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Overview
The king’s second wife enchants twelve stepsons into eagles and their sister into a dove to advance her own son’s inheritance. An old, white-bearded man witnesses the deed. When she attempts to enchant him as well, he disappears in a blaze of sunlight and she becomes a basilisk. The narrative places this change immediately after her spell, without explaining a separate spoken counterspell or naming the old man.
Her lethal glance kills everyone she looks at, including her own child. She retreats beneath the palace, whose rooms become deserted ruins that nobody dares approach. The tale supplies no detailed reptilian anatomy, wings or measured body size. After the king and his restored children return, a nobleman carries a looking-glass into the underground vaults. The basilisk sees her reflected image and dies from her own gaze. Her remains are burned and the ashes scattered to the four winds before the family inhabits the palace again. This is a particular transformed woman’s fate, distinct from a general account of basilisk generation.
Origins & earliest records
Polish Fairy Tales, translated from A. J. Gliński by Maude Ashurst Biggs (1920), The Eagles, pp. 29–36.
Records & interpretation
The selected English tale supplies the transformation, actions and ending. Biggs’s preface explicitly acknowledges considerable shortening of her source.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Polish Fairy Tales: The Eagles, pp. 29–36
Complete selected English narrative and translator’s preface. No individually named oral contributor provided; original Polish text not collated.
Family, evolution & connections
The twelve princes and their sister — Biggs’s telling
Complete The Eagles, pp. 29–36.
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- Unnamed king and deceased first queen
- One daughter, temporarily a dove
Opening first-couple family count and explicit stepchildren distinction. Both first-marriage parents and all children unnamed. The second queen is stepmother, not the deceased biological mother. Her own son is separate, without stated paternal identity. Eagle and dove forms preserve identities; no natural bird genealogy is implied.
The basilisk queen’s own son — Biggs’s telling
The Eagles, pp. 30–31, within the complete pp. 29–36 narrative.
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- Unnamed little son, killed
Explicit own little son wording. The son’s father is unspecified. The king’s remarriage does not prove paternity. The queen kills the boy in her basilisk form; no revival or descendants are supplied. Her thirteen stepchildren remain in the separate first-marriage tree.
The Twelve Eagle Brothers of Gliński’s Tale
The king marries her after his first wife dies. The twelve princes and their sister are expressly her stepchildren, distinct from her own little son.
Her unnamed little son
The narrative calls the little boy her own son and says her basilisk glance kills him. It does not identify his biological father; the earlier king’s marriage alone is insufficient to supply that fact.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary historical shortened literary translationGliński/Biggs 1920: The EaglesResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
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