The Iron Stove

The Iron Stove (German: Der Eisenofen) is a Fairy Tale collected by the The Brothers Grimm, as tale number 127. It is Aarne–Thompson type 425A, "the animal bridegroom".

A princess gets lost in the forest and finds an iron stove that can talk. The stove offers to help her go back home, but in exchange she must come back to scrape a hole in the stove itself and undo the spell over it, so they can get married. The princess accepts and then tells her father about this. Her dad doesn't want to give up his only child and sends other girls to 'fill' the promise, but they fail to hide that they're not the princess and the stove rejects them. The princess is still not very convinced but returns to fill her part, and as she works on making the hole, she sees a handsome man inside the stove itself. The man says that he's a prince and that he can take her to his lands, and the princess agrees but doesn't want to go before she says goodbye to her dad. He tells her to go but not to speak too much to him; she fails on that, and when she returns she cannot find either the prince or the stove. And then she begins a long journey to find her lost love...

The story was featured in the anime series Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, but with several changes compared to the original.

See also The Black Bull of Norroway.

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The original tale provides examples of:

• Action Survivor: Having lost the Stove Prince, the Princess goes through quite the hardships to find him. These include passing through very dangerous places only with help of magical implements.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: The Princess tries to give three of these to the Stove Prince in the second part, but is thwarted twice by the Prince's bride since she drugs him so he won't hear her rival in love. The third one works better because the servants warn the Prince and he just fakes being drugged. In her own words:
      “I have released you out of the wild wood – out of an Iron Stove; in seeking you, I have gone over a glass mountain, over three sharp swords, and over a great lake; yet, now that I find you, you will not hear me.”
• Arranged Marriage: In the second part, the Prince is stuck in one.
• Beautiful All Along: The Stove Prince turns out to be a stunner. Especially in the Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics version.
• Body Double: A miller's daughter and a pig-herd's daughter are sent by the Princess' Overprotective Dad to meet the still-locked Stove Prince. He identifies them as fakers over them mentioning their fathers' jobs.
• Disposable Fiancee: The second princess' role is basically to be an obstacle to the Princess and then be thrown away.
• Distressed Dude: The Prince is magically locked inside a stove and only a Princess can release him.
• Elopement: As soon as the Stove Prince recognizes his Princess and tells her that he loves her, they decide to get the fuck out of the castle. The magical items gifted to her play quite the role in their escape.
• Fallen Princess: The last part of the Princess' trials to be reunited with her man has her disguising herself as a maid in his castle so she can reach for him.
• Heroic BSOD: It's implied that the Prince accepted the Arranged Marriage because, when he believed that his dear Princess was dead, he fell into one of these and was barely responsive to almost anything. Learning that a "servant" claims to know him AND identifying her as his Princess lifts his spirits immediately.
• Jerkass : The other Princess takes the Pimped-Out Dresses that the protagonist hands her in exchange for trying to meet the prince undisturbed... but then interfers with said meetings.
• Love Triangle: In the second part of the tale, there's one between the Princess, the Stove Prince and the Prince's Disposable Fiancee.
• Near Villain Victory: The Princess goes through lots of misfortune to find her lost Stove Prince, but when she finds him, she cannot reach for him due to his Disposable Fiancee drugging him. The third time works far better thanks to the servants warning the Prince and him pretending to be drugged so the fiancée won't interfere again, and he and his Princess are happily reunited.
• Pimped-Out Dress: The talking animals hand three magical nuts to the Princess, and when she bites on them, she finds these inside. She uses them to bargain with her love rival for a chance to see her beloved.
• Second Love: Subverted: The Stove Prince is about to consider the other princess as this, because he believes his girlfriend to be dead. When he finds out that his beloved is alive and disguised as a maid, he immediately walks off the Arranged Marriage and returns to her side.
• Spanner in the Works: The Disposable Fiancee's plan to take her love rival out fails when two courtiers hear the Princess' pleas, realize the trick and warn the Stove Prince.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: The bride interfers with the Fallen Princess' desire to meet her Stove Prince by lacing his drinks with sleeping meds.
• Talking Animal: Two speaking toads claim to be friends of the Stove Prince and help the Princess to liberate him. 
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The Prince's estranged father is mentioned at the end, but not the Princess' Overprotective Dad .