The True Story of Rapunzel and the Witch

They call me Alice Gothel, though most don’t know me by name. To them, I’m simply the witch in the tower, the villain of the tale. Let me tell you, the world loves a neat story—one with a wicked witch, a helpless maiden, and a heroic prince. They never ask what came before the tower, or what happened after the prince rode away.

If you must know, it all started with a craving. Not mine, but Rapunzel’s mother, who, heavy with child, knocked at my garden gate one moonlit night. She had heard whispers in the village that my herbs could ease a mother’s burden. Her husband hovered at the threshold, eyes wide, hair tousled from worry. I saw the desperation in him and offered the herb she craved for a single penny, nothing more.

I saw no prophecy in the way the moonlight caught on the mother’s pale ringlets or the way the father’s hand trembled when he took the herb wrapped in brown paper. I saw only a family trying to survive, and I helped them, as I always had.

Rapunzel was born in the warmth of spring, with eyes the color of cornflowers and wisps of gold hair like dawn’s light. They named her for the herb that once calmed her restless kicks in the womb. I saw her grow from a giggling bundle into a child who trailed after butterflies, her laughter like wind chimes. I visited them often, bringing tinctures and warm shawls spun from lamb’s wool, enchanted to ward off cold in the winter nights.

Then the magpie came. A sharp-eyed creature that never forgot a slight. I once rescued a squirrel from its claws, and the magpie spread stories, twisting the truth like threads on a loom, calling me witch, wicked, and worse. It mattered little to me until the village, hungry for stories, began to listen.

Years later, while gathering wild garlic in the forest, I found a boy tangled in the ferns, his horse gone, ankle swollen. His eyes were bright with fear, and I felt the old tug in my chest that came when I saw something broken I could fix. I led him to my tower, healed him, and learned he was a prince.

After that day, he returned often, asking for salves for the king’s gout, potions for the royal cats, or herbs for his mother’s headaches. But it was not the potions he came for. One evening, as the fire crackled low, he stepped close, the scent of pine and horse on him, his eyes asking the question his lips dared not. When he kissed me, the world slipped away, and for a moment, I let myself believe in a different story.

But stories twist, don’t they?

Rapunzel came to me on a night when the fog clung to the fields, her small face streaked with tears, belly rounded with a secret she could not keep hidden any longer.

“He promised me marriage,” she wept, “but now he won’t even look at me.”

She was sixteen, with her mother’s gold hair and a softness that made her look fragile in the lamplight. I took her in, letting her stay in the highest room of my tower, thinking I could protect her from the world that had turned its back on her. But protection is a tricky thing, and the walls you build to guard someone can become their prison.

She grew restless, her appetite endless, her laughter ringing through the tower until it echoed in the quiet hours of dawn. And the prince—my prince—he kept visiting, slipping in after the lanterns were out, whispering promises against my skin, promises I wanted to believe.

Until the day he met Rapunzel.

They say betrayal comes like a thunderclap, but for me, it was a quiet unfolding, like the soft tearing of cloth. I found them one afternoon, tangled together on the window seat, her hair like a river of gold across his shoulder, their faces flushed with secrets.

Rapunzel’s eyes met mine, wide, pleading, but not with guilt—only the fear of discovery. The prince’s mouth opened, a protest on his lips, but he said nothing as he fled, leaving the scent of rosemary and betrayal behind him.

She looked at me, defiant. “You can’t touch me. I carry the prince’s child.”

I don’t remember grabbing the shears. I remember the weight of her hair in my hands, the way the golden strands fell like sunlight across the floor, and the way she screamed as the blades closed again and again. I threw her from my door, hair shorn, tears streaking the dirt on her cheeks, and I ran into the forest, the trees swallowing me whole.

Pain found me there, in the thorn thickets, tearing at my skin as I fell, darkness rising like floodwater. When I woke, I was cradled against a broad chest, the scent of moss and earth around me. A centaur, they called him, though to me he was simply the one who saved me when the world I built shattered.

In the centaur’s realm, under the arching white elms, time slowed. My wounds healed, the scars fading until they were whispers on my skin. I learned to see again, to breathe, to live without the constant hum of fear and loneliness. My black cat Lucifer found me, winding between my legs, purring, reminding me that love can be quiet and steady.

Word came to me through the nightingales that Rapunzel married the prince, that she became queen, that the kingdom fell into disrepair under their rule. Two children she bore, but even the cries of babes could not fill the emptiness they created.

As for me, I stayed in the realm of the centaur, where magic was as common as rain, where I was neither witch nor healer, but simply Alice. I married my centaur, his strength and kindness grounding me in ways I never thought possible. They say there are benefits to marrying a centaur, and there are—like the way he can carry me across mountains as dawn breaks, the wind tangling in my hair, laughter spilling from my lips.

Now, as I wait for the birth of our first foal, I think of Rapunzel sometimes, and the prince who once swore he would love me forever. I think of them, not with bitterness, but with a soft sorrow. They were children, playing at stories they didn’t understand, and I was a fool who wanted to believe I could step into their fairytale and find a place there.

But I have found my place, and it is not in a tower, nor in the whispers of villagers who need someone to blame for their fears. It is here, where the trees sing, where the moss is cool underfoot, and where love is not a promise made in the dark, but a truth lived every day.

If you wish to call me a witch, do so. But know this: I am a witch who chose peace over bitterness, who chose to heal rather than curse, and who found a life worth living far from the stories others told about me.

And perhaps, that is the truest magic of all.