Stahlbaum Siblings

Stahlbaum Siblings is the familyship between Louise Stahlbaum, Fritz Stahlbaum and Marie Stahlbaum/Clara from the Nutcracker fandom.

The Nutcracker and the Mouse King - E.T.A. Hoffmann
The three Stahlbaum children live in luxury as one of their parents is a doctor of medicine. Louise is the oldest one, Fritz is the middle child and Marie is the youngest. Due to Louise being far older than the other two, Fritz and Marie tend to spend most of their freetime playing together. The two siblings start the story by awaiting the gifts of Marie's godfather Drosselmeyer. Marie is hoping for a beautiful garden with a mechanical little girl being moved around feeding marzipan to mechanical ducks. Fritz dismisses his sister's idea, telling her that ducks don't eat marzipan. He instead is hoping for a fortress, with independently moving soldiers. Louise is not part of this conversation, as she's helping her parents set the table.

When Drosselmeyer finally arrives, he reveals his gift to the children, a giant castle with mechanical dancers spinning around on the inside. Fritz continuously showers the inventor with questions about why the figurines can't move in unexpected ways and is quick to dismiss the gift as boring when Drosselmeyer explains to him that he never intended for the figurines to do anything but spin around. Marie regards the gift with awe, but she quickly agrees with Fritz that she kind of tires of the repetetive movements. Unlike Fritz, she is polite enough not to tell Drosselmeyer. Drosselmeyer however is disappointed at his hard work being dismissed by ungrateful children, however, their mother appreciates the care put into it, so he satisfies the two siblings with candy dolls. When Louise asks if she should put on the nice dress she was gifted that year, Marie is given permission to put on something nice for dinner as well.

When eating their Christmas dinner together, Marie notices a little wooden man laying by the Christmas tree and asks her father to whom he belongs. Her father replies that he doesn't belong to anyone, he was designed to be shared between the siblings so all of them could crack nuts. This gave Marie a reason to stand up from the table and try cracking a nut, taking an immediate shine to the Nutcracker. Marie is eager to share the gift with her siblings and even Louise seems to like cracking a nut herself. However, Marie was always careful to not crack larger nuts as she worried about the Nutcracker breaking. So naturally, when it was Fritz's turn, he seemed to try and test the limits by shoving big, hard-to-crack nuts into the Nutcracker's mouth, breaking off three of his teeth and wearing out his jaw. Marie cries at her brother hurting her new friend and quickly wraps the poor thing in a stray piece of fabric to nurse it. However, when her parents get Drosselmeyer to look for the reason why their daughter is crying, Marie is shocked when Drosselmeyer agrees with Fritz that the Nutcracker is a tool that should naturally wear itself out. However, their father takes Marie's side, saying that he put the Nutcracker in Marie's care and tells Fritz that "no self-respecting general puts a wounded soldier into battle". Fritz finally finds a common ground with his sister and is ashamed for what he said.

After Marie sees her Nutcracker move by himself to fight evil mice, Marie tries to tell her family about what she saw, but her entire family dismisses it as a dream. Drosselmeyer however tries to comfort her by telling her and Fritz the story of how the Nutcracker came to be: He was the nephew of a man also named Drosselmeyer who was chosen as the one able to break the curse the Mouse Queen placed on the Princess Pirlipat. However, when he happened to impale the Mouse Queen with the heel of his shoe while taking seven steps backwards, the nephew stumbled and instead absorbed the princess' curse, turning him ugly by deforming him into a little wooden man. This caused the ungrateful princess to take back her promise of marrying him despite all he did for her. After Drosselmeyer is finished with telling the fairy tale, Marie comments on the ungratefulness of the princess while Fritz reassures her that the Nutcracker will turn out fine if he would stop playing games with the Mouse King, whose mother prophecied would slay him.

An untold amount of time passes since Drosselmeyer's fairy tale, during that time Marie couldn't find any rest as the Mouse King would keep visiting her and urge her to lay out her precious sugar dolls for him, else he'll turn the Nutcracker into sawdust. For fear of being called mad, Marie couldn't even tell her family about the villain threatening her, but her Nutcracker himself tells her that Fritz was right, all he needs is a sword to slay the Mouse King with. So Marie asks Fritz if he has a spare sword from one of his toy soldiers lying around, which her brother provides for her. With the sword, the Nutcracker successfully decapitates the Mouse King seven times in a row, freeing Marie from her terror and allowing her do visit the doll kingdom herself. But she was finally called mad when she tried to tell her family about the amazing adventures she had, so she was just told to stop talking about them. A year had passed since the Christmas Marie received the Nutcracker, desparate to save him, she finally told him that she would love him no matter what he looked like. This lifted his curse, so the Nutcracker could return to Marie's world as a handsome human boy, meaning Marie didn't have to tell stories to her family any longer.

Fanon
Marie/Clara's siblings are a very minor part of the story, but they have a few fanworks dedicated to them. Many fans of the book wish that Louise was adapted more often, given that she adds a third to the dynamic between the protagonist and her (often younger) brother.

Fandom

 * FAN FICTION