The Princess Blog

The School for Good and Evil  is a middle grade book series released in 2013 with a similar plot to Ever After High  and Descendants  and with all the ambition of Harry Potter . Considering how popular this fairy tale-inspired series seems to be, I'm surprised I never heard of it until a little over a week ago when I learned that Netflix is turning it into a movie . Perhaps one of the reasons it was so overlooked is its super generic title, which sounds like it could be about literally anything. Most fictional stories are about the battle between good and evil. A better title would have been The School for Princesses and Witches , which would have been more eye-catching to lovers of fairy tales. Maybe the vagueness is good, though, since this book contains many horror elements that could scare off young fairy tale aficionados or particularly sensitive older ones like myself. When I began reading The School for Good and Evil , I had many questions that were mostly resolved...

There are precious few video games that allow you to play as a princess  who does something other than dress up or recover the royal jewels. Until recently, Child of Light was the only game I knew of for modern consoles that fit those criteria. That's why I was eager to play The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince when it went on sale in the PlayStation Store . Its storybook illustration aesthetic and sidescrolling gameplay look so similar to Child of Light that I mistakenly thought it was made by the same people at first. Once I actually started playing, it became clear that The Liar Princess has a much smaller budget and a more linear world. Instead of the colorful cast and robust battle command menus from Child of Light, The Liar Princess's story is told entirely by a single Japanese narrator accompanied by cutscenes of an illustrated storybook that depicting the story. I completed the entire game in a single evening, which made me question its $20 price tag. Story-wis...

It's hard to get excited about something as cringe-worthy as Descendants , which premiered on Disney Channel in 2015 as a blatant ripoff of Mattel's Ever After High . It was followed up with an even more cringe-worthy sequel in 2017 that barely had any semblance of a plot. These movies seemed like an easy cash-grab to show off the singing and dancing talents of various Disney Channel teens by turning them into rebellious offspring of classic animated Disney characters  who jump around in leather '90s grunge and brightly colored hair. They focused mainly on the villains' kids, with the cliché message that you shouldn't judge people by first impressions. That's all well and good, but there weren't many royal children to demonstrate that princesses aren't always sugar sweet either. The only token princess to fill this role was Audrey, the daughter of Princess Aurora from Disney's  Sleeping Beauty . Instead of being polite and loving, Audrey comes off...

It would be impossible for me to write this post without spoiling the latest episode, so go ahead and watch Rapunzel and the Great Tree  if you haven't seen it yet before reading on. I was surprised that this hour-long episode was not promoted as a major special at all as far as I could tell. Rapunzel and the Great Tree was a crucial turning point in the plot and should have been treated as such. It brought back all of the things that we have been waiting since the season premiere to learn more about, such as the character of Adira, the significance of Varian's father, the meaning of the moon symbol next to the Sun Drop symbol on Adira's scroll, and the black rocks, which created the events that kicked off the series from the very beginning. Rapunzel and her friends are traveling to a place called the Dark Kingdom, which is where the mysterious rocks originate from. If that doesn't sound foreboding enough already, Disney also took some pretty big risks in the latest...

I've made some posts in the past about how more often than not, princesses are portrayed as good and queens as evil . Since this is so often the case, does that mean that the storybook princesses we love are not willing to fulfill their royal destiny as the hope for their kingdom's future ? While it's true that princesses often seek freedom from the confines of palace life, they don't necessarily want to run away from their responsibilities either. The problem is that princess stories usually reveal only a brief period from their heroine's life that takes place before the biggest trials and tribulations of reaching full adulthood. I expanded upon this briefly in my "Confessions of a Grown-Up Princess Fan" post, where I discussed how even though I still relate to certain aspects of being a princess, I have developed a sense of cynicism that I did not have the first time I watched their movies. Seeing the world through the eyes of a princess now feels mor...

A magical  Sofia the First special called The Curse of Princess Ivy  came out in 2014. It had everything--dragons, drama, fun a wicked princess , and a guest appearance by Rapunzel . Of course, that was back when Sofia's amulet was still purple and summoned Disney Princesses to help her when she was in trouble (with the exception of Pocahontas ). Now that Sofia has reached the next level of being a wise and benevolent princess, her pink amulet sends her to help troubled princesses. The last episode of the show used this ability to reacquaint Sofia with the vengeful Princess Ivy and teach us that there is more to people than what they appear to be. From a design standpoint, Princess Ivy is very unique. Her hair is reminiscent of Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmatians  with its split black and white aesthetic, but her face looks like that of a pretty youthful princess. She has a long dress with frills and ribbons like most classic princesses. However, the lack of br...

Yesterday, I explored the stigma that all queens are evil . Today, I'd like to follow up with an analysis of the stigma that all princesses are good. In the 1985 movie, Legend , Princess Lili gets seduced by Darkness and transforms into a "dark princess" in a revealing black dress, implying that her innocence had been taken away. Does being a princess and wearing a white dress automatically make a character sweet and innocent? The creators of  Child of Light , which I referenced in my "Video Game Princesses" post , had some fun with this concept by disguising a wicked princess to look like a good one. Ironically, the word "princess" is often used as an insult. Why? No one embodies the reasons behind that better than Princess Morbucks from The PowerPuff Girls . Despite her name, Princess is not actually a princess. She is the spoiled daughter of a very rich man who gives her everything she wants. Thus, she possesses all of the princess traits tha...