Rapunzel Meets the Prince and Plans Their Escape is the story’s decisive shift from Rapunzel’s confinement to a shared attempt at freedom. The prince first reaches her through the sound of her singing and then through the same golden braids that Mãe Gothel uses to enter the tower. Their meeting turns a mechanism of captivity into a route for intimacy and, eventually, a proposed escape; its discovery by Mãe Gothel brings that possibility to an abrupt and violent end.

Background: A Tower Without a Door

When Rapunzel turns twelve, Mãe Gothel takes her into the forest and shuts her inside a tower with neither stairs nor door, only a tiny window high above the ground. Rapunzel’s long, fine hair is the sole means of access. At Mãe Gothel’s call, Rapunzel lowers her braids to the ground; Mãe Gothel ties them to the window latch and climbs up. The arrangement makes the girl’s own body part of the tower’s entrance, while keeping access under Mãe Gothel’s control.

Years later, a king’s son rides through the forest and hears Rapunzel singing. He stops, searches around the tower for a door, and finds none. Although he rides home, the beauty of her voice has moved him so deeply that he returns to the forest every day to listen. His first connection to Rapunzel is therefore made at a distance: he knows her through the song that reaches beyond the walls, while she remains unaware of the listener outside.

The Prince Learns the Way In

One day the prince hides behind a tree and watches Mãe Gothel arrive. He hears her call to Rapunzel and sees the braids fall, then sees Mãe Gothel climb them to the window. The scene gives him the practical knowledge his search for a door could not provide. The tower’s entrance is not a fixed opening available to everyone; it is an access method activated by Rapunzel’s response to a familiar call.

The next day, as evening begins to fall, the prince goes to the tower and repeats the call he has overheard: “Rapunzel, Rapunzel! Jogue as suas tranças.” The braids descend, and he climbs them. His entry copies Mãe Gothel’s procedure, but changes its meaning: the route that has brought the captor into the tower now lets an unexpected visitor reach the prisoner. The prince’s access still depends on Rapunzel lowering her hair, and on his having learned the call by watching Mãe Gothel.

A Meeting and a Proposal

Rapunzel is frightened when a man comes through the window. She has never seen one before, so his arrival is not simply the fulfillment of the prince’s long effort to see her; it is an encounter with someone entirely unfamiliar to her. He speaks gently and explains that her singing moved him so much that he could not be at peace without seeing her. His manner eases her fear, and the meeting changes the emotional terms of her isolation: the voice that had drawn an unknown listener to the tower now belongs to a relationship between the two of them.

The prince is young and handsome, and he asks Rapunzel to marry him. She accepts, thinking that he will like her more than the old Mãe Gothel. Her response places the proposal against the relationship that has governed her life in the tower, even as the text makes clear that the prince is the first man she has seen. She joins his proposal to a practical wish: she wants to leave, but does not know how to get down from the tower.

The Escape Plan and Its Exposure

Rapunzel proposes a method that does not rely on the prince’s ability to climb her hair again. He is to bring a skein of silk each time he visits; she will weave the silk into a ladder. When it is finished, she will descend and he can take her away on his horse. The plan turns repeated visits into a gradual means of escape: each delivery contributes to a ladder, and the ladder would allow Rapunzel to leave by her own descent rather than by being carried up or down on Mãe Gothel’s braids.

They agree that the prince will come every night, since Mãe Gothel is there during the day. The arrangement gives their meetings a regular rhythm while making secrecy essential. Mãe Gothel does not discover the visits immediately. The plan is instead exposed when Rapunzel asks why it is so much harder to hoist Mãe Gothel up than it is for the young prince, who reaches the window in a flash. Her casual comparison reveals what the concealed night visits have taught her—and discloses the prince’s access to the tower.

Reversal: From Shared Access to Exile

Mãe Gothel recognizes the betrayal and reacts in fury. She takes Rapunzel’s hair, wraps the braids around her left hand, and cuts them with scissors in her right. The hair that had served as the tower’s entrance and enabled the prince’s visits is severed; the means of access becomes the instrument through which Mãe Gothel asserts control. She then takes Rapunzel to a desert, where Rapunzel must live a miserable and unhappy life. The discovery thus defeats the immediate escape plan and replaces Rapunzel’s confinement in the tower with exile.

Mãe Gothel’s use of the cut braids makes the reversal more complete. On the same day that she sends Rapunzel away, she ties the severed hair to the window latch. When the prince returns and calls, the braids still fall, and he climbs them expecting to find Rapunzel. Instead, he meets Mãe Gothel, who tells him that Rapunzel is gone and that he will never see her again. The method the pair had shared as a route toward escape has been turned into a trap: the prince can still reach the window, but Rapunzel is no longer there.

Significance and Aftermath

The meeting joins three distinct functions of Rapunzel’s hair. It is first the controlled entrance by which Mãe Gothel reaches the girl, then the means by which the prince crosses into Rapunzel’s isolated world, and finally a false invitation that brings him to Mãe Gothel after Rapunzel’s exile. Its cutting ends the couple’s access to one another through the tower, while the braided ladder of silk remains a plan that the story never shows them completing.

The escape plan does not succeed as intended, but the meeting establishes the relationship that continues beyond the tower. After the prince is deceived into climbing the cut braids, he leaps from the tower in despair, survives, and becomes blind when a thorny bush scratches his eyes. Years later he reaches the desert where Rapunzel is living with their twins, a boy and a girl. Rapunzel recognizes him by his voice, embraces him, and weeps; two tears fall into his eyes and restore his sight. They return to his kingdom and live happily for many years. The couple’s eventual reunion answers the separation that began when the secret meetings were discovered, though it comes through recognition, wandering, and Rapunzel’s tears rather than through the silk ladder they first planned.