After all, why does Lord Farquaad hate fairy tales?

In the very first film of the “Shrek” franchise, released in 2001, we meet Lord Farquaad, the ruler responsible for the Duloc region, who dreams of increasing his domain by marrying a princess, so that he can transform his land into a kingdom and, consequently, become king.

To do this, he holds a tournament to find a knight who would be able to rescue Princess Fiona from the tower in which she was imprisoned, which was protected by a fearsome dragon, with the ogre Shrek, alongside Donkey, being the only ones able to complete the mission.

In addition to his great dream of becoming king, another great characteristic of Farquaad is the dictatorial way in which he governs Duloc, which became even worse after he decided to exile all the magical creatures that lived there, offering rewards to the population for all who delivered them to the knights of his troop.

As explained by ScreenRant, Lord Farquaad wanted Duloc to become the “perfect territory,” and that fairytale creatures would be ruining his impeccable world.

But why does he hate fairy tale creatures so much?

The answer to this enigmatic question can be found in the 2008 musical entitled “Shrek The Musical”, where, during the number “The Ballad of Farquaad”, a little more is explained about the character’s origin, which is not addressed in the film, and how his hatred for fairy tales came about.

In the scene, we discover that Farquaad is the son of Grumpy, from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, with the princess from the story “The Princess and the Pea”, by the author Hans Christian Andersen. The story explains that, in order to marry her father, her mother had to give up her crown and, because she was so sensitive to the point of sleeping on 25 mattresses, one day she ended up dying after rolling over in bed and falling.

Upon his death, Lord Farquaad claims that his father had abandoned him in the forest, but Grumpy denies this and says that he actually kicked him out of the house years later because he was 28 years old and still living in his basement. Thus, it is possible to understand that the character’s great hatred for fairy tale beings arose from his complicated relationship with his parents, who are the result of two popular tales.