Die Gänsemagd (2009)

Long ago, King Sigismund killed the dragon and saved the life of his friend, King Gustav. Ever since then, Sigismund’s daughter, Princess Elisabeth, has been promised in marriage to King Gustav’s son, Prince Leopold. Since a journey would be too strenuous for the princess’s mother, who has a weak heart, Princess Elisabeth is accompanied to the wedding by her maid, Magdalena. The queen gives her daughter a cloth containing three drops of her blood to protect her; they are meant to shield the princess from misfortune. One bloodstain disappears when Elisabeth and Magdalena are attacked and the robbers are driven off; the second disappears when Magdalena makes an unsuccessful attempt to flee. Tired of having to spend her life as a maid, Magdalena throws Elisabeth’s cloth into the lake and forces the princess to switch roles with her. The final drop of blood disappears into the lake, turning it red. At the castle of Prince Leopold and his father Gustav, she tends the geese as a goose girl alongside Kürdchen, the gooseherd and Prince Leopold’s friend. Meanwhile, Prince Leopold gives the false princess the harp that belonged to his late mother. While posing as a princess, Magdalena uses a pretext to have Elisabeth’s horse, Falada—which Elisabeth had once received from her father—taken to the knacker’s yard. Elisabeth tries in vain to save Falada. Meanwhile, Leopold and the gooseherd Kürdchen wonder how the supposed maid can command the wind and talk to the head of the dead Falada. Leopold’s father dispels his son’s doubts that the false princess might not be the right woman for him. One night, when Magdalena catches Elisabeth playing the harp, she knocks it over and accuses Elisabeth of doing so. Elisabeth flees and confides in Kürdchen. With Kürdchen’s help, Leopold and his father learn about the switch. At the wedding, Leopold asks the false princess, Magdalena, how she would react if someone deceived her in that way and took away what she loved most. Without realizing that he means her, and thereby pronouncing her own sentence, she argues for a harsh punishment: having the offender dragged to death in a barrel studded with nails. Elisabeth, however, wants to spare her such an end and, now as Leopold’s bride, decrees instead that Magdalena be set adrift in a barrel on the river, so she can begin a better life wherever she happens to come ashore.