“This transformation from a half snake, half woman may be tied to d’Arras’s situating her near water –a fountain and her bath– and to the fact that dragons and serpents have scales just like fish (86).”

After reading this tale, I set out to look for some art works of this depiction of melusine, as a serpent or dragon. Many modern depictions are mixed between her as a mermaid, sometimes with a serpent’s tail, even sometimes with wings. However, I also was interested in the remains of the castle that she built, whose ruins can be seen today in France. In this 15th-century depiction of the Chateau de Lusignan, Melusine is in the form of a dragon, flying over the castle and perhaps making good on her promise to fly over at the changing of lords.

.Here is googles rundown on the remains of castle Lusignan

This is a link to the Edward Worth Library’s collection of images of Melusine and her different versions of hybridity.

Although the symbolism of water is deeply tied to her myth, she is also punished for her misdeeds, and in some sense, her greed, to forever transform into a serpent hybrid. There are so many different elements in this story which I hope to explore further, such as the curse inflicted by her mother, the multitudes of her hybridity (half fae and human, half woman and serpent), the nature of the curse being carried on to her sons through deformity and cruelness: “Geoffri with the tooth had burned his brother Freimond (p.88).” I’m still at a loss about the relationship between her husband and the conditions of a broken promise. It seems that even as Melusine bestows many gifts upon her husband and their kingdom, her curse afflicts mostly suffering onto her, with her children’s deformity blamed on her curse(or hidden nature), and in the conditions of her curse being discovered resulting in isolation.