“Rumplestiltskin” by Anne Anderson from Anne Anderson’s Old, Old Fairy Tales. Racine Wisconsin: Whitman Publishing Company, 1935.
In fairy tales the world over, the “little people”—the ants, the birds… the barnyard animals, wild bunnies, or wolves—help the innocent, magically-protected, sweet, kind, and noble hero or heroine. They sort out and accomplish the impossible tasks assigned the beleaguered and persecuted protagonist (stand-in for the magically-potentiated Everywoman/man) by the oppressive tyrant, evil king, inhuman ogre, goblin, or dragon lord.
They would spin the masses of wheat into golden threads—they would count, sort and quantify the towering heaps and innumerable grains of wheat or barley (notice that their “impossible” tasks often involve the tabulation or transformation of the harvest into wealth), or guess the name of the misanthropic woodland gnome by overhearing the gloating creature’s rantings from the corners, shadows, and eaves.
Conversely, they could cooperate to bring down the evil monarch or abusive tyrant oppressing the heroic protagonist and/or their noble quest which, often—in fairy tales—is simply to remain safe or unmolested by those who hold power over them. The small creatures, like servants in a great house or peasants in the fields, are invisible to those who hold and wield power, and can work undetected behind the scenes for truth, justice, magical recompense, or grace.
Buckingham palace staff are now speaking out about what kind of power the defrocked prince wielded over them. He was the most abusive, least popular royal of them all. His nickname among the palace staff and courtly servitors was ‘”the Cunt.” He was disrespectful and cruel to everyone under him, by innumerable accounts, with not one testimonial to his credit, asserting otherwise. He seems to have been universally hated by “the little people” who had the misfortune to have to serve him.
This is Virginia Giuffre’s description of his treatment toward her also—that she was less than a “thing” to the depraved prince, Epstein, and Giuffre—designated merely for sexual use.
Investigators expressed bewilderment that the supposed “financial investments advisor” had no such files on his clients, had rendered no financial consultations, hadn’t billed them for billable hours nor services, nor made any investments on their behalf. Yet tens of thousands, nay—millions—of dollars poured into his shady network of accounts monthly. Mainly because he held scores of receipts, just like the one he snapped of the disgraced prince, Maxwell, and Giuffre (nee Roberts) on the bedroom floor of Maxwell’s London townhouse that night.
OF COURSE the photo of the Windsor disgrace is authentic. THAT IS WHAT EPSTEIN DID. He got powerful men into dire compromise, then recorded it, took photos, kept correspondence about assignations between the men and young girls he trafficked to them—names, dates of rapes of minor girls in his properties, on his island or the so-called “Lolita Express”—and banked them.
A former member of the palace security police has pointed out that the Office of Royal Protection would have known about, recorded, and billed protective services for every single trip the prince has ever taken—who he was with, where he was staying, and any security risks involved. Of course. The Office of Royal Protection knew and maintained records on every single time Andrew stands accused of being with the trafficked teenager—in London, New York, and Epstein’s private island/pederastic sex enclave, Little St. James. How not?
The French model agent who was charged with securing girls and young women for Jeffrey Epstein was found dead Saturday in his Paris prison cell, where he was being held pending multiple charges of child rape and child sex trafficking. Jean-Luc Brunel, 74, was found hanged by his bed sheets in his cell around 1:30 a.m. local time at La Sante prison. “Brunel, who ran Karin Models in Paris, and later formed MC2 Model Management with Epstein, was awaiting trial on charges of sexual assault and rape. He was also being investigated for trafficking minors, including girls as young as 12 years old, according to French news reports.” (CNN) In point of fact, as a matter of public record, Epstein once bragged to his “girls” and associates about the 12-year-old girl Brunel had lined up for him.
Brunel died in circumstances eerily similar to Epstein, whose death also came about just as he was in prison while awaiting trial for multiple sex crimes against minors, with all of the depositions, disclosures, exposures, investigations, records seizures, and knock-on criminal charges that would entail.
Scores of internationally prominent, wealthy, powerful men will have slept easier last night, and will no doubt continue to do so since Brunel’s unfortunate death while in custody, having breathed a private sigh of relief. If involved, in any way, with their procurer’s surprise demise, they will no doubt count any recent dings on their private fortunes as money well spent. If the problem Brunel’s arrest represented for them was “handled” by a private, royal, or secret security service, all the better.
But they’re all forgetting about the little people—so often deemed invisible, inconsequential and overlooked—and the fact that there are eyes everywhere. There are and always have been witnesses everywhere—in the corners, the margins, shadows, fissures… in the cracks that are opening up in their non-disclosure agreements with employees and their entitlements, their old-boys’ legal protections from accountability…
They’re forgetting that, in the Age of Information and #metoo, every snippet of information can be publicized, often rendering a potent form of protection by public disclosure, and can certainly be monetized in excess of legal costs to complainants in well-furnished civil suits. There’s all manner of trauma and abuse, short of and including actual assault or rape, that is now deemed actionable.
Andrew should never have been so “rude, arrogant and entitled”—not to mention so downright disgusting, bullying, and mean—to all those palace “ants.”
For background on the Winsdsor/Guiffre abuse claims and court actions, an up to date timeline can be referenced by following this link: https://www.insider.com/virginia-roberts-sexual-assault-claims-prince-andrew-timeline-2021-8.
Yvonne Owens, Ph.D.
February 2022, Victoria BC
Yvonne’s publications have mainly focused on representations of women in art and the “unsung” women creators in art and culture. She is the author of many original and re-written folk legends and fairytales, as well as non-fiction works on the spiritual and imaginative sources of traditional lore. Her works on folklore and cross-cultural narratives include The Journey of the Bard (1996) and The Cup of Mari Anu (1994). She has published many articles in peer-reviewed journals, chapters in three scholarly books, and a full-length art history text, Abject Eroticism in Northern Renaissance Art: the Witches and Femme Fatales of Hans Baldung Grien (Bloomsbury, 2020). She also writes on art and cultural criticism, exploring contemporary post-humanist discourses in art, literature and new media. She is co-Editor of an anthology of essays titled Trans-Disciplinary Migrations: Science, the Sacred, and the Arts, forthcoming from Cambridge Scholars Publishing.