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)
“There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
Lo! as that youth’s eyes burned at thine, so went
Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
And round his heart one strangling golden hair.”
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)