“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?” Aliya asked the ornate mirror hanging at eye level.

            “No one in this land compares to you my queen,” the magic mirror responded.

            Aliya smiles at her reflection, satisfied with its answer. Ever since she had gotten the mirror about four months ago, she would look into the reflective surface and ask who was the most beautiful in her kingdom. And every day since arriving at her palace the mirror had assured the queen that there was no equal to her beauty.

            Aliya turned from her mirror and strolled through her palace, taking time to collect her thoughts before another day of ruling her country began. But today she found her thoughts circling around her interactions with the mirror. Her smiled slipped as she realized how much she had come to rely on the mirror.

            When it first came to her as a present from a neighboring kingdom, Aliya was confident she would have no use for it. She wasn’t in the habit of vainly staring at her reflection nor was she so insecure about herself that she needed to be constantly told she had the looks of a goddess.

            But then more and more delegates and ambassadors came to visit as her kingdom’s prominence grew.

At first she loved seeing her new friends dressed in their finest things. She complemented them just as much as everyone else at her banquets did, praising them for their looks despite how much they shrugged it off. And she would blush and wave away their complements when they tried to insist that she was far lovelier than anyone they had ever laid eyes on. Everything was fine until she began to question their honesty. If she was convinced they were far prettier than her and they persisted that she was the prettiest, who was telling the truth and who was lying?

This caused Queen Aliya to doubt her friends’ judgment, believing they only complemented her because they wished to be called her “friend.” So she turned to the only completely unbiased judgment she could think of: her magic mirror. She asked the mirror every morning before meeting new and old acquaintances who was the most beautiful as a way to detect who was lying to her as a way to win her over. But after a few months of being declared the fairest in all the land, Queen Aliya began to relish in her beauty. She saw opportunity to use her looks to her advantage and took it. She grew secure in her power and influence won by her physical magnificence. And she was resolved to eliminate anyone that threated that security.