The Princess Blog

Over the years, I frequently referenced the mermaid stories by my long-time friend, Kae-Leah Williamson . Today, she has completed her longest mermaid book yet, Pearlina and the Water Faery , which is free to read on Wattpad! This is the latest story in her series of reimagined fairy tales that take place in undersea fantasy kingdoms of merfolk and talking fish. Pearlina  is a loose retelling of "Thumbelina"  that ties into the other books Kae-Leah has written on Wattpad and includes tons of Easter egg-style references to Don Bluth , Hans Christian Andersen, and "The Little Mermaid."  Over the time I have known Kae-Leah, she has grown exponentially as a writer, and this is her best work yet. When an ancient mermaid mourns the distant loss of her daughter, a prince's favor grants her a magic shell promised to grant her heart's desire. From the shell emerges Pearlina, a dark-skinned mermaid the size of a Barbie doll. Pearlina helps to care for her mother in th...

Disney's 1989 animated classic The Little Mermaid  is a movie that means so much to so many people, myself included. It inspired children to chase after their dreams, encouraged future ingenues to pursue musical theater, pioneered the Disney Renaissance , started the trend of mermaiding, got the general public interested in animation, had a huge impact on the lgbt community , and held a universal appeal to dreamers everywhere. It is not only my favorite Disney movie, but my favorite movie of all time. If there was one film I didn't want to see suffer from Disney's live-action remake syndrome , it was this one. Even though I knew it would never live up to the original because nothing ever could, I went in with high hopes that it would at least capture the spirit of the story for a new generation of audiences. And I am so pleased to inform all of you, my lovely readers, that it did. Back in 2019 when Disney first announced the casting of Halle Bailey as Ariel , the internet t...

Though it feels like fairy tales have been around forever, the popular versions that we know today have actually only been circulating in English-speaking countries for a little over a hundred years. Much of this is thanks to a name that we rarely hear associated with fairy tales, Andrew Lang . Lang didn't write any fairy tales himself, but he was one of the first people to translate stories from the Brothers Grimm , Hans Christian Andersen , Charles Perrault , Madame d"Aulnoy , and others into English to introduce them to a wider audience of fantasy lovers with the Fairy Books of Many Colors , a 12-volume encyclopedia of fairy tales from all over the world. Lang was a scholar who published a number of periodicals, poems, and fiction, but he was most famous for annotating these stories that were translated by his wife and illustrated with beautiful ink drawings by H.J. Ford . Thanks to the magic of the internet, I was able to acquire a full set of the Fairy Books at a relative...

Most adaptations of "The Little Mermaid"  do one of two things. They  retell the exact same story with more detail than the original or they turn the whole tale on its head and create something completely different , usually losing what made the story so special in the first place. A Song of Sea and Shore  by Katherine Macdonald lies somewhere in the middle. The best way I can describe it is that it turns the story sideways. Some aspects are exactly the same while others have shifted, such as the mermaid's motivation to visit her human prince. This is the third book I have read from The Fey Collection , and the author takes more liberties with this fairy tale than she did with the other two . Some of the changes lower the stakes for the main character, making it less of an emotionally powerful tale, while others address concerns that critics have brought up with this story for years. Like most incarnations of "The Little Mermaid," Neri is a headstrong and opti...

This story was inspired by a book of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales I received for my birthday. I thought "The Shadow"  was a very interesting story with a disappointing ending, so I decided to rewrite it from the princess's perspective and a few minor alterations. The new ending is inspired by "The Goose Girl" by the Brothers Grimm  since it acts as a sort of gender-bent version of this narrative. "The Princess and the Shadow" Princess Rosebud felt uneasy about her upcoming wedding to Ian. He came into her life like a whirlwind and literally swept her off her feet with his exceptional dancing ability that seemed almost supernatural. The next thing she knew, her father was planning their wedding. She didn't dread the thought of being married to him, but there were things that made her second guess her rash decision. For one, he would never tell anyone where he came from. His full name, Iacolin, didn't seem to originate from any kingd...

As a result of the virus in Corona , a lot of live experiences that are no longer available to the public are  being shared online for free . One such is experience is the lovely Finnish ballet of "The Little Mermaid"  produced by Ooppera Baletti . Last night, I had the pleasure of watching the show in its entirety  and found that it is not only a unique retelling of the fairy tale, but also a beautiful tribute to the story's original author, Hans Christian Andersen . Andersen plays a unique role in this ballet in which he acts as a storyteller as well as a fairy godmother of sorts for the mermaid character. I loved the elegant way that the mermaid ballerinas were portrayed in the show as well as the brief nods to Andersen's other famous works. Though most of the story is told through dance, there were some short Finnish narrations throughout the show that I was unable to understand, so it's possible that some of my interpretation is wrong. If I'm not mi...

