Once Upon A Time: the part you've never heard

Once upon a time there was a brave knight. Or at least that's how the story goes. You know the drill, somewhere a lady-fair, maybe even a princess, has been kidnapped by a witch/dragon/seven little men in tights and put in a tower/cave/glass coffin. The brave, daring, and charming knight hears of her distress and solemnly vows to rush off to rescue the poor helpless maiden fair and win her hand. Off he sets on his noble steed towards the tower/cave/glass coffin and waving his sword about for a while, defeats whatever hideous creature has dared to imprison his one true love. He rushes up to the beautiful princess, and with a kiss, banishes all evil spells; then whisking her up onto his steed, they ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after. Sigh, tear, what a great story... If it was true. In my opinion, it's just a load of hogswallop. See, I'm what one may categorize as a "princess", as my father happens to be the king of a rather large plot of land called Scotland. Minor detail. And as I'm the eldest daughter (well, actually, the only daughter, really the only child), that means whatever lucky lad gets hitched to me becomes the next king. So my father's held tournament after bloody, boring tournament trying to see what young man will catch my fancy. They all make pointless promises and rediculous romantic gestures, then go beat each other upside the head until they're all carted off the field. All except one, who's somehow, by divine providence most likely, still standing (I've always thought that the great Lord All Mighty has a cheeky sense of humour; call it irreverence, but its an endearment between the two of us: He is cheeky, and I laugh), But the poor beknighted fool can't see out of his blackened eyes, and while trying to renew those wonderful, romantic sentiments he had vainly spouted earlier, spits blood out from the now gaping hole where his front teeth used to be. Yeah, that'll win my heart over and set my stomach all aflutter with feelings of love...gag me. What really is the point of tournaments, anyway? Is it practice for life as a king? Will the "brave" knights spend the rest of their days, after winning fair maiden's hand of course, go and run pell mell on their horse towards an opposing foe who is also running full speed towards them, brandishing wooden blades and javelins? If my father's life is any example, I don't think so. The times I've seen him needing to fight at all was the very few (thank You, my Providence!) scirmishes that arose when bands of raiders came to steal our cattle and grain during a hard winter. Why don't we have tournaments that find out who can plant a row of grain faster, or who can find water first: by digging a well or by creating an irrigation system that will water our crops when the summer heat brings no rain? None of these so-called suitors are actually suitable for ruling, at least in my opinion. I tried to tell my parents this brilliant idea once. It was funny actually. I laughed about it later. Seriously, you should have seen my father's face! It turned the color of an overripe tomato. I almost laughed right then, but my very prudent mother glared at me, and that was enough for me to turn the snort into a cough, a dainty one, of course, behind my lovely lacey handkerchief that I made..alright, one of my silly handmaidens made. Haha, get it, the handmaiden made the handkerchief, haha...oh never mind. anyway, where was I, oh yeah, my dad turning into tomato soup. So he gets all somber and fatherly, gives me the "now young lady" bit, and proceedes to tell me that it is vitally important that they find a suitable young man for me, who will able to protect me in the ways young princesses need to be looked after. I looked at him confused (I was only 5 at the time) and asked him why. He sputtered and fumed, and looked at my mother and asked her why a 5 year old is so preoccupied with crops and wells and such. Mother only looked at him with a look that I've now come to interpret as the "she's-your-daughter" look, and quietly took me out of the room to let father fuss a bit by himself. Back in my room (the one on the south-east side of the castle, with a huge bed and about 50 windows to let in the morning sunshine, oh, and I guess it could be classified as a tower, but that's another minor coincidence), Mother told me all that amazing silliness that is the wonders of being one of the female race. But in-between the lines of femininity that was gushing from her mouth, her eyes were telling me something different. I read that she was actually quite proud of me for thinking of our subjects as more important than waving around a silly wooden sword, and that she rather thought the same thing about the subject, but as a dutiful mother and queen, must continue her inherited duty to mankind and her husband, the king, who was just being protective of his only child. But somewhere in that conversation, it did enter my brain that the way things are supposed to go is that women need to be rescued, and the men are the ones that do the rescuing, most of the time by waving around a silly sword. I thought that was a bit silly, and so over the next couple of days I read through all my books to find a story that didn't involve the princess needing to be wisked off her feet by a handsome prince. I couldn't find any. Why is it that in all the fairy tale stories you hear, the poor, helpless maiden is, well..helpless?