I'm sure you've all run across this before. But I had this posed in a class and was curious what your answers would be. In order from most to least responsible, who is responsible for the death and why. My answers were nowhere near the rest of the classes.

A long time ago, in a country far from this one, there lived a king. The king was known as a great conqueror and he was extremely wealthy. But he was also deeply lonely. In the tradition of the monarchs of this land, he asked the king of a neighboring country if he might marry one his daughters. His neighbor consented, and the king married a beautiful princess.

The king moved his court and the princess to the grandest of his castles, a colossal tangle of masonry, arches, colored glass and spires. The castle sat in the middle of a lake, surrounded by a vast forest. A huge drawbridge connected to the castle to the lake’s shore.

One day the King told the princess that he would be leaving on a long trip around the borders of his kingdom. He did not plan to return to the heartland of the country for six months. The king told the princess that she was not to leave the castle while he was away. The king told the princess that if she disobeyed him, she would be killed.

The princess promised the king that she would not leave the castle. But with the passing time princess became bored and terribly lonely. One day towards the end of her fifth month of confinement, the princess decided that- whatever the risk- she would disobey her husband’s orders and leave the castle.

She crossed the drawbridge and ventured into a forest. She wandered through the forest, smelling the fresh, pine scented air. Unexpectedly, she stumbled into a clearing where a handsome young lumber jack was cutting wood. The lumberjack met the princess’s gaze and they immediately fell in love. They spent a few happy hours together. Gathering her senses, the princess remembered that she had to return to the castle – and that she had to do so quickly. If the king found out that she had been wandering in the forest, he would surely kill her. She bid farewell to the young lumberjack and set off through the forest, walking back towards the lake and the castle.

As drew near the castle, the princess saw a strange figure standing in the middle of the bridge that crossed the lake. As she was about to walk onto the bridge, saw that the figure was a large man draped with a dirty robe. The man threw back the robes hood, pulled an axe from its folds and screamed to her: “Don’t move any closer! I am mad and wild with fury. Approach me and I will kill you!”

Horrified, the princess fled back into the forest, stumbling over tree roots and through bushes until she found the lumberjack’s clearing. She told him about the mad man and his threats and asked for his help. The princess implored the lumberjack to fight the mad man. However, the boy took fright and insisted that he was more of a lover than a fighter. He suggested that the princess should simply wait for the madman to get bored and leave the drawbridge.

The thought of her husband finding out about her escapes in the forest still played on the princess’s mind, and she was desperate to return to the castle as soon as possible. The princess remembered that a fisherman often came to the lake, and that he used a boat to bring in his catch. She ran from the forest to the shore of the lake, found the fisherman and told him about the madman. She asked him to get her to the castle by boat. The fisherman however asked her for money in advance and the princess, being naïve, had left the castle without any coin in her pockets.

The princess then remembered that her former nursemaid was a subject of her husband’s kingdom, and lived in a cottage in the forest, a short walk from the castle. She ran to the nursemaid’s home and explained the whole situation. She begged her nursemaid for money, but also asked her not to tell the king what she had done. The nursemaid explained that she could not help the princess, as she could not bring herself to disobey the king or be disloyal to him.

The princess, desperate and hysterical with worry, ran to the Castle and tried to cross the bridge where she was slain by the madman.