The heroes of fairy tales are vulnerable, and that…
The heroes of fairy tales are vulnerable, and that is their central quality. That is why they are children and animals who appear weak in the face of the dangers that confront them and threaten to swallow them up. Fairy tales are built around the fragility of their heroes. The heroes are exposed to the world and are usually alone or in a small group of similarly fragile beings when the danger appears.
— from Takeoff Into Chaos · Narrative Brain: the Stories Our Neurons Tell by Fritz Breithaupt
In the book
The heroes of our oldest stories knew this. In fairy tales the hero is almost always the weak one — the youngest child, the small animal, the overlooked servant — precisely because vulnerability is the point. The tale carries that fragile figure from danger or even wounding to a rescue that arrives at the moment of maximum peril, and what wins in the end is never sheer toughness but the one who stays open and attentive when everything is shaking. — Takeoff Into Chaos