A couple of weeks ago, director Guillermo del Toro  released his latest masterpiece, The Shape of Water . Though not exactly a princess movie, del Toro tends to draw inspiration from fairy tales and mythology. His 2006 blockbuster Pan's Labyrinth  was an "Alice in Wonderland" inspired movie set in the midst of a Spanish war. Like The Shape of Water , it was very much its own story, even though the fairy tale elements were still present. Del Toro is better at using fairy tales as a jumping off point and putting his own spin on his films, which might be one reason that his adaptation of "Pinocchio" got canceled . In the same way that Pan's Labyrinth  borrowed elements of "Alice in Wonderland," I think that The Shape of Water  borrowed from "The Little Mermaid."  Let's take a moment to explore this theory. To begin, drawing inspiration from a story is very different from being an adaptation. Disney's The Little Mermaid  was a ...

I recently saw a fantastic YouTube video  analyzing the stigma that the title character from  Disney's 1950 Cinderella  is inherently weak despite enduring years of abuse and maintaining a strong survival instinct. It got me thinking about one of the most common criticisms people have toward princesses, which is that being a "Damsel in Distress" is a poor influence on girls. My issue with this is that it implies these characters somehow choose to put themselves in horrible situations in an attempt to be rescued by a prince. Why would anyone choose to be placed in such awful situations? They wouldn't. Just because many of the older princesses do find a way out of their unfortunate circumstances through the love of a prince ( which is no longer the case ) does not imply that they were the masterminds behind their own abuse. In fact, if they had intentionally put themselves in these situations, they would certainly have some extremely messed up psychological issues. ...

Yesterday, a friend of mine shared an image she saw on Claire Keane's Twitter that sparked her interest. If you're out of the loop, Claire Keane is the daughter of the legendary Disney Princess animator Glen Keane  who did concept art for the Tangled  movie and series . She tweeted a drawing from a short Russian movie that was released in 1952 called The Scarlet Flower . The movie is a Russian adaptation of "Beauty and the Beast."  After watching this lovely work of art on YouTube , I found a link to another animated Russian fairy tale from 1968 called  Rusalochka , which is the story of "The Little Mermaid."  The artwork in Rusalochka completely blew me away. Every frame looks like something that you would find hanging on the walls of a fine art museum. It was refreshing to see such a unique perspective on my favorite fairy tale. Both of these movies have a classic and otherworldly feel to them. The Scarlet Flower  tells Charles Perrault's versi...

In 1845, Hans Christian Andersen wrote a story called "The Snow Queen" about a girl named Gerda who bravely journeyed through many dangerous lands to rescue her friend Kay, who was possessed by a cursed mirror and seduced by the beauty of a wicked queen . In 2013, Disney released a movie that had absolutely nothing to do with any of that. I go back and forth between hating Frozen  and thinking it was just okay. The more hype it gets, the angrier I become. When people ask me why, I get tired of going into the same explanation again and again because it's long and complicated. That's why I'm writing this post. Most of what I knew about Frozen  before seeing it in theaters came from the D23 Expo  in summer 2013. I went to several panels where I saw the early footage and listened to the filmmakers discuss their progress. At the time, I was very excited about it. Olaf's song was hilarious, and Elsa's disapproval of Anna's engagement to Hans se...

Did you know that yesterday was Don Bluth's 80th birthday? In case you're out of the loop, Don Bluth  is an animator who used to work for Disney until he teamed up with Gary Goldman and made a whole bunch of hit animated features on his own in the '80s and '90s. He is responsible for  Anastasia , one of my favorite animated princess movies of all time as well as  Thumbelina . To top things off, he created a cool animated game called Dragon's Lair that was in arcades and on laser disc. Despite his age, Don and Gary are still working hard to bring their fans great animation. They recently started  an Indiegogo campaign  to do a full-length animated feature film of Dragon's Lair . Don Bluth is very loyal to his fans and responds to nearly all animation-related inquiries on his website . In my opinion, Don Bluth's greatest masterpiece of all time was Anastasia  in 1997. The movie used state-of-the-art technology for the time period. I wasn't v...