“The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy” by A. N. Roquelaure, pseudonym of Anne Rice (post 3): Royal slaves cope by multiple personality and bisexuality

The name A. N. Roquelaure was one of the pseudonyms I discussed in previous posts on Anne Rice (search “Anne Rice”), who is best known for The Vampire Chronicles. Her Sleeping Beauty Trilogy is a sadomasochistic fantasy of princesses and princes who become sex slaves.

Characters in these novels have a sense, typical of multiple personality, that something within them seems to have a mind and feelings of its own:

Beauty “was not afraid of anyone in the castle, not of him, the Prince, the Queen. It was her mind that frightened her” (1, p. 238).

“She could not bear any more, yet the pleasure was fragmented, multiplied”…“I don’t know why I did it. I can’t explain, but yes, it must have been deliberate” (2, pp. 6-7).

Beauty’s “mind was curiously empty, as if she weren’t thinking at all. Yet she was thinking…she burst into fresh tears suddenly, and why, she didn’t know” (2, p. 29).

“Her voice was alien to her…She felt as if she was losing the very form of her personality” (3, p. 48).

“O, please…” she wanted to say. But…That was the old Beauty speaking the words in her head, wasn’t it? The new Beauty wanted to say only the word “Master” (3, p. 55).

“…he passed through the attitudes [of his various personalities?] of man, boy, woman, and angel with varying gestures and little changes in his expression” (3, p. 137).

Prince Laurent feels as if someone else were talking through him: “I heard myself answer…” (3, p. 144).

Beauty doesn’t experience the change that comes over her as that of her own changed attitude, but rather, as if she were observing someone else (another personality taking over?). She notes “that her demeanor had changed” (3, p. 201).

Coping by Switching Personality

When princes and princesses are recently enslaved, I would expect them to be preoccupied with thoughts of escape and revenge. But the characters in this trilogy are not like that. Their instinctive way to cope with adversity is to change their personality, which is the way of multiple personality.

Bisexuality

The word “bisexuality” is never mentioned in these three novels, because bisexuality is taken for granted. In what kind of universe might bisexuality be taken for granted? In a universe where everyone has multiple personality, which often includes personalities of the opposite sex and contradictory attitudes.

1. Anne Rice writing as A. N. Roquelaure. The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty [1983]. New York, Plume Penguin, 1999.

2. Anne Rice writing as A. N. Roquelaure. Beauty’s Punishment [1984]. New York, Plume Penguin, 1999.

3. Anne Rice writing as A. N. Roquelaure. Beauty’s Release [1985]. New York, Plume Penguin, 1999.