Cinderella is Dead is a 2020 Young Adult, Queer Romance, Dark Fantasy novel by Kalynn Bayron.
200 years after Cinderella found her prince, girls of age in the kingdom of Mersailles look forward to being sent to the royal ball, where they have a chance to be chosen as brides - or be cast off from society.
Sophia Grimmins doesn't want to be chosen, and she doesn't want to go to the ball. She's already in love with her childhood friend Erin. When things go deeply awry at the night of the ball, Sophia escapes the palace and sets out to make her own destiny. One where she alone gets to decide who she'll spend her life with.
This novel contains examples of:
- A Fate Worse Than Death:
- Sophia sees living out her life like Lille's society expects her to as this, since the last thing she wants is being a plaything for a husband she could never love and being forever separated from her actual love, Erin.
- Being deemed forfeit is considered this for the young girls who attend the royal ball. Many take drastic measures to avoid it, such as purchasing "spells" and "potions" to enhance their looks and chances of being picked.
- After the love potion Cinderella was given stopped working, she became disgusted by the prince and started to defy him. He retaliated by slowly sucking out her life force and keeping her prisoner in the palace until she died, completely drained and alone.
- Action Girl: Constance, who is a very experienced knife-fighter.
- Adaptational Heroism: Cinderella's step-family were very straight-forward bad guys in the original fairy tale and were intensely jealous of her for managing to gain the attention of the prince. In this book, they were Cinderella's co-conspirators against the tyrannical monarch and a very loving family to her. Their villain-status in the Cinderella-tale is revealed to be the doing of the royal family's revisionism.
- Adaptational Villainy: Prince Charming in the original fairy tale was pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin: A gallant prince who genuinely loved Cinderella and helped her escape her step-family's abuse. While in this book, he is little more than a Psychopathic Manchild who viewed Cinderella as his property and killed her in the most cruel, drawn-out way possible when she wouldn't give in to him. He then proceeded to do the same to thousands of innocent women for over a century to stay alive and rule eternally over Mersailles.
- All Abusers Are Male: Every instance of abuse we see in the book is perpetuated by a man against a woman. Female abusers are never shown or even mentioned, except for the occasional Female Misogynist.
- All Men Are Perverts: The men of Mersailles are almost universally depicted as perverted scumbags fully buying into the misogyny the system propagates or just not doing anything against it out of complacency, and who feel entitled to every woman who strikes their fancy. The only male character to completely avert this is Luke, who is gay.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: The kingdom of Mersailles is a very patriarchal and heavily misogynistic society, where women have no rights whatsoever and are seen as little more than servants to the men in their lives.
- Domestic Abuser: Sadly a common occurrence in Lille. Due to the system's inherent sexism, no one bats an eye at husbands who abuse their wives, as they're seen as little more than men's property. Right at the beginning of the book, Sophia walks in on a seamstress being beaten by her husband when he suspects she's been keeping her earnings from him.
- Don't Go Into the Woods: The White Woods are teeming with hostile wild-life and are very easy to get lost in. For this reason, they're not as heavily guarded as Mersailles' other borders, as the king expects people to be kept away by their reputation alone.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Mersailles, of France in its Baroque era.
- Female Misogynist: As a result of Mersailles' rampant anti-woman philosophy, a lot of young women and girls grow up internalizing harmful beliefs about themselves, leading to them competing with, shaming and degrading each other for men's affection.
- Grimmification: While the original Cinderella was a very straight-forward Rags to Riches fairytale in which a poor girl gets the life of her dreams by finding her Prince Charming and fleeing her evil step-family. In this book the story everyone knows is a heavily whitewashed version of true events. In actuality, Cinderella was lured to the palace and fell in love with the prince due to having been given a magic potion by the prince's mother without her knowledge. She originally wanted to come to the ball with the goal of seducing and then killing the prince, who was a horrible tyrant, only to end up failing due to the aforementioned betrayal and spending her life as his prisoner.
- Incompatible Orientation: Sophia resents the royal ball for all the obvious reasons, but also because she knows she isn't attracted to men and could never have a happy love life no matter who would choose her.
- The Lost Lenore: Luke lost his boyfriend Louis when Louis' classmates outed them and Louis' parents turned Louis in to the authorities. Luke still grieves him and is furious when one of the boys in the village mocks Louis' death.
- Magic Feather: A more tragic example. It is considered an embarrassment for a girl not to be chosen on her first ball, so a lot of worried parents buy their daughters all sorts of trinkets, potions, and artifacts in order to enhance their looks or attract an actual fairy godmother like Cinderella had to bolster their chances for the ball. Sophia's friend Liv even buys a plastic magic wand. It's all but stated that none of these trinkets actually do anything and that the people who sell them are scammers.
- Marriage of Convenience: Luke offers this to Sophia. Due to both of them being homosexual, neither would have expectations of the marriage the other couldn't fulfill, allowing both parties at least a modicum of freedom.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The seamstress helps Sophia get away after she escapes from the royal ball. King Manford finds out about her involvement later on and has her publicly executed as a warning to any would-be rebels and dissenters.
- No Woman's Land: The women of Mersailles are seen as the men's property and nothing else. A woman's body, finances, and even life belong to her husband. It's so bad that soldiers can casually talk about killing their old wives to get new younger ones right in the open.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: King Manford is a cruel, controlling monarch and a card-carrying misogynist. In his very first appearance, he berates poor Liv in front of everyone at the ball for her looks, and then has her dragged out while the court laughs at her. He was like that even in his original identity as Cinderella's Prince Charming, feeling entitled to her love and using a spell to get her to adore him. When the potion wore off, and he realized she would never love him of her own volition, he slowly drained her as a way of punishing her. He created the royal ball as a general way of getting back at every woman who even slightly reminded him of her.
- Rule of Three: Girls get to visit the royal ball three times. If they're still not chosen by their third ball, they're considered "forfeit" and get cast out.
- Second Love: After Sophia's and Erin's relationship breaks apart due to Erin not being able to handle the societal pressure, Sophia finds a new love in charming rebel Constance.
- Starcrossed Lovers:
- Sophia's and Erin's relationship is forbidden under Lille's law, since both of them are supposed to be dutiful wives to whichever man selects them at the royal ball.
- Luke and his late boyfriend were in the same situation. It ended with Louis' parents selling out their son as soon as they found out about him being gay.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Constance and Sophia disguise themselves as boys by wearing male clothes and braiding and putting up their hair in order to traverse Mersailles unhindered.
- Title Drop: Constance says the title in chapter 12 when her and Sophia meet for the first time in Cinderella's tomb.
- Transparent Closet: Luke once overheard a conversation between his and Sophia's mothers, in which Sophia's mother expressed worry of Sophia's obvious feelings for Erin. Sophia also reminisces at one point about her trying to invoke I Have This Friend in order to gauge Erin's reaction to her crush on her, but Erin immediately seeing right through it.
