[3] The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children", albeit following a specific narrative that is found in Romania, Moldova, and Hungary, as well as in other Eastern European and Balkanic countries.

She got her brother to declare war on him, to get him away from her, and when the empress gave birth in his absence, killed and buried the twins in the corner of the garden and put puppies in their place.

When they transform into human babies again, the siblings grow up at an impossibly fast rate and hide their supernatural trait under a hood or a cap.

[8] The motif of a woman's babies, born with wonderful attributes after she claimed she could bear such children, but stolen from her, is a common fairy tale motif; see "The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird", "The Tale of Tsar Saltan", "The Three Little Birds", "The Wicked Sisters", "Ancilotto, King of Provino", and "Princess Belle-Etoile".

French scholar Gédeon Huet noted the "striking" (frappantes, in the original) similarities between these versions of ATU 707 and the Ancient Egyptian story of The Tale of Two Brothers - "far too great to be coincidental", as he put it.

[10] India-born author Maive Stokes noted the resurrective motif of the murdered children, and found parallels among European tales published during that time.

[11] Austrian consul Johann Georg von Hahn also remarked on a similar transformation sequence present in a Greek tale from Asia Minor, Die Zederzitrone, a variant of The Love for Three Oranges (ATU 408).

He saves a princess named Pathumma from inside a drum she was hiding in when some terrifying creatures attacked her kingdom, leaving her as the sole survivor.

An old couple passes by the quince tree and a large fruit falls on their lap that they take home and put in an earthen jar.

The wife orders the horse to be killed, but before his death, La Valeur instructs a maid to save his first three droplets of blood.

[30] Analysing some of the available variants of tale type 707 during his lifetime, Romanian folklorist Lazar Saineanu suggested that the killing of the twin children and their rebirth in a cycle of metamorphoses seemed "typical" to Eastern Europe:[31] in Romania;[32][33] Belarus; in Serbia; in the Bukovina region;[34] in Croatia;[35] Bosnia,[36] Moldavia, Bulgaria, Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia,[37][38] and among the Transylvanian Saxons.

[40] In addition, Ákos Dömötor, in the 1988 revised edition of Hungarian Folktale Catalogue, noted its presence across the countries bordering Hungary and in Southeastern Europe.

[42] In this regard, according to Russian folklorist Lev Barag [ru] and Belarusian scholarship, the twins' cycle of reincarnations appears in "some" variants from Belarus and Ukraine, as well as in West Slavic texts.

[45] Russian scholar T. V. Zueva names this format "Reincarnation of the Luminous Twins" and considers this group of variants as "an ancient Slavic plot", since these tales have been collected from Slavic-speaking areas.

[47] She also argues that this format is the "archaic version" of the tale type, since it shows the motif of the tree and animal transformation, and recalls ancient ideas of twin beings in folklore.

[50][51] Romanian folklorist Atanasie Marian Marienescu published a tale in newspaper Albina (ro) with the title Doi feti cotofeti ("Two Children with Golden Hair").

[52] In a Romanian tale translated into Hungarian language as A két aranyhajú gyermek ("The Two Children With Golden Hair"), the youngest sister promises the king to give birth to a boy and a girl of unparalleled beauty.

A "gypsy" who worked at the king's court, jealous of the newly-crowned queen, exchanges her children for two puppies and buries the babies in the garden.

[56] In one, Doi feţi logofeţi, collected from Ţăranu Dumitru, the third sister promises to give birth to twins as beautiful as gold and silver.

In a Moldovan tale published by author and folklorist Grigore Botezatu [uk] with the Romanian Cyrillic title "Дой фець логофець ку пэрул де аур" (Transcription: Doi feti logofeti cu parul de aur; English: "Two Children with Hair of Gold"), the youngest maiden promises to give birth to twin children with golden hair.

[66] Other Magyar variant is Die zwei goldhaarigen Kinder (Hungarian: "A két aranyhajú gyermek";[67] English: "The Two Children with Golden Hair").

[69][70] In an article in the Archiv für slavische Philologie, scholars Vatroslav Jagić and Reinhold Köhler [de] reported a Serbian tale published in magazine Српски летопис [sr].

[72] Linguist Erich Karl Berneker translated the tale into German as Vom Grafen und seiner bösen Mütter and sourced it from the Kajkavian dialect.

[73] The Bulgarian Folktale Catalogue, published by scholar Liliana Daskalova, registers a similar narrative as a regional subtype of type 707, indexed as *707D, "Деца със златни коси и сребърни зъби",[74][75] or "Kinder mit goldenen Haaren und silbernen Zähnen" ("Children with Golden Hair and Silver Teeth").

The eldest sister, envious of her fortune and marriage, takes both boys as soon as they are born, kills them, buries them in the garden, while putting two puppies in their place to further humiliate the queen.

Their ashes are gathered by the former wife and spread through the garden, where two cornflowers with golden stamens and silver petals grow and are eaten by a sheep.

[82][83] Czech scholar Jiri Polivka identified a Slovak tale of the Boys With the Golden Stars format, which he then named Pani s chlapci zakopaná do hnojiska.

In this subtype, the children are born with stars and a golden necklace, are buried by orders of their aunt, and go through a cycle of reincarnations from plant to animal to humans again, until they return to their father's court to tell their story.

In these variants, the youngest sister promises to give birth to twins with the sun on the forehead, the moon on the neck and stars on the temples.

[89] Slavicist André Mazon [fr], in his study on Balkan folklore, published an Albanian language variant he titled Les Trois Soeurs.