INTRODUCTION

There are several parallels between Sherlock’s and fairy tale or disney characters (Fairy tales - Masterpost).

Along other characters, Sherlock qualifies to be both:

The White Swan in the The Swan Lake.



The Swan in the Ugly Duckling;





SHERLOCK’S LOOKS

The coat just visually looks like a black swan. All black with a bit of red on the front.

The blue scarf is reminiscent of water.





HIDDEN SWANS

There are some occurrences of hidden swans in Series 3.

As @finalproblem​ has pointed out in their meta, there are two mentions for this fairy tale in Mycroft’s computer in The Last Vow:

The Ugly Duckling



M#17, which could stand for M17, The Swan Nebula.

There is also a swan among the serviettes.







THE SWAN LAKE

Swan Lake:

A sorcerer turns a maid, Odette, into a white swan because he wants her for himself.

Then enchants another girl, the black swan, to look like Odette to make it so that her love interest, the prince, betrays her.

When the prince falls for the black swan and asks her to marry him, the white swan dies of heartbreak.





Sherlock:

Moriarty makes it so that Sherlock has to leave, possibly because he is jealous of John.

Mary takes John from Sherlock while he cannot be there. As it is improbable that an assassin would casually meet John, Moriarty might have placed her as a love interest to hurt Sherlock.

After John marries, Sherlock is heartbroken, relapses into drugs and is also shot by Mary to the point of being momentarily declared dead.



The episode where the marriage happens has also Sherlock being revealed has someone who loves to dance and the Swan Lake is a ballet.

Plus the serviettes Sherlock folds (along with the swan) are Sidney Opera Houses, a place where you can see a ballet.

SHERLOCK: Swan or Sydney Opera House?







Swan Lake is also the ballet Holmes and Watson are attending to at the start of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, written by the also mentioned composer Tchaicovsky.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes has being cited by Gatiss as one of the sources which inspired BBC Sherlock.









THE UGLY DUCKLING

The Ugly Duckling:

The egg of a swan is misplaced in a farm and the little bird is born among ducks, a family in which he’s misunderstood and deemed ugly.

He leaves home and is in constant search for a family.

After months of solitude, he sees some beautiful swans and tries to approach them, because the risk of being killed by such beautiful creatures is worth it when the alternative is to be alone forever.

He’s surprised by the fact that they welcome him into the group, then he looks at his reflection in the water and realizes he has grown into being a swan himself.

The flock raises in the air and the ugly duckling spreads his beautiful wings to fly away with them.





Sherlock:

Due to his peculiar personality and possibly to some traumatic events, Sherlock has a past as a drug addict and a solitary individual.

After years of solitude he manages to make a friend of John Watson (and to some extent of other people too), leave his addiction behind (at least until the above described plot points in Series 3) and grow into a better man.

The story arc of his character is essentially becoming a good person.

Part of this concept was explored in The Abominable Bride too.

Holmes has two issues:

His drug habit;



His repressed impulses towards John, which take the form of being born in a society where homosexuality was illegal.

By the end of the special he confronts his demons on both aspects and flies away like a swan.

This body position in particular is called Swan Dive.





SHERLOCK’S WHITE SHIRT

In Series 3, where the Swan Lake plot developed, Sherlock starts wearing white shirts. This was also commented on by Gatiss.

GATISS: I don’t think anyone would have noticed, but Sherlock has never worn a white shirt; he’s worn pale grey and pale blue, but we’ve never done a white shirt before. With the colour of the suit, we decided we didn’t want him in black and white. But in episode 1, we needed the white shirt for the scene where he’s the waiter. So we continually try to bring in new pieces for them just to make it more interesting. Later on this series there will be some different colours introduced for Benedict. I bring colours together to subtly show seasonal changes.”

According to Gatiss the new colour was due to the waiter disguise, but since he keeps wearing a white shirt at other times, maybe Sherlock being the White Swan had something to do with it too.

I wonder if we will eventually see Sherlock in a white coat too.





SHERLOCK VS THE PRINCESS SWAN

Here a visual comparison between Sherlock and Swan Lake’s character using the latter’s cartoon adaptation, The Princess Swan.