Key Question:

What if Cinderella is a physician who treats a dying king in a medieval dystopian world?

Setting:

A medieval fantasy world that’s ran by a monarchy. Women are taught to be docile and uneducated.

Writing Style:

A dark and pessimistic tone that becomes lighter after Cinderella rises above her circumstances and she saves the king’s life

Character Profiles:

Gracious is a physician who started out as a nursing assistant, but she was sent to medical school by a kind benefactor.
The kind benefactor is like the fairy godmother who guides Gracious towards better circumstances.

Another character that is like a fairy godmother is Bounty, a mysterious woman who helps Gracious break into the palace to save the king.

The queen is like the wicked stepmother who tries to prevent the king from recovering.

Story Beats:

Gracious returns to her dormitory, too exhausted to stand. As a secret physician, she has been helping people who are sick with a strange unknown disease. She could be imprisoned since women are not allowed to practice medicine.

Her roommates worry about her, but she explains that she grew up in worse conditions in an orphanage. She explains that she escaped the orphanage at age fifteen to work as an underpaid private nurse to a dying boy. She is a medical genius who managed to make him healthy again.

Gracious further explains that the man’s wealthy father was so grateful for her efforts that he paid for her to attend medical school in another country, although it’s illegal for women to be doctors in their homeland.

Section I: Beginning

Gracious returns home. She is filthy and exhausted. Her two roommates, Hope and Love, warn her to stop practicing medicine since she could be imprisoned.
Gracious explains that she won’t give up on practicing medicine since it’s her calling.

The authorities stop by and question her and the other dorm residents about their medical knowledge since a hospital patient told them that she had been healed by a woman.

After the police threaten to arrest everyone in the dorm, Gracious confesses that she was the doctor. The police arrest Gracious and then place her in jail.

Section II: Middle

The middle begins with Gracious in a dungeon style jail. She’s been there for nearly a week, and she is hungry and cold although she has been scrubbed clean.

After interacting with other prisoners, she is told by a guard that someone has paid her bail money and that she is free until her trial.

Gracious heads to the front of the jail to thank the woman, thinking that it’s a dorm resident. Instead, a strange woman is waiting for her.

The woman introduces herself as Bounty. She takes Gracious to stay in her cottage deep in the woods. She convinces Gracious that their nation’s queen has poisoned their king, which is why he’s in a coma.

Bounty tells Gracious that no doctors have been told about the king’s illness since the queen wants to ensure his death so that she may rule.

Bounty insists that she can sneak Gracious into the palace, and that Gracious will be a hero if she saves the king.

Gracious accepts the mission out of the kindness of her heart.

Section III: End

Bounty helps Gracious sneak into the palace by battling guards and fighting the evil queen.

Gracious uses a home remedy to heal the king. He is grateful to her and he changes the law to allow women to be doctors. Gracious is given the title of Royal Physician.

She then learns that Bounty is actually Princess Bountiful III, who was presumed dead after she supposedly went missing while on a tour of the country. It’s revealed that the queen had had Bounty kidnapped with intentions to be murdered. Bounty had escaped, but she went into hiding when she learned that the king was poisoned.

The king divorces the queen and he shames her before he forces her to become a nurse maid in a hospital. The former queen spends the rest of her life dumping bed pans and other menial tasks.

Gracious and the king fall in love. Bounty is thrilled when Queen Gracious I becomes her stepmother.

Angela Greenfield

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