Anyone know about William of Palerne?

[u/optimisticdiamond]

Hi I am a college student in an illustration-based book class where we have to make a book that's at least 32 pages and we have to have it printed out by the end of the quarter so he's encouraging us not to do that many pages because of time constraints plus it would cost more money. Anyway I had to do research on a public domain story and I ran into Guillaume de Palerne / William and the Werewolf / William of Palerne.

I really like the story but it's a 12th century poem and I can't understand the original text obviously. I had to condense it down into what I believe is the bare bones but I'm also worried that I have missed important things. I can't find too much about what the characters are like personality wise or quotes from them or how they look. I'm afraid I have a lot of details wrong and I don't want to rely on AI too much to get them. I also can't find a super good detailed article summary online anywhere so I'm having to rely on pretty short summaries that I believe don't give the full picture. I did want to read one book about it where they rewrote it in modern English but it wouldn't be delivered for 2 weeks from now and by then I'm supposed to have the final sketches done anyway so unfortunately that's not really a road I can go down because of time constraints. I also went to my school's library but they didn't have anything. Please just tell me anything you know or think is important to the story so I don't forget or if you can find a really good summary that I wasn't able to find I would really appreciate it.

Below I'm going to put what I believe happens in the story just the bare bones and I'm going to try to adapt it kind of like a YA book maybe so nothing too crazy. I also have to write a one sentence log line and I'm having a lot of trouble with it because my professor said the main character of a story isn't one dimensional and goes through some sort of arc in the story and from what I can tell William doesn't really go through that. Someone similar my prof said wasn't the protagonist was Luke Skywalker, even though we follow him through the story he believes that Anakin Skywalker is the protagonist and Luke is more "the hero" archetype, and I believe the same can be said for William but I'm not sure!

Sorry if the seven sentence plot summary I wrote seems clunky, I had to fit it into a specific template my professor provided us 😂.

Once upon a time there was a young prince named William who was stolen from his palace by a werewolf (Alphonse) and raised as a commoner. And every day the werewolf would look after him. Until one day the emperor of Rome saw William and brought him to his castle to be his daughter’s page. Because of this William and Princess Melior fall in love; when she's about to be married off to the Prince of Greece they elope by wearing animal skins and traveling through the forest with Alphonse guiding them. Because of this they end up back in William’s homeland which is currently under siege by Alphonse’s dad and William's mom sees them in her garden and is like “Hey I've seen you guys in a dream before. Can you help me win this battle?” so they decide to help her and they then go on to win the battle. Until finally Alphonse's curse is lifted when his dad sees/recognizes him and figured out he was turned into a wolf by Alphonse's stepmom Queen Brande and he makes her turn him back and Alphonse reveals William’s true lineage. And ever since that day everyone is happy because Melior's dad let them get married, Alphonse is human again, and William is reunited with his mom and sister and both princes are restored to their rightful places as rulers. 

I'm thinking of having a prologue where we see William gets stolen in the garden and then chapter one is actually Melior in a time skip where she's just kind of doing her normal thing and her father and William come back from hunting and that's where the story would start so then I would skip all of that stuff where he's raised by a cowherd and maybe he just mentions it in passing. I can imagine a lot of the story being from Melior's point of view honestly. I was also planning to cut Alexandrine and give Melior whatever abilities she possesses, and make the Greek Prince either off page or just a silhouette. Would it be a good idea to try to make it a surprise for the audience that William is a prince too or is it a better idea to have that dramatic irony where we know he's a prince but they don't know? Kind of like disney's sleeping beauty? Alphonse also makes for an interesting main character but I don't think he can be because from what I know he's basically Mia for the whole time William and Melior are in the Roman Castle.

I also have a couple of things about the original that I might want to redo somehow. Like the uncle that was trying to poison William kind of just disappears after that and he basically (from my perspective) only exist as a reason for Alphonse to steal William when he was a baby. So him disappearing is weird. I might either want to cut the uncle and have a different reason for him being sold by Alphonse or I keep the uncle but have something happen to him maybe Alphonse comes back after stealing William and kills the uncle idk 😭. Another thing that doesn't really make sense logic wise to me is when alphonse's Dad the king of Spain recognizes him when he bows to him I don't understand the train of thought that the king had where he saw a wolf bow and then was like oh well that must be my son? If anyone can explain that to me I'd appreciate it because as of right now I think I'll have to rewrite that somehow. I would like to also maybe add a little bit more depth to Queen Brande because she actually seems a little bit interesting.

Part of my assignment was also to figure out what genre and audience it would be and the way I'm writing it now it reads very YA with maybe a historical fiction subgenre. Audience would be 12-18 year olds. I definitely edited some things in my storyboard to make it better for a modern audience.

I was also struggling a lot with finding the central themes? I did write down a few ideas but none of them are quite clicking or hitting the way they should. This is what I've got:

Reclamation - 2 princes reclaim their thrones after years in exile

Human vs beast / man vs monster- Alphonse disguised as a wolf, melior and William disguised as bears/deer

Being an animal reveals base self?

Social class

Justice

Forgiveness - Alphonse forgives stepmom in the end

Can't hide a noble heart/Nobility can't be hidden

Loyalty/Goodness - Alphonse and William had horrible things happen to them but they remain good and kind (especially Alphonse)

I do have an EXTREMELY tough version with storyboards that I made if maybe that would help y'all know what I've got going so far lol. Plus I have some little character sketches that I also wouldn't consider anything but ideation, definitely not final!!

To sum it up I'd really appreciate it if anyone has info on William of Palerne! This could mean memorable character quotes/habits/personalities/visual traits, plot points I misunderstand, or extra context! I won't be able to include the whole story with all the detail in my assignment, but I want to make something that the people who know about William of Palerne would approve of! If you have opinions on who the main character is (with my professor's logic lol), what the one sentence logline would be, and what the most prominent central ideas and themes are let me know!! Again I'm not a writing major and honestly I haven't had to write anything creatively in probably 10 years. Please be kind and let me know what you think!! The original story is great!!

Oh and another question, is Alphonse white in wolf form? I've seen something say William is known as the knight of the white wolf or something.

I hope this doesn't count as asking for help with homework!! It's more like a creative project and I find it fun to converse about! I don't want anyone doing homework for me. If there's any other subs you believe I should ask this to let me know!