Marissa Meyer’s The House Saphir is a reimagining of “La Barbe bleue” (Bluebeard), a French fairytale first published by Charles Perrault in 1697. The original tale warns against female curiosity through the story of a wealthy man who murders his wives and hides their bodies in a forbidden room. Meyer modernizes these themes of patriarchal violence and hidden horrors through the characters of Count Bastien Saphir, a ghost whose legacy of murdering his wives haunts his descendant, and Mallory Fontaine, the dangerously curious woman who is a mix of con artist, detective, and witch.

The novel alludes to other versions and likely sources for Perrault’s Bluebeard tale, such as the legend of the historical figure Conomor the Cursed or Count Comorre (c. 540), a Briton king who killed four of his wives. In the novel, Comorre is the city where House Saphir is located, and Triphine, Bastien’s first wife, is named after Conomor’s fifth wife who escapes, Tréphine. Conomor was known to be a werewolf, and this creature is one of the first monsters to attack Mallory. In addition, the monster hunter Fitcher alludes to the Brothers Grimm tale, “Fitcher’s Bird” (1812), a German version of the Bluebeard tale in which the husband is a sorcerer and the wife escapes by disguising herself as a bird.