Have you ever heard this Deutsch volkslieder, “Es Waren Zwei Königskinder“??
If you have not, you can listen to it on YouTube, there are a lot of videos there. I am writing a couple of stanzas here, so you can get a feel of how it goes… I will explain it in English in a bit.
Es waren zwei Königskinder,
die hatten einander so lieb;
sie konnten zusammen nicht kommen,
das Wasser war viel zu tief.
„Ach Liebster, könntest du schwimmen,
so schwimme doch her zu mir!“
Drei Kerzen will ich dir anzünden,
die sollen leuchten zu dir.
Königskinder means children of kings, or “royal children”
So, this is how the story goes:
There were two royal kids, and they loved each other so much. But there’s a catch… they cannot be together. Why?
Well, the water was too deep! I mean, they were separated by a very deep river between their kingdoms.The girl says, “Oh my love, if only you could swim, then swim over here to me! I will light three candles for you; they shall guide you.”
A wicked nun heard this, who was pretending to be asleep.
So, unaware of what would happen to him, the boy sets off to cross the river. It was going all good when midway through the river, the nun puts out the candles. Now, without the guiding light, the boy lost his way and drowned in the river.
The next morning a fisherman well in his boat, threw out his fishing net. He fished out the dead prince right in front of the princess’ house.
The princess wraps him around her arms and kissed his pale mouth. She says, “Alas, that I must live and you are in the bottom.”
She then wrapped herself in a cloak and jumped in the river saying, “Farewell, you proud mother, we will now be together.”
You would find it pretty tragic, right? Well, yeah, it is a tragic piece of story. It is the story which carries the common trope of unification in death that many star-crossed love stories carry such as, dare I say, Romeo and Juliet.
You would find such stories in many other cultures as well, like Hero and Leander in Greek, Heer – Ranjha in Punjabi (Indian), Pyramus and Thisbe in Roman… the list goes on. They all have one thing in common… Union in Death.
The barrier dissolves, the world shuts up, and finally, finally, the lovers belong to each other without interruption. Yeah, not in life, not in the way we naively hope for it, but still… something. A closing of the gap. A final refusal of separation.
And that’s where it starts to feel strange to me.
Because if you look at all these stories… the boy drowning in the river, the girl following him into it, Romeo and Juliet lying side by side in a tomb, Hero and Leander pulled together by the same water that kept them apart, Heer Ranjha, Pyramus and Thisbe, they all promise the same quiet resolution:
“You couldn’t have each other in life… but don’t worry, you will not remain apart.”
Death, in these stories, is not just an ending. It’s mercy.
I think that they did get what they wanted, even though life never let them together, death did. And that is why, guys, I respect death more than the life. Death doesn’t discriminate; it doesn’t put you through hardships and it certainly doesn’t ask you to prove that you deserve what you already feel. Death doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t care about the river. It removes it.
I envy them.
I envy the princess, I envy Hero, I envy Ranjha. They had the luxury of being together with their love. The real tragedy is not even getting that simple pleasure. The real tragedy is suffering alone, lamenting.
Tragedy is there being no river to cross, no final leap, no poetic symmetry where two people end up together? When the story just… stops? No union in life. No union in death. No final scene where the distance collapses into nothing. Just one person here. And the other… somewhere that cannot be reached, not even in the way these stories promise.
I was thinking, how come the princes gets to say, “We will now be together!” and I do not? And that’s the part that keeps snagging in my head like a loose thread you can’t stop pulling.
Because what gives them that right? Not in some moral sense, not in a “who deserves what” kind of way. Life has never played fair enough for that question to even make sense, but in a narrative sense.
They get an ending.
And me?
It feels almost like I’ve been written into the wrong genre. Like I showed up expecting a tragedy, and instead I got something worse.
Sometimes I think what if I did not love her that much to be together with her? Why do I have to think about other people, people who love me? The princess didn’t, neither did any of them.
It’s not that I have not tried to be with her, I did, but the waves always threw me off to the shore. So, there is also this thought of keeping the love alive. The love will persevere as long as I live. Nobody will be there to love her if I die. At least in this material world. So, I guess I have to somewhat keep doing that, as long as I live.
I had a talk with my friend, she said, “You have to move on, find new people.”
Well then, what is the fucking point of me not throwing myself in the river like the princess? What is the point if I do not wake up feeling heavy every fucking morning? I am supposed to be the flagbearer of our love. The day I forget to do that, is the day our love dies, and there will never be any union, ever.
I have to wait for the union in death I guess, maybe that’s not a tragedy in the classical sense. Maybe it’s something lonelier than that.