The Tale of Tsar Saltan

One dark winter evening, the young Tsar Saltan was lucky enough to find himself a queen from a simple Russian family. He was so impressed by the speech of the young charmer that he married her that same evening, and took her two sisters with him to the palace as servants. However, the insidious girls do not share the happiness of their luckier sister and begin to plot intrigues. Saltan leaves for a long military campaign, during which the young queen gives birth to his son. The evil sisters write a dispatch to the Tsar, where they blatantly lie about the child: they say, the Tsarina gave birth to someone unknown, "neither a son nor a daughter." Saltan is upset, but orders them to wait until he returns. The sisters replace the letter, and as a result, the girl and her son, in the best sadistic traditions, are sealed in a wooden barrel and thrown into the ocean.