Talk:Maidens/@comment-4891043-20160105161919/@comment-26397825-20160106092406

There is a mirror in the original Snow Queen tale. A shard gets into the boy's eye and makes him see the bad and ugliness in the world, makes him agressive and cruel, and actually starts causing his death. The Snow Queen kind of helped him by giving him her kiss and freezing him, as it slowed down the rate at which the mirror killed him, even though it bound him to her.

When his childhood love came to rescue him, she finds him alone on a frozen lake the Snow Queen calls the "Mirror of Reason". He has to spell out a word to get free, but he can't do it. She rescues him by crying on him out of love, which melts his frozen heart and burns away the mirror shard.