Cindy: When Cinderella Gets Bored of the Happy Ending

Cindy: When Cinderella Gets Bored of the Happy Ending Cindy has already won when Grimm Fairy Tales #45 opens. She has the position, the popularity and the authority to make other people do what she wants. That makes “Cinderella Revisited” a particularly ugly reversal of the familiar fairy tale. The question is no longer whether the girl will escape humiliation. It is what she does when she gets to decide who is humiliated next. The answer arrives before Fenton ever enters her room. Cindy oversees a sorority initiation, using the promise of belonging to make the pledges submit to a grotesque ordeal. Another member becomes uncomfortable and tries to stop it. Cindy reminds her who is president and insists that the ordeal continue. This is not a scene where someone loses control in a moment of anger. Cindy is enjoying control. She can see that the people around her are distressed, and that distress is part of the point. When she is asked why she treats the pledges this way despite already having everything she wants on campus, her answer is brutally simple: “Because I can.” That line does more work than a catalogue of supernatural abilities could. At this point in the issue, Cindy's most visible power is social. She controls access to a group the pledges want to join. She uses rank to silence another member's objections. The fairy-tale promise of acceptance has become a tool she can use against somebody else. Then a visitor arrives claiming to be her uncle. Fenton is not family. He is there to collect a debt on behalf of his master, and the payment is Cindy's lasting devotion to that master and his cause. It sounds like the moment when a character should finally discover that her bargain was a terrible mistake. Cindy takes it rather differently. Later, aboard a private flight, she can tell that Fenton is trying to understand her willingness to come along. She explains that she was bored. She would have gone with almost anyone promising a more interesting life. That admission is the sharpest part of this version of Cinderella. Her happy ending did not cure her dissatisfaction. Once she obtained the social world she wanted, she began looking for a larger one. Fenton does not have to drag her away from a life she treasures. He offers a new stage. He also gives her a sword. When she asks about the unusual material in its hilt, he identifies it as half a unicorn's horn and says the other half is in another sword. The scene introduces an important weapon, but this issue does not yet demonstrate its full capabilities. Receiving it is not the same as proving mastery of it. The ending is almost a parody of a royal reception. Cindy arrives at a lavish Las Vegas property and is welcomed to an extravagant pool party. Instead of recoiling from the company she has joined, she declares her approval. This is a deliberately narrow look at Cindy in issue #45, not a claim about every version or later turn of her story. But within that chapter, the character is remarkably clear. She is not simply an innocent princess being punished for wanting too much. The comic shows her choosing cruelty before her new assignment begins. Fenton has come to collect a soul. The unnerving part is how little convincing its owner needs.