feeling that his new wife will try to hurt his children, so right before the wedding he sends them away to a small castle in the woods to keep them safe, visiting them in secret from then on. The stepmother finds out about the kids anyway via bribing the servants, and then she attacks and enchants the boys.
  • The Princess herself not only loses her birthright and her family, but she almost loses her newborn babies and is falsely accused of killing and eating the children.
• Baleful Polymorph : Six young boys are unwillingly turned into swans via cursed shirts/capes.
• Big Brother Instinct : A genderflipped: the sister (also said to be the youngest of all the royal kids) is the one who puts 'self through Hell to save her big brothers. They return the favor by playing the trope straight to save her when she's about to be executed.
• Burn the Witch!:
  • The protagonist is framed for infanticide and condemned to this, and barely escapes this fate thanks to her brothers.
  • The evil mother-in-law is burned at the stake for kidnapping her grandchildren and framing her daughter-in-law for it. This probably inspired the Wicked Stepmother 's Karmic Death in Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, where she burns herself to death for using wind magic near the protagonist's not-fully-extinguished pyre.
• Cute Mute: One of the conditions that the lovely-looking main girl must fulfill to break the curse over her brothers is to not say a single word or show a single emotion for seven years.
• Emotionless Girl: The main girl is believed to be this by the court of the second kingdom, as she's not supposed to speak or laugh in the seven years.
• Fallen Princess: The protagonist and her brothers are first taken away from the court for their protection and confined to a small manor, then they're attacked by the Wicked Stepmother . The boys are transformed into swans and the girl must run away into the woods to begin her curse breaking mission without anyone bothering her.
• Named by the Adaptation: The protagonist is not named in the original tale. The name "Elise / Elisa", used in more recent adaptations like Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, comes from "The Wild Swans" instead.
• Obnoxious In-Laws : The villain of the second part is the girl's Rich Bitch of a mother-in-law, who thinks that a Cute Mute of muddled origins like her is not worthy of being a Queen. She goes as far as framing her to get her executed , which gloriously backfires in the end.
• Plucky Girl: The princess endures all kinds of misfortunes with incredible, quiet courage and stays true to her goal of undoing the curse on her beloved brothers.
• Rags to Royalty : The protagonist and her brothers starts as Snow Whites and switch to Goose Kids, first forced out of their noble positions in an attempt to protect them from the Wicked Stepmother and then definitely kicked out of the kingdom as the boys are enchanted and the girl runs into the forest to counteract the curse over her brothers. The princess then switches to a mix of Goose Girl and Cinderella: she marries a King due to her beauty (and he doesn't know she's a Fallen Princess), is targeted by her Rich Bitch of a mother-in-law and near executed as a result, and ultimately is restored when her innocence is proved.
• Wicked Stepmother : The King's wife from the first part. She disappears from the story after the protagonist runs away, but in the Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics version she reappears by "paying a visit" to her and her husband when they have their first (and in this version, only) child, taking up the role of the original's jealous mother-in-law when she recognizes the prince's wife as her stepdaughter.
• Wicked Witch : The Wicked Stepmother and her mother. (But not the evil mother-in-law)

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The "Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics" version provides examples of:

• Adaptation Expansion: In the original, the Stepmother never meets or attacks her stepchildren before turning the boys into swans. In this one there's a whole scene where she fails to endear herself to them, then another has her summon a huge snake against them at night.
• Adaptational Badass: The Wicked Stepmother is still a Wicked Witch, but she possesses MANY powers that she didn't have in the original: she can summon snakes, cast illusions, use wind attacks, etc.
• Adaptational Villainy: Elise's husband is a borderline example, since his attempts to protect her from the infanticide accusations in the original tale are not shown.
• Ascended Extra:
  • The Wicked Stepmother is FAR more important in the episode than in the tale itself.
  • Elise and the Swan Princes' father also has a bigger role, even getting a Papa Wolf moment for his children as he attacks the gigantic snake that threatens them.
• Bishie Sparkle: Genderflipped example: Elise is the one who gets these when the Prince sees her for the first time.
• Blush Sticker: Elise has these as a little girl.
• Bowdlerize:
  • In this version, Elise manages to fully finish the shirts so her youngest brother isn't stuck with a swan wing for an arm.
  • In the original, the Princess met the Young King's huntsmen when she was knitting and, trying to shoo them away, she thew her necklace and then her clothes at them until she was only in her shift/chemise, back then equivalent to be in her underwear. The anime averts it via having Elise simply and quietly stare at the Young King and his group from her 'seat' and leaving them stunned with her good looks.
• Composite Character: The Big Bad of the anime is a mix of the Wicked Stepmother from the first part and the Rich Bitch mother-in-law from the second.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Elise is a bitty Girly Girl and, during her and her brothers' days at the hidden manse, she's seen using a cauldron to make what seems to be a thick stew.
• God Save Us From the Queen!: The Wicked Stepmother returns to the story as the (usurper) Queen of the land that Elise's brothers should reign over. At the end, the released Princes say that they will reclaim and rebuild it.
• Hello, Nurse!: The Young King and his courtiers react like this when they see Elise for the first time.
• Karmic Death: The Wicked Stepmother tries to get Elise burned alive, but fails. Then she tries to attack everyone with her wind powers... while standing next to Elise's would-be pyre, which reignites and sets her ablaze. For further humiliation, the huge-ass cross that Elise was briefly chained to falls on the still-burning witch.
• Meet Cute: The Young King first sees Elise when she's knitting the capes while sitting on a huge branch of a tree. He first tells her to get off the tree so she won't fall off and hurt herself, then she looks at him...
• Named by the Adaptation: As said above, this particular rendition uses the name "Elise" for the originally unnamed princess.
• Parent with New Paramour: In the original, the trope is more or less averted since the King sends his kids away for safety before marrying the Hot Witch. In the anime, however, there's a scene where the King introduces the Wicked Stepmother to Elise and her brothers: the kids are so uncomfortable with the new Queen's presence that they awkwardly refuse to acknowledge her as their new mother, prompting her to harshly scold them in front of the court... and to attack them that same night.
• Pragmatic Adaptation:
  • Elise and her hubby have only one child, rather than three.
  • The original has the brothers being able to retake their human forms briefly every day. Here, they stay as swans until they're de-enchanted but retain their capacity for human speech.
  • The anime keeps the Wicked Stepmother as its biggest villain of the story, instead of dividing the Big Bad role between her and the evil mother-in-law. It also makes her far more powerful and influential than before.
• Princesses Prefer Pink: Elise's wardrobe almost always includes at least one pink piece.
• Red Right Hand: The Wicked Stepmother has blue marks on her cheeks.
• She Is All Grown Up:
  • Princess Elise goes from an adorable little girl to a gorgeous older teenager/young adult.
  • Elise's brothers are cute-looking boys, and when they're released from the spell over them after six years, their adult selves are VERY handsome.
• Spanner in the Works: A dropped cauldron allows Elise to become this and derail the plans of her Wicked Stepmother. At some point she's making stew in the kitchen of the hidden manse and hears that the King is coming, and in her excitement she drops said cauldron and is stuck cleaning up the mess... but in the meantime, her brothers go greet their father and are instead greeted by the Stepmother, who enchants them into swans. Had Elise not stayed behind, she would've been either killed or enchanted by the Witch...
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Elise changes clothes many times in the story. She is first shown as a well-dressed little girl, but later has to wear a simple peasant dress as a Fallen Princess. When she marries she's again seen in regal clothes (now including a golden crown and a veil), then in a simple pink and red dress when she's about to be unfairly executed, and at the very end she's back to her regal outfit.