The Dark and Dirty History of Sleeping Beauty

One of the first incarnations of the Sleeping Beauty story was the Italian literary fairy tale "Sun, Moon, and Talia" ("Sole, Luna, e Talia") by Giambattista Basile in his 1634 collection called The Pentamerone.

But this is no kid-friendly fairy tale. In this version a king has sex with (rapes) the sleeping lord's daughter Talia, and she gives birth to twins, Sun and Moon, while still asleep. After she is awakened by her child sucking the splinter from her finger, which had kept her asleep this whole time, the king's wife, the queen, tries to have Talia's children killed and eaten and Talia burned to death. But the king has the queen burned instead, and then marries Talia.

German authors the Brothers Grimm used the previous Sleeping Beauty folklore to write "Little Briar-Rose" ("Dornröschen"), which was included in their 1812 collection of fairy tales.

This painting titled "Sleeping Beauty" by Alexander Zick (1845-1907) shows the princess with the old woman and the spindle that pricks her.

House of the Sleeping Beauties is a 1961 novella by the Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata. The story follows an elderly gentleman who is a part of an elite club full of nude, sleeping young women the men are allowed to sleep next to but not be intimate with.

In The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by Freudian psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, the story of Sleeping Beauty is described as a case study of latent female sexuality.

Anne Rice's erotic Sleeping Beauty trilogy was the Fifty Shades of the '80s, and it recently had a comeback with a rerelease in 2012. The series — which includes The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty's Punishment, and Beauty's Release — is a steamy twist on the classic fairy tale in which the princess is awakened with a lot more than a peck on the cheek!

Disney's Sleeping Beauty characters Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip entertain at all the Disneyland theme parks and posed here at the 50th anniversary release of the remastered version of the film in 2008.

In the 2010 French film The Sleeping Beauty ("La Belle Endormie"), the story follows the adventurous dreams of the young sleeping princess.

Emily Browning plays a bored college student who gets taken into an underground club in the 2011 film Sleeping Beauty. The plot was inspired by House of the Sleeping Beauties, just with a flip-flopped perspective.

Maureen McGowan's YA novel Sleeping Beauty: Vampire Slayer portrays the princess as a kick-ass heroine who must fight evil — and kill vampires — to break the spell that has separated her from her family.

In ABC's show Once Upon a Time, Sarah Bolger plays Princess Aurora, who's based on the daughter of Sleeping Beauty from the fairy tale but has a sleeping curse cast on her as well. Twenty-eight years later Prince Phillip wakes her with true love's kiss. Things are complicated when Aurora is at first jealous of his friend Mulan, thinking she's into Prince Phillip — but Mulan only has eyes for Aurora.