The Last Unicorn

This was the first thought in seeing this challenge title, and really all I'll write about for a brief topic.

The film is an older movie released in about the eighties, with central themes on the loss of innocence, death, love, and regret. Among the central rules of its magic system is that only those who believe can see a unicorn, while all other "men" see only a white mare. A normal horse.

And sure enough there is only one or two exceptions among the women who see the unicorn for what she truly is.

A clumsy, somewhat inept sorcerer who nonetheless has a good heart and more power than he himself realizes and the old, wizened King Haggard who is a miserable almost non-human entity who has never tasted anything like the euphoria of a unicorn's gallop across his long life.

The sorcerer is an especially interesting case as he represents the innocence that the unicorn herself does in a much less ethereal form. Many could call him childish with how he blusters and makes himself grander than he actually is while in the employ of a cruel, vindictive master. His journey is one of learning as he steadily matures to understand the true nature of the magic he had attempted to wrestle and force into being what he wanted. And through that innocence as well as an optimistic attitude that preserved his ambitions despite failure, is he able to believe and see the magic in front of him even past illusions and his momentary misery before he takes freedom alongside the unicorn.

But what is really poignant is the middle-aged woman, a bandit wife, who sees the unicorn despite being what the archetype would call, in her "crone" phase. She had never had children and now has lost all her appeal as an attractive, fertile mother and provider. She is introduced as a cynical nag, and yet retained the magic within her of the tale of a unicorn. Through all her years did in her goodness, believe in and revere the powers of a unicorn.

Despite her bitter feelings of never having been so lucky.

When taken into perspective, of history and of our literature the phases of a woman's life are uniquely entangled with loss. As a maiden she loses power and agency, often a victim in need of a savior and of respite. In many ways like any young child but especially sharp-- the sharp tang of aged cheese-- for little girls who society tells are the most worthy as voluptuous, incorruptible princesses, who should stay innocent forever until it is to the convenience of someone else that they transition from their childish purity, from believing of unicorns into motherhood.

Motherhood, where they have experienced pain, where they realize the ticking clock of losses to come, from their own mothers and their fathers, who have already lost the assurance of their warm breasts forever there for their comfort. Where most women will lose that belief in fairy stories and unicorns, but will nevertheless pass on what "must be" a pretty lie to their own children. Pass on that lie because they love them. Whisper lies until they can do so no longer, because their own mothers have unfortunately left them and so have, that treasured innocence that always made their smiles brighter. Leaving behind a tired, so-called unappealing crone. The spinster.

The crone, devoid of the warmth and light she had once borne, now ugly and hollow. The symbol of death and decay. Who has long and so bitterly grieved, the idea of unicorns. Who believe, they have vanished from the world, or were perhaps never there to begin with. This is where we meet the secondary female character of the film.

Bitter and angry at the unicorn, the last of her kind, for never appearing to her-- the unicorn, meant to symbolize the purity and chastity of a bride-- ever the status symbol, as a bride when she had been married or when she had been new.

Who nevertheless never stopped believing that they existed and that perhaps she herself had sinned to never be worthy of the unicorn. Never worthy of being called innocent or beautiful or lovely or magical.

But in her goodness, did she forgive and was equally honored to be worthy of the Last.

"Where were you twenty years ago, ten years ago, where were when I was new. When I was one of those innocent young maidens you always come to? How dare you? How dare you come to me now? When I am this!" Molly Grue, the Last Unicorn.