The kids are ready for it...

I mean German fairy tales try to maximize Schadenfreude. Bad things happen to bad people - which is fun. Sure, the "bad things" are horrific but children don't mind that usually.
I definitely remember reading a bunch of gruesome children stories as a child (and they were great)! Struwwelpeter and Max und Moritz are two funny children books with a couple of deaths.
- In Romania we have a story about a goat with 3 kids written by a famous author.Source.
  Shortened version: She leaves the kids at home and tells them not to open to door for anyone. Wolf comes, the 2 older kids open the door cause they're idiots, small one hides. Older kids get eaten and the wolf leaves their heads by the window.
  Mom comes home, young kid tells her what happened and she decides to invite the wolf to a meal. There's a big hole where she puts hot coals or something and covers it with a bunch of twigs or something and places the table on top.
  Wolf comes, eats and eventually falls in the hole once the hot coals weaken the twigs enough. Goat and kid throw some stuff on the fire to weaken it and then kill the wolf by throwing big rocks at him since he can't escape the hole.
  
  We have a sinilar goat story except the wolf falls asleep after eating the goats and the mother literally cuts him open and fills his stomach with stones. The wolf then wakes up thirsty and goes for a sip from the well but because he has a stomach full of rocks he falls in and drowns.
- Maybe in the Grimm's versions, but I think it doesn't really apply to the older folk tales they were based on...
- It's not Schadenfreude, it's more education by fear. Make children be afraid of not following the rules.

Oh lord that's true fairy tales are twisted

Disney©®™ Cinderella ending: 👸
Original Cinderella ending: 👹
- Wait does she not get the prince in the original?
  
  There are two previous Cinderella stories which are both grotesque to say the least. In one of the versions, written in the 17th century, Cinderella kill her evil step-mother by slamming a lid of a chest on her throat which breaks her neck. In Brothers Grimm version, the step-sisters chop off their feet to fit the glass shoe. When this trickery is uncovered, the little birds that follow Cinderella around, peck the evil stepsisters’ eyes out.
  https://www.scoopwhoop.com/entertainment/disney-fairy-tales-with-dark-twisted-endings/

Eh, the original version was basically pre-internet porn fanfic. Brothers Grimm cut out most of the x rated stuff. Disney cleaned it up further with a lot of bleach to get the smut and kink off and made it into movies.
- Would love some sources on that.
  To my knowledge, brothers Grimm collected them and put them into text, and they were all pretty fucking horrific. Some stuff is really graphic.
  The question of why kids didn't mind comes up a lot and it had something to do with kids naturally not being able to empathize in cruelty and therefore able to basically emotionally detach from those parts. But I might be wrong on that, I don't have sources for this rn.
  Anyway, because your comment is so very different, I'd love to be wrong and to read up on it.
  
  Wikipedia:
  The first volumes were much criticized because, although they were called "Children's Tales", they were not regarded as suitable for children, both for the scholarly information included and the subject matter.[3] Many changes through the editions – such as turning the wicked mother of the first edition in Snow White and Hansel and Gretel (shown in original Grimm stories as Hänsel und Grethel) to a stepmother, were probably made with an eye to such suitability. Jack Zipes believes that the Grimms made the change in later editions because they "held motherhood sacred".[4]
  They removed sexual references—such as Rapunzel's innocently asking why her dress was getting tight around her belly, and thus naively revealing to the witch Dame Gothel her pregnancy and the prince's visits—but, in many respects, violence, particularly when punishing villains, became more prevalent.
  
  People had much less empathy than they do now. Steven Pinker talks about this in The Better Angels of Our Nature.