immolate_the_silence | brothers grimm (2005) meta + picspam

Collection: Trope Bingo (Round 14)
Prompt: Fake Relationship
Specifics: Meta + Picspam [10 images]
My Card
Title: Her Love is Poison: How True Love Conquers All in The Brothers Grimm
Notes: So I'm playing with this prompt a little. SPOILERS.

Will being under the Mirror Queen's enchantment, forcing him to become her slave, means that he technically is in a fake relationship with her. The Mirror Queen makes it clear to Jake that under her bewitchment, she has claimed Will as her eternal servant and lover, snatching him from the arms of a death she has indirectly caused. She has manipulated Jake into impaling his own brother with a blade she has enchanted; thus, twisting Jake's desperate, albeit true love for Will into something destructive and damning. She is the one with the magic beans now and taunts Jake about this, given his own magic beans from childhood failed to save their sister.

While the relationship between the Mirror Queen and Will isn't consensual on both sides, it has become truth courtesy of the magical broach embedded in Will's heart. It is her third and final step towards claiming Will after the stabbing, with a knife not wielded by her and yet under her control, and after stealing his full attention via the mirror she inhabits and with which she constructs a false reality. With all the odds stacked against him, Jake must fight to break the curse and have his brother returned whole to him. This fake relationship between the Mirror Queen and Will not only threatens the latter's very life but also the lives of Angelika and the young girls, the livelihood of Marbaden and last but certainly not least, the troubled relationship between the brothers.

Although, even when Jake shatters the enchanted mirror and breaks the spell, thus forbidding the Mirror Queen to remain in her new flesh and blood body, Will's continued infatuation for her lingers, her will over his physical heart persisting. This infatuation is fabricated given it becomes entirely unreasonable as Will frantically scoops up pieces of the mirror, or rather, the Mirror Queen herself, desperate to possess them, to possess her. The Mirror Queen's infatuation is also fabricated, given she merely needs Will to kiss her to complete the spell and seal herself inside her beautifully restored form. This trope could be described as the climax of the film given the Mirror Queen first tries to claim Jake, meaning that without one of the brothers, without sealing the spell with a kiss, she is not able to achieve her goals.

As it is, the shattering of the mirror; the breaking of this false, manipulative relationship; the testing of the endurance of Jake's love for Will, which isn't fake in the slightest, all are what give the story a much-needed happy ending.

Mirror Queen:
“What a beautiful bedtime story this will be.
Did you not know, Jakob? Truth is much more terrible than fiction.”