Serendipity (noun)
The faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident.
Serendipity is such a wonderful little word. I can’t recall when I first learned what it meant, but I do remember when I found out that it comes from a fairy tale.
My favorite English teacher in high school mentioned that the word came from a Persian story about three princes who stumble upon good fortune. Incidentally, it was also her favorite fairy tale. Getting lucky by accident seems like a great subject to write about for Thanksgiving, a holiday about gratitude. So let’s take a stroll through this very old (and very odd) story from the kingdom of Serendip (a.k.a. Sri Lanka).
We Know the Exact Year When the Term “Serendipity” was Born
1754 to be exact. The person who coined the word was an English historian named Horace Walpole. The guy was something of a serial word inventor who added more than 200 words to the English language. He used the term “serendipity” for the very first time in a letter to a distant relative. In this correspondence, Horace described a fairy tale that he had read: “The Three Princes of Serendip,” which is the Old Persian name for Sri Lanka. In his letter, Horace used the term serendipity to describe the act of discovering fortunate things that you weren’t actually looking for, something that happens a lot in this particular fairy tale.
To be perfectly honest, most sources on this fairy tale are dedicated to covering Mr. Horace Walpole and the history of the word serendipity, which is great and all . . . Me? I’m far more interested in the fairy tale itself and the serendipitous discoveries that convinced Horace to write about it. This fairy tale has been translated many times, but it was still a task to find the full version so I could read it start to finish. And honestly my first impression of it was . . . huh?
Be Prepared: This Is a Weird Story
I read utterly bizarre fairy tales all the time. Very little shocks me in the weirdness department these days, but this fairy tale is definitely up there on my list. Let me give you the run-down of “The Three Princes of Serendip.”
The story begins when the king of Serendip hires the best tutors in the land to educate his three sons in both knowledge and virtue. One day the king tests his sons’ caliber by offering each prince the throne. All three young men refuse on the grounds that their father or older brothers are still alive. Therefore it wouldn’t be proper for any of them to claim the throne.
The king is thrilled to hear these wise responses—but he pretends to be angry and banishes all three of his kids from the kingdom. Yes. Really. The king realizes that the princes have learned everything they need to know from tutors. They need to further their education by going out into the world, and the story claims that “this was the only way he could send them out on their own.” Search me for the reasoning behind that, but moving on.
The Princes’ First Adventure Involves a One-Eyed Camel
The brothers travel together into the neighboring Persian kingdom. Soon they encounter a man searching for his lost camel. The princes jokingly ask if his camel is blind in one eye, missing a tooth, and lame. The ecstatic camel driver says yes, on all three accounts! The princes go on to guess that the camel was carrying a load of butter on one side, honey on the other, and a woman upon his back. A woman who’s also pregnant. Now the man KNOWS that the princes have seen his camel. In fact, he’s convinced that they must have stolen it.
This is how the princes get accused of theft and thrown in jail. The ruler of the land, Emperor Beramo, sentences the three princes to death unless they can produce the missing camel. Of course the princes explain that they were joking about all these details and have never even seen this camel. Their knowledge is based purely on deductive evidence.
These Princes Are the Ultimate Logicians
They thought the camel was blind in one eye because only the grass on one side of the path was eaten. They guessed the missing tooth thanks to the gaps left behind in the grass cuds and the lame leg because of the dragging footprints on the road. The butter and honey caused a trail of ants on one side of the path and swarms of flies on the other. The person riding the camel gave herself away when they saw footprints and urine on the side of the trail. Apparently the handprints of her pushing herself to her feet led the youngest brother to assume that she was pregnant (lucky guess).
Even all of this detail doesn’t convince the emperor of their innocence. So the princes await their execution in despair.
Their Lives Are Spared Through Pure Serendipity
This camel misunderstanding might have been the end of the three princes, but by pure happenstance, the one-eyed camel returns! Only then does the emperor believe their miraculous story and invites the young princes to stay in his palace to make up for the misunderstanding.
