The Little Mermaid was written as a love letter by Hans Christian Anderson to Edvard Collin. Anderson, upon hearing of Collin’s engagement to a young woman, proclaimed his love to him. He told him ”I long for you as though you were a beautiful Calabrian girl.” Edvard Collin turned Anderson down, disgusted. Anderson then wrote The Little Mermaid to symbolize his inability to have Collin just as a mermaid cannot be with a human. He sent it to Collin in 1936 and it goes down in history as one of the most profound love letters ever written.
Most scholars and psychoanalysts concluded that Anderson was bisexual; however, he never acted upon his homosexual drives.
The Little Mermaid, as it was originally written, did not have a happy ending.