There is another Brothers Grimm tale called Snow White and Rose Red which also includes a character called Snow White. However, this Snow White is a completely separate character from the one found in this tale. The original German names are also different: Schneewittchen and Schneeweißchen. There is actually no difference in the meaning (both mean "snow white"), but the first name is more influenced by the dialects of Low Saxon while the second one is the standard German version, implying a class difference between the two Snow Whites.
Another possibility is that the story of Snow White merged with the story of Elizabeth I of England and her rival and ultimately her victim Mary Stuart (Mary Queen of Scots). Her biographers described Mary as having skin of snow, blackest hair, and lips blood red. She was considered a beauty all her life. The story goes that Mary brought two venetian mirrors from France and wanting to give Elizabeth, her cousin, a gift, sent her one mirror and had her portrait placed into the other matching frame. The two were wrapped in straw and sent to Elizabeth. Elizabeth was much older than Mary Stuart and not as beautiful. In addition, Elizabeth had never had a real mirror, just rubbed metal plate. When she first saw herself in the Venetian mirror, she saw her age and her flaws clearly for the first time. Then she looked at the portrait of her beautiful cousin and her hatred was complete. She felt Mary was mocking her. Mary was young and would surely take the throne form her old maid cousin, eventually. The rumor is that you could hear Elizabeth screaming all the way to Westminster and that she threw her shoe and broke the costly mirror. She simultaneously hatched the scheme to imprison and kill Mary, and abduct her son to be raised as her heir.
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Famous quotes containing the words snow white, snow, white, rose and/or red:
“And thus Snow White became the prince’s bride.
The wicked queen was invited to the wedding feast
and when she arrived there were
red-hot iron shoes,
in the manner of red-hot roller skates,
clamped upon her feet.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take,”
—Archie Randolph Ammons (b. 1926)
“The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his sagacity, balance, co-operation, competence, and purpose which Man has suffered since he rose up on his hind legs.... He began to chatter and he developed Reason, Thought, and Imagination, qualities which would get the smartest group of rabbits or orioles in the world into inextricable trouble overnight.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“Thou art not fair, for all thy red and white,
For all those rosy ornaments in thee.
Thou art not sweet, though made of mere delight”
—Thomas Campion (1567–1620)