During their stay, the three brothers deduce all kinds of information for the emperor, like that the palace wine is being sourced from a cemetery. Or that the lamb served in the palace isn’t as high of quality as the emperor believes. Also someone is plotting to kill the emperor, a far more useful tidbit of info than wine and lamb . . .
The princes help the emperor outsmart his would-be killer and restore peace to the kingdom. At this point, Emperor Beramo is so impressed with these young foreigners that he sends them on a quest.
The Magic Mirror and the Villainous Hand
I’ve written extensively about magic mirrors before, so imagine my delight when one showed up in this fairy tale. Emperor Beramo tells the princes of an incredible lost relic of his kingdom: the Mirror of Justice. When criminals or wrong-doers look into this mirror, its reflection turns their faces black, revealing their guilt for all to see. But the mirror was carried off to India long ago. Beramo begs the wise princes to bring it back.
Ready for another adventure, the three princes set off to the Indian kingdom and discover an unusual supernatural problem. Every morning, a giant magical hand rises out of the ocean and hangs out ominously for all to see. When the sun sets, the hand snatches an innocent victim and departs. It’s unclear if the hand is carrying off the victims to some unknown location or simply drowning them, but either way, it’s a terrible problem.
Princes vs. Giant Evil Hand
The Indians are currently using the Mirror of Justice to protect themselves from the hand, and while the power of the mirror does seem to confuse the hand, it’s still grabbing livestock every day. Not cool. Emperor Beramo has promised the three princes a huge reward if they can defeat India’s killer hand and return the mirror to its rightful owner, so the princes decide it’s worth a shot.
Lest you think that this hand is a formidable foe . . . Let’s just say that defeating it turns out to be quite easy.
The princes go to shore at sunrise and see the giant hand rise from the sea. Then the first prince (the oldest, I presume) holds up two fingers to make a Persian symbol of victory. This “bold gesture” as the story puts it IMMEDIATELY banishes the hand into the depths of the sea. Don’t you wish all life’s problems were that simple to solve?
The Realm’s Virgin Queen Is VERY Impressed
The queen decides on the spot that she wants to marry one of these three princes to insure that the hand never returns. Or something like that. I assumed she would marry the oldest who defeated the hand, but instead she puts all three princes through two different tests. To prove their worth, the princes must eat an entire storehouse of salt and divide five eggs into three equal portions without breaking the shells. Just embrace the randomness, folks.
The princes outsmart these tests easily with their wits. So the queen randomly chooses to marry the middle prince. Perhaps because she finds him to be the most handsome? The story doesn’t specify, but I’m making an educated guess. The Indian kingdom rejoices over the engagement, and the royal wedding is deferred until the three princes can return the Mirror of Justice to Emperor Beramo.
Meanwhile, the Emperor is Having Girl Troubles
When the princes return to Emperor Beramo, he is so depressed that he’s on the verge of death. In their absence, he fell in love with a slave girl named Diliramma. The girl is beautiful and a talented musician. But when she “offend[s] his manly pride” after a deer hunt, the emperor flies into such a rage that he banishes Diliramma to the forest to be devoured by wild beasts. Because THAT isn’t the biggest red flag you’ve ever heard . . .
Long story short, after he sends his girlfriend to die, Emperor Beramo instantly regrets his decision. He falls into such complete melancholy that he’s lost his will to live and begs the wise princes to tell him what to do. The oldest prince advises the emperor to build seven palaces, each in a unique color, and to spend a week in each one. He’s hoping that the project and the change of scenery will give the emperor a renewed lease on life. The second prince advises the king to entertain a different beautiful princess in each palace, hoping that meeting other women will help His Highness move on. And the third prince suggests that the Emperor invite the seven finest storytellers of Persia to tell stories whilst he’s entertaining the foreign princesses.
