Sleeping Beauty Original Story: From "Sun, Moon, and Talia" to the Grimms

The original Sleeping Beauty story is usually traced to Giambattista Basile's "Sun, Moon, and Talia" (1634). In it, the sleeping princess is not woken by a kiss. A married king finds her, assaults her while she sleeps, and leaves. She gives birth to twins in her sleep, and she only wakes when one of the babies sucks a splinter of flax from her finger. The king's jealous wife then tries to have the children cooked and served to him.

Later writers softened the story step by step. Charles Perrault (1697) kept a dark second half with an ogress mother-in-law, and the Brothers Grimm (1812) cut the tale down to the version closest to the one we know today, "Little Briar Rose." Here is how each version works, and why the story changed.

Content note: this article discusses sexual assault in the oldest version of the tale, described factually and without detail.

The Earliest Roots: Perceforest

A sleeping-princess episode appears in Perceforest, a long French prose romance from the 14th century. A princess named Zellandine falls into an enchanted sleep, and a knight, Troylus, comes to her chamber. As in Basile's later tale, she becomes pregnant while unconscious, and she wakes when her newborn sucks a flax fiber from her finger. This shows the darkest elements were part of the story from the start, not a later invention.

Basile's "Sun, Moon, and Talia" (1634)

The prophecy

Wise men foretell that Talia, a lord's daughter, will be endangered by a splinter of flax. Her father bans flax from the house, but she meets an old woman spinning, and a splinter lodges under her fingernail. She falls down as if dead. Her heartbroken father leaves her seated in a velvet chair in a country house and abandons the place.

The king

A king out hunting follows his falcon into the empty house and finds Talia. Unable to wake her, he assaults her and leaves. Nine months later she gives birth, still asleep, to twins: a boy and a girl. Fairies care for the babies. One day, searching for milk, a baby sucks her finger and draws out the flax splinter. Talia wakes.

The jealous queen

The king returns, finds Talia awake, and tells her the truth. He names the twins Sun and Moon. But he is married, and his wife discovers the affair. The queen orders the twins brought to her and tells the cook to kill them and serve them to the king. The kind cook hides the children and serves young goat instead. The queen then tries to burn Talia alive, but the king arrives in time, throws his wife into the fire instead, marries Talia, and rewards the cook.

Perrault's "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" (1697)

Perrault made the story courtly and elegant, and he invented many details later versions kept:

• Fairy godmothers at the christening, one of whom is offended and curses the baby.
• A good fairy softens the curse from death to a hundred-year sleep.
• The whole palace falls asleep with her, and a hedge of thorns grows around it.
• A prince arrives after exactly a hundred years, and she wakes as he kneels beside her. There is no kiss.

But Perrault kept Basile's second half in a new form. The prince marries the princess in secret and they have two children, Dawn and Day. When he becomes king and goes to war, his mother, who is part ogre, orders the cook to serve her the children and their mother with a sauce Robert. The cook substitutes a lamb, a kid and a deer. When the ogress discovers the trick, she prepares a vat full of vipers for the family, but the king returns. In a rage, she throws herself into the vat.

The Grimm Version: "Little Briar Rose" (1812)

The Grimms' Dornröschen is short and fairy-tale perfect:

• The king invites twelve wise women but owns only twelve golden plates, so the thirteenth is left out. She curses the princess to die from a spindle at fifteen.
• The twelfth wise woman softens it to a hundred-year sleep.
• On her fifteenth birthday the princess pricks her finger on a spindle in a tower and falls asleep, along with the whole castle, even the flies on the wall and the fire in the hearth.
• Many princes die trapped in the briar hedge. When the hundred years are up, the hedge opens into flowers for one prince. He kisses her, she wakes, and they marry.

The Grimms dropped the ogress and the cannibal second half entirely. Their version, with its kiss, became the template for Disney's 1959 film.

Sleeping Beauty Versions Compared

What Does Sleeping Beauty Mean?

Different eras read the tale differently:

• Adolescence. The curse falls at puberty (fifteen in the Grimms). Many readers see the long sleep as the passive, waiting period before adulthood.
• The danger of exclusion. The thirteenth fairy's revenge is a reminder that small social slights can have huge consequences.
• Consent and agency. Modern readers often find the oldest versions disturbing, and many recent retellings, including Disney's Maleficent (2014), rewrite the story to give the princess a voice.

For another take on this tale, see our feature on the evil stepmother and other female villains, or compare it with the equally dark original Snow White.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the original Sleeping Beauty story?

The earliest well-known version is Giambattista Basile's "Sun, Moon, and Talia," published in 1634. An even earlier episode appears in the 14th-century French romance Perceforest.

How does Sleeping Beauty wake up in the original?

In Basile's version, one of her newborn twins sucks the flax splinter out of her finger. The kiss only appears in the Grimm version.

Why are there 13 fairies in Sleeping Beauty?

In the Grimm version, the king owns only twelve golden plates, so he invites twelve of the thirteen wise women. The one left out curses the princess.

What happens in the second half of Perrault's Sleeping Beauty?

The prince's mother, an ogress, tries to eat the princess and her two children. A kind cook hides them, and the ogress eventually dies in a vat of snakes.

Who were Sun and Moon?

They are Talia's twin children in Basile's tale, named by their father, the king.