The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights
fairy tale by Alexander Pushkin
The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights (Russian: «Сказка о мёртвой царевне и о семи богатырях», romanized: Skazka o myortvoy tsarevne i o semi bogatyryakh, literally: "The Tale of the Dead Tsarevna and of the Seven Bogatyrs") is an 1833 poem by Aleksandr Pushkin telling a fairy tale of Prince Yelisei's search for his love, the Tsarevna (princess), who has been cast out by her stepmother.
Origin
While the story resembles the Little Snow White tale from the Grimm's Fairy Tales, it is based around national Russian folklore, like Pushkin's other fairy tales in verse inspired by the childhood tales told by his nurse Arina Rodionovna at the Mikhaylovskoye village.
Similar stories could be found in the Russian Fairy Tales collection by Alexander Afanasyev (tales No. 210 and 211), Great Russian Fairy Tales collection (1861) by Ivan Khudyakov (tale No. 45), Fables and Legends of the Samara Region (1884) by Dmitry Sadovnikov (tale No. 14) and Great Russian Fairy Tales of the Vyatka Governorate (1915) by Dmitry Zelenin (tale No. 52).
Researchers find a lot of symbolism in the Puskin's version of the fairy tale with roots in both Slavic mythology and Christianity.
Plot summary
A tsar goes on a voyage and leaves his beautiful tsarina behind. She spends days and nights waiting for him by the window, and in nine months gives birth to their daughter.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights” as fairy tale by Alexander Pushkin. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as fairy tale by Alexander Pushkin. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4421383. VIAF identifies the subject as 1320145424624786830421. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1833, 1861, 1884 and 1915.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.