Mousetrap: a prologue

There is a motif, less fashionable now, but previously much in vogue in fairy tales that an otherwise lovely individual be placed in some predicament - whether an enchantment, tower, or just destitute condition - until the appropriate individual should come along and fulfill the not always clearly related conditions for alleviating that predicament. The catch, of course, being that this couldn't be done by anyone who knew that what they were doing would fix everything. The frog must be kissed without the kisser knowing he was or would become a prince, etc. This of course makes for delicious irony, decent moral tales, and the satisfactory conclusion that even though the couple has just met they can be expected to be married happily ever after since the one in the predicament obviously deserves happiness now and the one who got them out of the predicament MUST be the right one because fulfilling the conditions would be just too extraordinary a thing otherwise. Unfortunately, this last bit happened to be my godmother's favorite part about the whole thing. Thus, even though the fad of kissing toads had worn off by the time I was 16, she still felt she had to come up with something less predictable.