It’s a tale as old as time – or, at least as old as the 1500s. But the real couple that inspired Beauty and the Beast lived a tragic life. The real life Beauty and the Beast were Catherine and Petrus Gonsalvus, and they were treated like freaks of nature by Europe’s kings and queens. Although the tale of Petrus and Catherine Gonsalvus isn't the single inspiration of the tale – it has much deeper folkloric roots than that – its optics match those of the fictional couple.

Just like P.T. Barnum collected freaks, in the 16th century, Europe’s royal courts competed to find the strangest human for their amusement. Petrus Gonsalvus, the "beast," was born with a condition that covered his face in hair. The French royal court kept Petrus for years to amuse the nobility by reciting Latin, and they even decided to arrange a marriage for Petrus as a joke.

There are definitely some messed up things in the fictional story of Beauty and the Beast – especially if you start to wonder what happened after the movie ended. But nothing in the fairy tale version compares with the torments suffered by the Petrus Gonsalvus family tree. When he was just 10 years old, Petrus Gonsalvus was locked in a cage and treated like an animal. Lady Catherine Gonsalvus was tricked by an evil Queen into marrying a wild man that she didn’t even meet until their wedding day. And what Europe’s royalty did to the Gonsalvus children is even worse. In the tragic story of Catherine and Petrus Gonsalvus, there are no fairy tale endings.

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