How it begins: Short Stories of Love and how it ends

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Life and Death

        The Princess Bride as a novel and a film is a prime example of a fairy tale romance. Love at first sight. Yet for all of its undying devotion to the adage that love conquers all, The Princess Bride never outwardly represents love as we have so regularly come to expect. In fact, in the case of the film, screenwriter and author William Goldman have the Grandson reject the “Kissing scenes”, having his Grandfather skip them as he reads him the novel. So without these scenes of affection how does The Princess Bride explore the depths of love? Three little words “As You Wish”.  

In using “As You Wish” as the catalyst for the relationship between Buttercup and Westley the Princess Bride smartly illustrates how love at first sight can happen. Though it does it in a way you may not expect. The story asks our two protagonists to care about the welling being of the other before their own. As a result “As You Wish” both exemplifies and redefines the idea of love at first sight, by expressing the idea of love as means of service. The phrase also suggests that the person saying “As You Wish needs to know more about the other before they can actually say I love you. Yet, as the film offers, in saying “As You Wish” Buttercup and Westley are in fact saying I love you.     

Death is a large part of way “Love” works within the context of the Princess Bride, death and love go hand in hand, you cannot have one without the other. Let me explain, Before Westley and Buttercup can get married Westley must first seek his fortune. As a result of this he apparently dies, and as a consequence Buttercup dies as well. As she says when Westley returns, “I died that day”.    

Now of course death in this case is not meant to be taken literally, though it is meant to reflect the importance and power of love. Both Westley and Buttercup are willing to do whatever it takes to secure the safety and wellbeing of the other. One of the most pointed examples of this idea occurs when Prince Humperdinck corners them both at the edge of the Fire Swamp. As a way of saving Westley’s life Buttercup gives herself up to the prince. Saying to Wesley “I thought you had died once before. I could not bear it if you died again, not if I can save you.”

There is a constant back and forth of willing the good of the other in the Princess Bride, a concept that Prince Humperdinck cannot even begin to understand. He even goes so far as to mock the very idea of sacrifice, saying to Buttercup. “Please consider me to suicide”. It is obvious that Humperdinck does not know or care that love is most evident when we sacrifice for the good of the other.  This is brought full circle when Humperdinck literally sucks the life out of Westley in order to claim Buttercup as his own. Though what the prince does not realize is that true love and friendship can always buy you a miracle at Miracle Max’s to bring you back to life.

Love is a cycle of life and death, death and life, a continuum of sacrifice and rebirth. That is why the Grandson askes to skip the “Kissing scenes”, he wants to find out where love begins before he discovers its end. Though, in truth it is there at its culmination where love hides’ its greatest secret. So perhaps it is true, as a wise man once said, “It is in endings where we begin”.  That however is a story for another day.