The Prince Falls from the Tower and Goes Blind is the rupture that transforms a secret courtship into years of separation. Mãe Gothel uses Rapunzel’s severed braids to lure the prince into the tower, then tells him that Rapunzel is gone forever. In despair, he leaps; he survives, but a thorn bush blinds him. His fall makes the deception physically consequential, while his later reunion with Rapunzel turns the story’s movement from loss toward restoration.

Causes and Deception

The prince’s peril grows out of a plan to escape the tower. After he first climbs Rapunzel’s braids to reach her, she accepts his proposal and asks him to bring silk so that she can weave a ladder and descend. They agree that he will visit at night, when Mãe Gothel is away. Their arrangement depends on secrecy and on the prince repeating the familiar call that brings the braids down.

Mãe Gothel discovers their meetings when Rapunzel remarks that raising her is harder than raising the young prince. In a fury, the witch cuts Rapunzel’s braids and exiles her to a desert. On the same day, she ties the cut hair to the window latch, preserving the appearance of the route into the tower while removing the person the prince expects to find there.

The False Reunion and the Fall

When the prince arrives and calls, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel! Jogue as suas tranças”, Mãe Gothel lets the braids fall. He climbs, believing the familiar signal means Rapunzel is waiting. Instead, Mãe Gothel confronts him with an angry, venomous look. She taunts him with the image of Rapunzel as a bird no longer in its nest and tells him that he has lost his beloved forever and will never see her again.

The prince is overwhelmed by grief and leaps from the top of the tower. The jump does not kill him, but he lands among thorn bushes, whose branches scratch his eyes. The apparent path back to Rapunzel thus becomes the means of his injury: the braids carry him upward into the witch’s deception, and the fall leaves him alive but unable to see.

Consequences and Aftermath

Blind and unable to see the world around him, the prince wanders through the forest. He finds only roots and berries to eat and spends his time weeping and lamenting the loss of his wife. His blindness is therefore both an immediate bodily consequence of the fall and the condition under which his separation continues; the story gives no quick escape from either his grief or his wandering.

After many years, the prince reaches the desert where Rapunzel is barely surviving with the twins she has borne, a boy and a girl. He follows a familiar-sounding voice, and Rapunzel recognizes him when he comes close. She embraces him and weeps; two of her tears fall into his eyes, and his sight returns clearly. The event’s injury is reversed at the reunion, after which the prince returns with Rapunzel to his kingdom, where a great celebration follows and they live happily for many years.

Narrative Role

The fall is a sharp reversal: the prince reaches the tower by the very sign associated with his visits, but the expected reunion becomes a betrayal. His leap gives Mãe Gothel’s claim of permanent loss immediate force, while his survival leaves open the possibility of another meeting. The later restoration of his sight through Rapunzel’s tears answers the earlier injury with an act of recognition and reunion, completing the passage from deception and separation to shared life.