The Change Of Heart

Once there was a king named Victor the first who was a cruel and brutal tyrant who treated all his poor subjects terribly; taxing them to the brink of starvation yet doing nothing at all to help them and locking up or executing anyone who dared speak out against him.
One day however, the King went out upon a hunting trip and, whilst chasing a red deer, saw some fluttering fairies with shining wings of gold darting amongst the trees and, following them, found a cave of shimmering crystals in which there was a tall golden crown sitting upon a small pillar of rock.
And seeing the golden crown, the king thought it so beautiful that he decided he should have it for himself.
The moment he put the crown on, however, it started to glow with a strange eery light and then he heard a voice from within the cave, like a living echo, say,
"Whoever places the magic crown upon their head shall have a change of heart".
Terrified, the king threw the crown onto the floor.
But, no sooner had he done that when, suddenly, the King was turned from a cruel wicked, tyrant into a kind and generous ruler.
And so when he returned to his palace he started to change all his cruel laws; he began taxing the rich more and the poor less and used the money raised by taxes to fund services to help the poor whilst releasing people who he had had imprisoned just for criticizing him.
But his corrupt ministers and the nobles who had profited under the tyrannical king didn't like the new him and when he started to tell people about the fairies and the magical crown he had found in the cave they saw that as an opportunity to declare him insane and thus unfit to rule so that they could overthrow him.
"Any king who believes in fairies and magic crowns clearly has no place upon the throne", said his chief minister.
Fortunately the King had one true friend within the palace; a young serving girl called Stephanya who, though she had detested the old cruel king had fallen deeply in love with the new kinder one and believed his story about the fairy crown and, realizing that the ministers and nobles were planning to overthrow the king she ran to the forest to seek out the fairy cave that the King had spoken of and ask the fairies for help.
And when they heard what was happening to the king, the fairies gave Stephanya a pair of silken fairy wings and a fairy wand topped with a glittering star and she flew back to the city as fast as moonlight flies and, perching atop a statue of the king in the main city square, she shouted to all the people there, telling them about the fairy crown, how it had turned King Victor from a tyrant into a kind King and how his ministers and the nobles were now trying to seize power from him.
"They don't like the king because he is changing things; helping people", she said, "But if they succeed, they'll bring back the old days of cruelty and hardship".
And because they remembered those unhappy times the people who heard the girl knew that they had to do something so , forming a large crowd, they marched to the palace to defend the king, Stephanya flying with fluttering wings overhead.
And just as the kings ministers and nobles were forcing the king into a straight jacket, the crowd of people came walking up to the palace gates.
But the guards started to close the gates and so Stephanya, using the wand that the fairies gave her made the gates fly off, flapping away like a pair of wings and carrying one of the screaming guards with them.
But the palace guards still refused to let them in and threatened to shoot them and cut them down with their sabres if they would not leave.
And so Stephanya, using her wand again, turned their rifles into broomsticks and their swords into umbrellas and, frightened by the fairy magic, the soldiers ran off then the crowd pushed their way into the palace just in time to save the king.
After that those who had tried to overthrow the king were imprisoned and new ministers appointed from among the people; King Victor married Stephanya and both they and their subjects lived happily ever after.