Sleeping Beauty Stories Books In Order

Publication Order of Sleeping Beauty Books

The Sleeping Beauty Stories is a sequence of novels by Ann Rice, an American author writing under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure. The stories are made up of four books; the first The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty’s Punishment, Beauty’s Release and lastly, Beauty’s Kingdom. The stories were published in chronological order from 1983 to 1985 for the first trio of books followed by a 20-year lag, before the publishing of Beauty’s Kingdom in 2015. The Sleeping Beauty Stories feature Beauty a character from the fairy tales of Sleeping Beauty as the main character in the medieval setting of these novels. However, while the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty is a chaste young maiden, Beauty’s storylines in the Roquelaure’s novels are of a more erotic nature. Sleeping Beauty the Protagonist, is involved in graphic sexual adventures with male characters Laurent, Tristan, and Alexi. The series are more of an erotic Bondage and Discipline (BD), Dominance and Submission (DS), Sadism and Masochism (BDSM) type of novels, portraying vivid scenes of femdom and maledom scenarios interwoven with imageries of pony play, ephebophilia, homosexuality, and bisexuality.

In 1994, the first trio of books in the series were adapted into audio versions and published as audio cassettes. Winthrop Eliot and Genviere Bevier read a CD format of the audio books. Elizabeth Montgomery made famous in the ABC sitcom Bewitched played the role of Beauty while Michael Diamond played Tristan in the reading of Beauty’s Punishment. Actor Amy Brenneman read The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty.

In September 2014, Televisa USA acquired the rights to adapt and televise the first three stories of the Sleeping Beauty Stories into a TV series. Rachel Winter, a renowned producer of the critically acclaimed movie Dallas Buyers Club will executive produce the series alongside the author Ann Rice. Plans had been afoot to make the Stories into a series as early as 2012, but early development began in 2016.

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

The first book of the Sleeping Beauty Stories shows Beauty awakening from her century-long sleep not from being kissed by the Prince but rather by copulation. The copulation initiates the protagonist into a life that closely approximates the erotic and decadent passages of the Roman prose and verse passages – Satyricon. The Prince strips her naked and takes her to a kingdom ruled by Queen Eleanor, his mother. Beauty is made into a plaything and a slave alongside dozens of others. Unlike Beauty, most of the other slave playthings are princesses and princes sent to the Queen as tribute from the rulers of lesser vassal states. At the palace, the slaves spend their years getting an education on how to be submissive and obedient sex slaves. They are forced to have heterosexual and homosexual sex with slaves and with the lords; they are beaten, humiliated in public, and made to crawl on their hands and knees in gory scenes of debauchery. These acts of humiliation and violence are to make them wiser when they ultimately return to their homelands.

The central story of the novel is when Beauty befriends and copulates passionately with Prince Alexi, a fellow slave. It turns out that Alexi had been one of the most stubborn slaves that resisted all attempts at his enslavement. He tells her all about his adventures in the castle that had him sent to the kitchen servants to be tortured until he accepted his fate. Rice expertly tells the story of how Alexi is mercilessly punished and humiliated by a tough stable boy until he begins to lose a sense of self, becoming a submissive sexual toy that now plays a range of sexual games at Queen Eleanor’s pleasure.

Nonetheless, while Alexi’s story ought to be a warning to Beauty to obey without question, she goes ahead to disobey when she meets Prince Tristan a similarly stubborn sex slave. Consequently, she is sold at auction at the Village Square and sent to live in slavery in a village near the castle.

Providing a twist to the traditional folktale of Sleeping Beauty, Roquelaure casts a spell just as strong as that of the mystical Prince in this first installment of the Sleeping Beauty Stories. An ancient story that still evokes a lot of emotion, this new retelling of the narrative makes for some excellent reading. The unspoken implications of erotic fantasy and yearning interspersed with a need for total surrender and submission that descends into total enslavement makes for a compelling read for anyone with a taste for classic erotica.

Beauty’s Punishment

Beauty’s Punishment is a sequel to The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty nd follows her story after she leaves the royal castle after her disobedience to the Queen. After Beauty indulges in forbidden and secret infatuation with fellow slave Prince Tristan, they find themselves sent away to be sold at auction. Her new surroundings in the village soon expose her to tantalizing new punishments as she gets a new Satyricon-like education from the brashly attractive Captain of the Guard. The Captain schools her in utter submission, dominance, cruelty, love, and tenderness interspersed with drunken orgies. Tristan who is sold to the Queen’s chronicler Nicholas undergoes even worse punishments as he is forced to pull Nicholas’s cart while harnessed and bound like a pony while being whipped mercilessly. He is also forced to not only gather apples with his mouth from an orchard but also to pleasure other human horses in the stable.

Meanwhile, Beauty is a witness to the harsh chastisement of Prince Laurent, a runaway slave that is whipped mercillessly by the Captain. Later Laurent is put on a cart that is pulled by Beauty’s former love interest Tristan in a penitentiary parade. After much begging from Tristan, Nicholas allows the two lovebirds to reunite in his house. Ever the Satyricon, Nicholas watches Tristan and Beauty copulate from behind a mirror. The scene is suddenly interrupted when the village is raided by Arab soldiers that kidnap Laurent, Tristan, Beauty, and other naked slaves. The story closes as they sail away to serve as sex slaves in the harem of the Arab Sultan.

The second book of the Sleeping Beauty series continues the teasing yet explicit investigation of the psychology of human desire for what society tells us is wrong. Rice’s remarkable storytelling prowess is evident in the way she portrays the hidden desire for pain and pleasure that is almost primal in the human heart. The precursor to Sylvia Day’s Bared to You, the critically acclaimed Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James and even her previous novel Belinda, the second story of the Sleeping Beauty story is a standout narrative from Roquelaure.