Which Fairy Tales End With And They Lived Happily Ever After?

The words ‘and they lived happily ever after’ are one of the most delightful signals that a tale has finished folding its arms together and taken a deep breath of satisfaction. The ending of this type of tale has become a hallmark of many European fairy-tale collections, and often is found at the end of well-known stories that children have grown up with in printed editions. When we read classic Perrault fairy-tales such as ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Puss in Boots’, for example, we can expect the very end of the story to read ‘and they lived happily ever after’. The tales of the Brothers Grimm also tend to end happily in many of the retold stories, and in most English translations of the originals. The stories are: ‘Snow White’, ‘Rapunzel’, ‘Rumpelstiltskin’, ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and ‘The Frog Prince’.

However, not every story has a happy ending. Hans Christian Andersen’s famous story of The Little Mermaid does not have a happy ending in the original story and in some translations there is even a spiritual ending to the mermaid’s tale. Some of the Grimms’ stories are even darker in their original forms. For example, the story of Bluebeard has a very grim ending in some versions and Little Red Riding Hood meets with her death in some of the tales. However, many of these stories have been rewritten for children and have happy endings, such as the Disney versions of Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast. Other stories such as Jack and the Beanstalk and The Twelve Dancing Princesses are included in many children’s story anthologies because they have a happy ending and a good moral for the readers.

But then again, what the phrase really conveys to the reader is hope. The phrase tells the reader that after the wild ride of the story, the danger has finally subsided and the story’s protagonist(s) are returning to a life of normalcy and order. This ‘happy end’ is thus a big part of what oral storytellers wanted to leave their listeners with, i.e. the safety of their homes and, in fairy-tales in particular, the notion that by behaving well, good things will happen to them. (In other versions of stories, the happy ending is even delayed until the very last line, and can sometimes be qualified or even ironical.) As for me, I love the happy ending of classic fairy-tales, even when they’re not entirely earned. There’s just something so cozy about coming home to a tale after all that excitement and emotion. I also get a lot of fun from comparing different versions of the same tale, often by reading Perrault and Andersen side by side with the Grimms, and then following their various adaptations into comics, films and novels.

As a child, I devoured picture books and got a charge from ending a story with the right ending to collect. Here are some of the classic stories and fairy tales that include “and they lived happily ever after” at the end. I can recommend “Cinderella”, “Snow White”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Frog Prince” as all of these end with a wedding or the characters being reunited.

Other stories, from folk tale to fairytale, often include that optimistic ending in a more Victorian or Perrault-esque style, such as the happy ending of ‘Puss in Boots’, ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ or even some versions of ‘Rapunzel’. Note however that original regional versions of these stories can differ markedly from the above examples and while the Grimm brothers’ tales are often darker than their adapted versions, the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen is notorious for ending his children’s stories on a more sombre note, with a moral rather than simply happy ending. The examples of cosy children’s stories that use the phrase ‘and they lived happily ever after’ listed above are my personal favourites for bedtime reading.

It’s so sweet as a bedtime story that most of the fairy tales are read to the end where it says “and they lived happily ever after”. I have a few favorites that almost always end this way: Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast – all of them are stories of reunions, weddings, lifting of a curse. The Frog Prince is another exception of a happy end.

And whereas some stories deviate from the standard happy ending (e.g. Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ is heartbreakingly sad), in most comfort stories you will read versions that lead to a happy ending. You can read different versions of a fairy tale and I prefer the versions that give me a warm feeling before I go to bed.