The Princess Blog

Did you know that there are several fairy tale franchises that portray the legendary princesses as mothers ? One of the most famous is Ever After High , Mattel's series of dolls, books, and animated webisodes that ended abruptly a couple of years ago. I consider myself a casual fan of this series, watching or reading stories as I find them without going out of my way. I love the concept of fairy tale characters fighting to write their own story as well as the beautiful character designs that were cleverly engineered to sell as many dolls as possible. A couple of weeks ago, I hit the jackpot at a local library sale that had not one, not two, but three Ever After High books available for my reading pleasure! Until then, I had only skimmed through the first book in the series, The Storybook of Legends  by Shannon Hale , which was the only book with a faithful animated adaptation . The premiere series went on to release three other full-length novels. I got my hands on the second one,...

In  my "Animal Princesses" post , I mentioned that Lauren Faust was coerced by Hasbro to change Queen Celestia into Princess Celestia because little girls see queens as evil and princesses as good. Why is that? Surely, there were many benevolent queens throughout history and mythology. Have the  Disney Princesses  taken over the world so much that people believe that princesses ran the monarchy? I think it's more complicated than that. Wicked queens are usually stepmothers who seduce the king to gain power. Most princesses don't have mothers, and the few that do are very loving. What is the root of the problem behind all the queen hate? The Evil Queen from the  ever evolving tale of "Snow White"  strikes fear into children's hearts at the mere mention of her name, if she has one, of course. Since  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs  was the first animated feature film ever, it had the side effect of setting the groundwork for certain archetypes in a...