The Medieval water sprite whose betrayers accidentally made her a literal icon
They tried to destroy her. She became an embodiment of power for the ages—including our own.
Sometimes the people who try to destroy you accidentally end up transforming you into something more powerful than they (or you) could have ever imagined.
That’s exactly what happened to Mélusine.
She’s the most powerful fairytale figure you’ve probably never heard of.
Except you do know her—you’ve seen her double tail, long flowing hair, and crown as the brand logo of the world’s largest name in coffee.
Photo by Athar Khan on Unsplash
That’s how big her influence was, and is. The people around her saw the extent of her power, and it scared them. They were actually right about that, in the end.
Mélusine’s tragic flaw was that she was way too generous. I don’t know about you, but I empathize with her. She was always helping people, finding solutions to their biggest problems, setting things right for them, basically bringing them along with her as she changed the fabric of the circumstances around her.
A few examples:
When Mélusine’s mother spilled the big family secret that her father had betrayed them when Mélusine was born, Mélusine took matters into her own magical hands. She decided he wasn’t going to be able to carry on like nothing had happened while her mother watched and cried, so she sealed him inside a mountain forever. Effective and non-violent resolution to family drama, especially by Medieval standards.
Another time, she was just minding her own business by a pool in the woods, which is what you do on a random Tuesday in Medieval France as half-fairy half-human water sprite. When, out of the trees, a strange man appeared, visibly distraught. He told her he had accidentally killed his uncle (boar hunt, also typical Medieval Tuesday amirite?).
Melusine (Detail aus der Mitteltafel des Triptychons) Heinrich Vogeler, circa 1910
This man, Raymondin, was miserable because his whole family had disinherited him. Mélusine told him what to say to smooth things over with the family, somehow erasing the familial murder he had committed. What? See, I told you she was powerful. Then she got him back his riches, helped him build an enormously wealthy kingdom overnight, and gave him all the power and influence he could possibly desire.
The things she could do for people were, obviously, incredible. She could take a situation that looked dire and turn it into diamond-encrusted goodness without breaking a sweat. She lifted others into their power through generously sharing her own.
You would think that this kind of ability and willingness to help would make her their hero. Not quite.
The problem with being as overly generous and as powerfully able to solve people’s problems as Mélusine, is that people do come to rely on it. They expect you to fix everything for them, always. And when you can’t or won’t or it doesn’t go the way they wanted, they can react…poorly.
As it turns out, Mélusine should have just shrugged and said not my problem. Sorry that dad hurt you, mom. Sorry your uncle died and now you’re on your own, sir. Then gone and built her own dang queendom full of generous souls like herself.
Instead, her reward for all of this generosity—avenging her mother’s pain, creating other people’s royal legacies, making literal murder trials go away—was that those closest to her systematically betrayed her. When they couldn’t contain her power just for themselves and have her comfortably performing the role and storyline they wanted her to, they sought to destroy her.
Her mother cursed her, condemning her to hide in the shadows of her bath every Saturday when she would grow a serpent’s tail—or according to some texts, a fish’s tail.
Yes that’s her as the Starbucks “mermaid” you know so well now! The story does get better! …but not quite yet unfortunately.
You can see why her mother thought this weekly time as a monster would stop Mélusine. As a fairy queen, her mother knew something about power and how to manage it. Shame, isolation, and walking on eggshells to keep a dark secret have a tendency to diminish someone’s influence.
And her husband! That bewildered and distraught man from the forest pool! He promised her that he did not care and would not ask what she did on Saturdays in the confines of her bath because she had helped him so much and shown him so much love. But over time, he let his family convince him that maybe she wasn’t who she said she was. They meant an affair. Not a serpent woman on the weekends. But when he peeped his eyeball through the keyhole to spy on her one Saturday, he discovered that she was actually much more than he had realized. Her power was visible and undeniable in a whole new way.
To his credit, he kept her secret a while. But in the end, it was the same story. One day, she couldn’t save a tragic situation with their children (familial murder again, I’m starting to wonder a little about Raymondin’s genes now). In his fury, Raymondin announced her secret to the public square, denouncing her as: “false serpent!”
Melusine nouvellement Imprimee a paris, Michel Le Noir, 1517
Quite to Raymondin’s—and likely everyone’s—surprise, the second part of Mélusine’s mother’s curse kicked in: She transmogrified into a winged dragon permanently and flew away into the hills of France, wailing. Because if they can’t diminish you by making you hide in the shadows, the next step is to make you seem dangerous to everyone who would take you in, and outcast you entirely.
Where was the same support for Mélusine that she showed to everyone else? She probably would have taken a pat on the back or a listening ear, to be honest. Not much to ask after her betrayers had received literal castles and heirs and erasure of their family dramas, all thanks to her considerable power.
But I want to tell you something I’ve learned from experience: Time spent in isolation with the shadowy parts of yourself, in the corner, in the dark—it doesn’t make you weaker. Not in the long run. They may think you’re gone for good, but oh no. It teaches you to dance with your shadows. It teaches you to shine light on them and let them laugh. It transforms you in a way you can never undo. It teaches you things about yourself that others didn’t want you to see, because it scared them. Things like your true power.
And what is more powerful than a fire-breathing dragon?
Mélusine found her peaceful home and her true belonging among the other dragons. They were powerful like her, separate from the world because of it like her, and—maybe surprisingly to those who outcast them—generous and kind and clever like her. She had entered her final most powerful form where she, at long last, found the support she’d lacked all along. She settled among beings who understood what it meant to be a real threat to small people grappling for power they already had.
Now, here is my favorite thing about Mélusine: She didn’t let all the horrible treatment turn her cold. Not even when she grew scales and wings and claws and could have scorched any of them in a heartbeat.
Nope.
She returned to the castle of the man who had betrayed her, not for revenge for herself and definitely not to see him, but to watch over her children as they grew, and then their children and their children’s children. She warned them of dangers she could see from her higher view. She cried tears for them, because she still loved and missed them. She mourned their passings and celebrated their triumphs for generations.
So much so, that her name became the official seal of belonging to the royal French family for centuries: the House of Lusignan, House of Anjou, House of Plantagenet, and House of Limburg-Luxembourg all claimed her ancestry as proof of their luck, valor, and unquestionably royal blood.
She’s remained popular—a literal icon—in France and Northern Europe for centuries more, including a 1997 stamp issued in Luxembourg, connecting the country’s heritage and reverence still for Mélusine.
1997 La Belle Mélusine Luxembourg stamp. Some versions of the tale say that Mélusine became a fish and jumped into the river, as depicted here.
And, in 1971, more than a thousand years after her original appearance by some accounts, a coffee and tea company named Starbucks found Mélusine’s likeness. They saw her obvious magic and beauty and she became the symbol of their new enterprise, one which has experienced its own flavor of the luck, mystique, and influence she’s said to continue to bring to her lineage.
Mélusine’s betrayers meant to steal her happiness, keep her from being loved, cast her out as monstrous, and make her magical abilities irrelevant, all out of their own fear and loathing. Instead, it backfired spectacularly. They turned her into the ultimate and everlasting embodiment of legitimacy, belonging, and earthly power.
When you decide to own your powerful nature rather than agreeing to call it a monster and hide it locked inside the dark bath, that’s when you unleash your own inner dragon lady (whatever your gender). That’s when she gets to be free.
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