Sapia
Sapia, to me, seems like an early version of the The Taming of the Shrew story, but it ends with a stronger reconciliation. Then again, the Taming of the Shrew has an unofficial sequel (The Woman’s Prize by John Fletcher). Let’s start with Burton’s faux-Jacobean synopsis: “Sapia, daughter of a baroness, teacheth Cenzullo. the son of a king, who will not understand or keep in mind the alphabetical letters, to be prudent ; but receiving a buffet from her, and willing to be revenged, he taketh her to wife, and after a thousand outrages, she having presented him, without his knowledge, with three children, they become reconciled and united.”
The king of Closed Castle has only one son, Carluccio, who is a blockhead. He refuses to learn to read. If anyone speaks to him of learning, he goes wild and acts like a madman. He becomes immune to words, blows and threats. The king things you can’t be unwise and a king simultaneously, so he looks for options.
The Baroness Cenza has a daughter who is so learned that at thirteen she gained the nickname Sapia, which means “wise woman”. I’d note this is where we get the modern name “Sophia”. The king sends his son to be fostered by the baroness, hoping some of the girl’s wisdom will rub off via her ‘company and example.”
Sapia tries to teach the prince the sign of the cross. He fails to learn it, perhaps deliberately. Deciding that kindness is useless with this student, Sapia clips him around the ear. Carluccio is ashamed. His spite is s strong it takes him only a few months to learn to read, and a few more to to pass his grammar. The king is pleased and sends the prince off to a seat of higher learning, to continue his studies. He becomes one of the wisest men in the kingdom, but can’t let go of his desire to be avenged. He dreams of humiliating Sapia, and vows to have his satisfaction, or to die. So, he’s a really horrible stalker and he’s the hero. Imagine what happens in the stories I won’t read.
When Sapia comes of age, the prince says to his Dad “I know you want me to marry some foreign noble, and I know I owe you everything, but as an indulgence, I’d like to marry Sapia. I know of no other way to repay her for my knowledge.” The king weighs this up, and says that even if her status is low, her character is so good that it makes her a suitable match. He sends for the baroness, and they hammer out a marriage contract for their children and throw a wedding feast.
The prince then says “Hey, Dad, I need my own pad.” and the king makes him a palace. He locks Sapia in it, starves her and annoys her as much as possible. .Eventually he goes in and asks how she is. She asks why he married her if she wanted to treat her so badly. He says it’s revenge for the slight she gave him as a tutor. She tells him he’s an idiot and a tyrant, so he leaves her and makes her conditions worse. He then takes a few days and asks again. She hasn’t changed her opinion.
The king then dies, and so the prince leaves to claim the throne, with his retinue. The baroness, who has heard what’s happening to her daughter, has been arranging a jailbreak via a tunnel. I’d put the PCs in here as her agents. The baroness kits her daughter out with retainers and luxurious carriages, then uses a short cut (ahem, let’s say magic) to make sure she reaches the capital first, and rents out the palace opposite the kings. Who are these people who are renting out palaces?
The new king falls in love with the beautiful neighbour, gets her pregnant and gives her a necklace to remember him by. He then goes on a royal progress. Sapia heads home and gives birth, but she’s doing better because she can smuggle in supplies through the tunnel. Her husband arrives, hoping she’s died, because he wants to marry the hot neighbour from the capital. She tells him again she struck him to make him wise, because he was an ass, and he gets annoyed and leaves for the capital. The same thing happens and he gifts Sapia a rare gem for her hair, and she gets pregnant again. This happens a third time, and so she gets a thick gold chain covered in jewels and a third child.
The last time the prince comes home, Sapia has been giving a sleeping draught by her mother, and is pretending to be dead. They bury Sapia, then pull her out of the ground and smuggle her to the baroness’s castle. The king has a short mourning period and then offers to marry his hot neighbour. During the feast she throws herself at his feet and says “Please don’t disinherit your kids.” then she brings out the three children and explains the whole thing. The prince works out she’s wiser than him, and agrees to stop being a monster. This is apparently a happy ending and I hate this author.
The Five Sons
Pacione sendeth forth five of his sons into the world to learn a craft, and each returneth with some experience; they go to save the daughter of a king stolen by a ghnl, and returning with her, dispute as to who did the greatest deed of prowess so as to be worthy to make her his wife; but the king giveth her to the father, as the parent stem of all these branches.
There’s a wealthy merchant named Pacione, and he has five good-for-nothing sons. He gets sick of them sponging off them, so he sends them off to masters to learn trades for a year. After that they return, and he asks what they’ve learned.
The eldest, Luccio, says ‘ I have learnt the craft of a rogue, where I became the chief of rogues, and the head-master of thieves, and the fourth in the art of marauding, and thou wilt not find a peer to this body, that can with more dexterity cut off knots, or steal cloaks, or wrap up and cut up washing, catch and lighten pockets, clean and put to rights shops, shake and empty purses,
sweep and empty boxes; and wherever I can reach, I can show the miracles of hooking.’
The second is a shipbuilder, the third a crossbowman.
The fourth has learnt of a herb that will cause the dead to rise. His father responds “Bravo, 0 thou priest of I ,anfusa – this should be the time when we should be sa,·ed
from want, and cause folk to live longer than the Verlascio of Capua.’
The youngest has learned the language of birds. He tells them that while they have been dining, the birds have told him a princess has been stolen by a ghul and whoever brings her back can have her wife.
“Lets do that, gang” says the eldest and they say “Sure!”. Off they truck like a loaded brace of Chekov’s pistols. They arrive at the rock and the ghul is having a rest using the breast of princess Cianna as a pillow. They pop a big rock under the ghul’s head and race off. The ghul wakes as they are rowing away, and turns himself into a dark cloud to peruse them. The crossbowman hits the cloud right between the eyes, which gives the ghul such a headache he falls in the water. Yes, I know clouds don’t have eyes.
When they turn back to check on Cianna, she’s dead. She’s not wounded in aqny way, she’sw just cold and gone. The leader of the group carries on for half a page, tearing his beard and speaking in elegant variations until his brother stops him and says they can give the body to the sultan, and then flee quickly in case he’s angry. Some of the others agree this is the best plan.
Then another brother points out that he can literally raise the dead, and wonders how his brothers could have failed to register that, because it’s pretty marvellous. I mean, being a crossbowman or a shipwright is good, but how many guys do you know who can raise the dead? One. He tells them to row for shore and let him look for the herb that revives. Oddly he finds the herb within minutes of first landfall, so it must be locally endemic. The brother squeezes the juice in Cianna’s mouth and she’s returned to life.
They get back to the Sultan’s court with no further use of their talents. Weird, if you were the guy who was the Prince of Thieves in this scenario, you’d be annoyed that there was no time in the spotlight for you. The Sultan needs to decide who to give the girl to as wife, and the thiefly one, who has been leading the expedition, says to give her to the one who did the most work. The Sultan thinks that’s just and the author dresses this up as a ploy by the leader, but honestly I think the shipwright who did all the sailing of the boat may have put the most sweat into the venture. Each of them relates their role. Finally the king says to Pacione “What’s your opinion.?”
He says “They are my sons, and without me they’d be idiots. I forced them to learn all of their crafts.” The sultan says that sounds fair to him, and the boys now have a new mother. Awkward. The sons are given money and the father a new lease of life. He says the moral “Between two disputants, the third rejoiceth.”
Games From Folktales 