A Fairytale in the Works

I want to write a fairytale about an old wise man who tells a tale about a fair princess living in a barren land in and abandoned castle, not in a tower but a dungeon. The princess had been falsely accused of being a witch and locked away. The kingdom was burnt to a crisp by the fierce, unbeatable, dragon. The last dragon to exist.

What the reader doesn't find out till the end is that the princess IS the dragon, a curse as the result of the queen and king's greed? Or maybe their cruelty? Or maybe the the King is of royal blood and the queen was the abandoned child of a gypsy who had been cursed with the same misfortune as the most recent princess. Therefore, the Queen's mother, the cursed gypsy, a nomadic immortal, must be reunited with the princess to reverse the curse.

The old man lures princes of every kingdom to their death because they are tricked into believing there is a princess, when really the old man thinks there is just a fierce dragon who kills any man who enters the castle.
So what makes the last prince special enough to not be turned into toast?
A special medallion?
Maybe his ancestor was a great wizard who crafted a stone to protect his kin from the elements
The old wise man has no knowledge of this stone/medallion

Maybe the old wise man was one of the brothers who founded the 12 kingdoms, 12 brothers and a kingdom for each, 8 of the brothers were from the step-mother who was a power-hungry woman driven to conquer all the land. However, her husband, the king, divided the land equally to all 12. She made a pact with her 8 sons while on her death bed that they must succeed in conquering the other kingdoms, the kingdoms which belonged to sons of the king and his previous queen. The old wise man is the last of the 8 sons to conquer the last kingdom.

To Be Queen of Your Thoughts

I’m sorry for the pedestals I placed you all on,

with the utmost unrealistic hope

But I just couldn’t help admiring you, and I made you look like a trophy;

Now, who else would have thought of raising you up

As triumphantly as I did?

Lately your trophy has gone askew

And the statue doesn’t even look like you

It resembles the crumbled face of someone

Whom lost himself to a battle.

So I placed you on the shelf, and you still held importance

I forced your mangled figure onto that shelf

Because you still lingered in my mind.

 I covered you up with books about how I really didn’t care

Books I wrote, forced into a state of emotionlessness—now that’s something we share.

Then one day the light hit my forgotten golden trophy,

So I knocked down the books, I noticed you—the pedestal was gone.

I sighed with relief but it still wasn’t over

I took you outside and I buried you in the deepest hole in the Earth.

The next year came, and I didn’t feel the same, 

My hope was finally set free.

Still, I longed to avenge you, if only to be Queen of your thoughts.

Then I turned to my window and on the ledge I saw

A boy was staring at me.

I felt something rise up from beneath my feet;

My hands and body coated in gold.

It was then I realized what was happening:

The statue on the pedestal…

is now me.

--Natalie Klett