cat's castle, and she promises to help him win this contest as well. Over the next year, he guesses at the cat's background, but she refuses to tell him. At the end of the year, she tells him that she can give him a beautiful princess, but only if he will first cut off her head. The prince at first refuses to cut off his beloved cat's head, but is eventually forced to comply. Then, from the cat's body appears a beautiful woman, while the cat courtiers are transformed into humans. The princess finally explains her past. Her mother was a queen who promised her, before she was born, in return for fairy fruit. The fairies then raised her in a tower that was impossible to enter except through a high window. While the fairies arranged a marriage for her to an ugly fairy king, she fell in love with a human king who passed by her tower, and planned to escape with him. However, the fairies caught him in her tower room. They killed him and transformed her and the people of her kingdom into cats. She would only be free when she found a man identical to her dead lover. The prince and the former white cat set out for the prince's kingdom, where she is found to be far more beautiful than his older brothers' brides. However, the former white cat rules over six kingdoms, and bestows a kingdom each on his father and older brothers, leaving her and the youngest son still with three kingdoms over which to reign. They celebrate a triple wedding. Analysis Folklorist Stith Thompson argued that the "Animal Bride" story was made popular by Mme. d'Aulnoy's literary opus and pointed that the tale type "maintain[ed] a clear and vigorous tradition in the folklore of all of Europe", with more than 300 versions collected. The tale of The White Cat was a product of the salon culture of the late 17th and early 18th century France, a period of prolific literary production by female writers. French scholarship (e.g., Paul Delarue and Genevieve Massignon) noted that "many French versions" merge tale types ATU 310, "The Maiden in the Tower (Rapunzel)", with tale type ATU 402, "The Animal Bride". Variants Rachel Harriette Busk collected a Tirolese variant, The Grave Prince and the Beneficent Cat, with many similarities to MMe. d'Aulnoy's tale. A Danish variant, Peter