Snow White: Father, where did you go?

Does anyone else find it strange that Snow White's father is not present in the story? I'm assuming most are like me in thinking that Snow White's father was killed or died before these events. So, while looking at this story a few months ago, I noticed that it never once says that the King had passed.

A year later the King took himself another wife.

That is it. The King is never mentioned after this. No funeral; no death; nothing.

So here is where my thinking comes in to play, I don't think the King ever died. I think that the King was alive when all of this played out. I understand that this is a twisted view, but I believe that the King's death would have been a traumatic part of a story and would have had an effect on Snow White.

But in thinking in both of these areas, whether the King was alive or not, it is tragic. I honestly see it potentially being tragic in four different ways:

1. If her father was dead, that means Snow was truly alone with the Queen and probably had a lot of issues
2. If her father was alive, then that means he was a weak 
3. If her father was alive he may not have cared about Snow White
4. Or the trauma from his first wife's death was too dramatic for him and caused him not to be able to help his daughter because it caused him too much pain

Any of these are depressing in their own right and I think it puts a new perspective on the story. Think about it, Snow didn't have the love of a mother, but she didn't have the love of her father either. It doesn't matter if the King was dead or alive, he did not show love. He let the Queen kill his daughter three times and that is not a sign of love.

Now I am not going to blame the King for the crimes of the Queen, because that is not fair. Everyone has faced something traumatic in their lives, but whether we let those events shape our lives is our choice. If the King was alive, the death of his first wife may have caused him not to be the father he should have been. He may have been mourning for the rest of his life over the death of the woman he loved. This doesn't give him the excuse to let his second wife abuse his only child.

I know in many film adaptations, they show her father being dead or in the more recent movie, "Mirror Mirror," he was in a different form and thus being taken away from his daughter. I believe the film world finds it easier to just kill the King off because it is almost too painful to think of the idea that the King did not stand up for his child. Maybe it is the idea that a character like Snow White cannot be that broken, because of the idea that she is so pure.

The reason I like to believe that the King is alive is that Snow was still pure and kind even with all the utter pain around her. She had the ability to rise above it all and still find love. Snow White had a broken family in more than one way, but she was able to rise against it and find her happily ever after.

Next week's blog, if I actually hold to my schedule that I wanted to do with this blog, will be entitled:
Snow White: Strength in Weakness (Snow's three deaths)