Daily Monster 269: Melusine
Region of origin: Northern France
One of three daughters of a Scottish king and the faerie Pressyne, Melusine was raised on Avalon away from her father because he had broken one of the taboo of the fae folk. Learning this on her fifteenth birthday, Melusine sought out to punish her father for his behavior but learning of her daughter’s attempts at revenge, Pressyne put a stop to it and instead cursed her daughter to take on a demi-serpentine form every Saturday. Years passed and eventually Melusine was married (to whom varies with the telling, but often a nobleman from Poitou) but forbade her husband from viewing her on Saturdays, locking herself away in a bath for the day. One day the husband’s curiosity got the better of him and he spied on her in her chambers, and, either through the terms of the curse or fueled by her own rage, Melusine’s serpentine form consumed her, turning fully into a dragon and flying away. Never able to return to a human form, she is said to live on, acting as a guardian of her descendants.