Folklore · Romanian traditions
Făt-Frumos and Ileana Cosânzeana
Romanian fairy tales · characters retold across generations
The story
The names Făt-Frumos and Ileana Cosânzeana belong to a familiar world of Romanian fairy-tale heroes, heroines and impossible journeys.
A story opens and an ordinary road leads somewhere extraordinary. These familiar fairy-tale figures return in oral storytelling, books, theatre and children’s creative work. Their adventures and relationships depend on the particular tale or retelling; they are recurring characters rather than people with one fixed historical biography.