Of all the fairy tales Disney turned family-friendly, this one takes the cake.
The earliest "Sleeping Beauty" is found in Perceforest, a 16th-century collection of Arthurian legends, but I want to focus on "Sun, Moon, and Talia," from Giambattista Bastile's Il Pentamore, in which a nobleman rids his home of flax, after a prophecy predicts that a splinter of it will harm his daughter, Talia. Of course, he can't protect her completely, and one day, Talia gets a splinter while investigating an old woman using a spinning wheel. She falls down dead.
When a King finds the country house, he moves Talia's corpse to the bed, rapes her, and leaves. Nine months later, she gives birth to twins, and comes back to life when her babies dislodge the flax while suckling on her fingers. She cares for the babies, Sun and Moon, in the house, unaware of what has transpired. The King eventually returns, but cannot bring his new family home with him, because he is already married.
His Queen soon finds out, however. She orders that the children be brought to the castle and cooked for the King, but the Cook hides the children and prepares lamb instead, with the Queen none the wiser. The Queen then asks for Talia to be brought to the castle and put to death. The King discovers her plan, and has the Queen and all who helped her killed in Talia's place.
Read three different versions of the "Sleeping Beauty" story here.
