# 7 Myths and Fairy Tales That Inspired ‘A Court of Thorns and Roses’

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/7-myths-and-fairy-tales-that-inspired-a-court-of-thorns-and-roses/
- Published: 2026-11-07T22:14:12+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-07T23:37:19+00:00
- Original publisher: Collider
- Original article: https://collider.com/myths-fairy-tales-inspired-a-court-of-thorns-and-roses/
- Topics: Entertainment, TV

## Key points

- ACOTAR reworks Beauty and the Beast and other folklore.
- Maas has cited a Norwegian tale as a favourite.
- The series follows a wider fantasy tradition of retelling old stories.

## Summary

Sarah J. Maas’s *A Court of Thorns and Roses* draws on older fairy tales, myths and folklore, giving its faerie courts, cursed romances and magical objects familiar roots. The article says the series began as a darker retelling of *Beauty and the Beast*, while Maas also drew on other traditional stories as she developed Feyre’s character and the world of Prythian.

One key parallel is with the 19th-century Norwegian tale *East of the Sun, West of the Moon*, which Maas has called her favourite fairy tale and which also resembles *Beauty and the Beast*. Like Feyre, its heroine lives with an enchanted prince and sets out to rescue him after a spell is broken. The article also places ACOTAR in a wider fantasy tradition of adapting older stories, noting that Maas’s *Throne of Glass* began with a question about Cinderella as an assassin.

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