The youngest prince actually suspects that Diliramma isn’t dead. When the emperor sent his men to rescue his love from the forest, they found no evidence of her at all. Perhaps all these storytellers will know what happened to poor Diliramma . . .
A Happy Ending for All
Turns out the youngest prince was right. One of the storytellers speaks of a beautiful maiden musician who loved a noble lord and was banished to the woods after she offended him. Then she was rescued by an old merchant. Beramo immediately sends messengers to search for his lost love. They find Diliramma, and she and Beramo reunite with great happiness.
Forever indebted to the three princes, Emperor Beramo showers them with gifts and sends them back to Serendip with great honor and riches. Their father greets them with joy. Seeing that his sons turned out exactly as wise as he hoped, the king blesses them all and dies, leaving the kingdom to his oldest son. The second prince of course returns to India to marry the queen he was promised to. And the youngest son marries Beramo’s daughter and rules Persia after the emperor’s death.
So . . . What Exactly is This Fairy Tale Saying?
I’m not gonna lie, this one is a head-scratcher. This story has an inordinate amount of random plot points, but I do find it interesting how serendipity guides the tale to a happy ending for all who deserve it. There’s plenty of meaning to be found here if you dive deeper . . .
The most classic instance of serendipity is the one-eyed camel. The princes were only joking when they identified the camel so exactly. And they ended up sentenced to death. This execution absolutely would have happened if the lost animal hadn’t randomly wandered home in time. A serendipitous occurrence indeed. This whole incident could be a cautionary tale of how wits can get even the pleasantest of people in trouble if they aren’t careful. Or maybe the point of this episode is the unpredictable nature of life. People are just as likely to welcome you graciously to a new kingdom as they are to accuse you of crimes you didn’t commit.
But the princes are spared in the end despite the wild misunderstanding. The fairy tale is pretty clear that the three princes are protagonists and certainly good guys. Their father spent their entire childhood training them in intelligence and virtue so they could use that intelligence for good. But Dad also realized that their book learning wasn’t enough. The princes needed to journey far from home to complete their education, and it’s this important combination of intelligence AND spontaneous discoveries that leads to their happy futures.
Good Judgment and Curiosity Become their Guiding Stars
“The Three Princes of Serendip” is considered the earliest detective stories in history, long before Sherlock Holmes or Edgar Allan Poe’s influential “Murders in the Rue Morgue.” In all their wanderings and adventures, the princes use logic and reasoning to solve their problems. Without that piece of the story, they never would have ended up anywhere, just wandering strange lands until their father called them home.
This also isn’t a story of sheer dumb luck either. Maybe their adventures would have brought them to the giant evil hand or the dying Emperor Beramo eventually. But without their wits and clear-headedness, they wouldn’t have had the tools to make serendipitous discoveries.
I think this is the true key to serendipity: being prepared while also being open to something unexpected. There’s a famous phrase attributed to the Roman philosopher Seneca: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” This idea is the very essence of serendipity.
Openness is What Leads the Princes to Their Happy Endings
It’s still bizarre that their king dad pretended to be angry and banished his three kids. But in the end, this banishment is exactly what led to the second ingredient of their success: opportunity.
The oldest prince left Serendip to honor his father. He ended up defeating a giant hand through bravery and insight he didn’t realize he had. Serendipitously, he becomes exactly the kind of successor his father needs.
The second prince was looking for a magic mirror—which he did find to be fair. But he also found a wife, a new home, and a prosperous future that he didn’t expect at all.
And the third prince in his mission to restore his friend’s health and locate a lost love ended up finding a father-in-law and a love of his own. By restoring someone else’s happiness, he simultaneously found his own along the way. I find that to be the most profound application of serendipity possible.
May We All Make a Little Room for Serendipity in Our Lives
I have lots of experience with making my life so structured and so exact that there isn’t really space for serendipity to find me. Maybe we should all look for opportunities to invite in the unexpected. Anybody can stumble upon a happy spontaneous discovery. Even when—or maybe especially when—we least expect it. ❧
