[pjc50]

> I don't remember Cinderella or Snow White being special beyond being pretty and charming.

Snow White was, at least in the canonical Disney 1937 version, "the fairest of them all": the most attractive person known to the magic mirror.

Cinderella was the chosen one, high femme edition: rather than being handed a magic ring or sword she got a pair of shoes and a carriage. Both of these are folk tales that fit the fantasy trope mould.

Really I think this is a slightly circular problem of genre, because if you try to write this sort of story without centering on The Chosen One you end up just doing literary realism.

(possibly urban fantasy gets into this more, by explicitly starting from the modern post-feudal world. Anyway, I agree with you that it's a great article!)