Quid est amor sine fiduciam?
What is love without trust? Is it possible? Does it exist? Whenever I think about the themes of love and trust, I always think about my favorite movie, Everafter. In the movie, the heroine, Danielle, is a peasant girl who dresses up like a courtier to save her family’s servant who has been sold into slavery. While she is dressed as such, the prince of France sees her, hears her plea to free the servant, and falls in love with her…typical chick flick. Girls, you know we love this stuff. Prince Henry thinks he has found his match, and Danielle keeps up the charade by taking on her mother’s name, Nicole, and continues to play the part of a courtier. She has the prince fooled, and wants to tell him the truth, but is afraid. Her evil step mother (yes, this is a Cinderella story) discovers her deception and exposes her lie to the entire royal court, including the heartbroken prince who disowns her on the spot. After she runs away (leaving, of course, the glass slipper), the prince is confronted by a wise old man, who just happens to be Leonardo Da Vinci. Da Vinci tells him to go after her because she is his “match.” The prince looks up at the old man and says, “And love without trust, what of that?” He cannot trust her. She has deceived him. All of the millions of times that I’ve watched that movie, I felt sorry for Danielle for being rejected like that, but this time around, now that I know what it feels like to be lied to by someone you love and trust so dearly, I feel for Prince Henry. It’s a horrible thing to have believed in someone so deeply, placed all of your faith in that person, and then find out that he or she has been lying to you all along, masking a deception. It is the stuff broken hearts are made of.
So, once you’ve discovered the lie, how do you deal with it? Can you forgive and go on loving? Or, do you take this as a warning and protect yourself from future heartache? I don’t really know, to be honest. The good news is, I’ve stopped crying, and I’ve got a great support system made up of my mother, who would kill for me, a friend who sits up with me until 2 in the morning, and a best girlfriend who brings me ice cream to pig out on until I feel better.
But wait a minute! You might be thinking, “But how does the movie end? Does the Prince accept her?” Of course, being the Cinderella story that it is, he does. But unfortunately, life isn’t a fairytale, and I’m nobody’s princess.
:(
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