The Princess Blog

The Sacred Beast was the third and final story released in the massive update from Time Princess a little over a month ago. Set in Persia, this is the second middle eastern visual novel in the game since Magic Lamp . It focuses on the mythology of the manticore, the legendary beast with the body of a lion and a scorpion tail. I found this story charming and different from the other visual novels in this game so far. Instead of focusing on romance or history, it follows the formula of movies like Lassie , emphasizing the love between a human and her loyal pet. The cultural fashions in this book were stunning. I found that I liked them much better than the craftable items in Magic Lamp. There were also many different directions that the player could take, resulting in a variety of endings, unlike Cleopatra , which was deceptively linear. The Sacred Beast is about a young lady named Asha, who works hard to care for her sick brother. When she learns of a valuable mushroom that could treat...

"The Mountain and the Knight" Once upon a time, there was a brave prince who loved to be challenged. He had slain dragons, rescued damsels, and defeated witches. Legends of his achievements had spread far and wide. One day, the prince heard rumors of a mountain that was so perilous, no man had ever climbed it and lived to tell the tale. Soon, the prince was filled with determination to climb the fabled mountain and return to spread hope to his people that anything is possible. The king and queen advised him against this, for he was the only heir to the throne. They warned him that if he shared the same fate as the others who climbed the mountain, the kingdom would one day be left without a ruler. The prince was so confident in his abilities that he ignored their warnings and snuck off to the mountain in the middle of the night when his guards were asleep. The path up the mountain was indeed perilous, full of monsters and traps. One wrong step and the brave prince would...

Tír Na nÓg is a land of eternal youth that originates from Celtic mythology. It is often associated with  faeries  because they are also common in Celtic myths. The  most common story  of Tír Na nÓg is about a beautiful woman named Niamh who fell in love with Oisín, the son of the leader of the Fianna clan on Earth. She took him back to her homeland of Tír Na nÓg where no one ever aged. They lived happily together there for three years. One day, he decided that he missed his family and wanted to visit them. Niamh sent him back to Earth on her enchanted white horse, but warned him never to touch the ground. Upon returning home, Oisín realized that 300 years had passed on Earth during the short time he spent in Tír Na nÓg, and everyone he loved was dead. When he inevitably touched the ground by accident, the 300 years caught up with his body, and he died of old age. This myth has rarely been touched upon by modern media, but the land of Tír Na nÓg occasi...

The concept of a "faery princess" is often pegged as the most feminine thing a girl can dress up as. Yet, there are surprisingly few stories about faery princesses. The ones that do exist are somewhat obscure. Sure, there's Queen Titania from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," but that story contains no faery princesses, and her character is not referenced often in fiction. The term "faery" is derived from the "fae folk,"  who were mischievous sprites from old European mythology that liked to prank mortals with their powers. They did not necessarily have wings, but this changed during the era of of  J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan  around the early 1900s, which portrayed Tinker Bell as a tiny winged woman. Though "fairy" is the more common spelling (even though fairy tales rarely actually have faeries in them), "faery" is more proper because it's closer to the root word, "fae." Surprisingly, Di...

It's the premiere week of  Mysticons , so let's talk about magical girls and their impact on princess mythology. The magical girl craze began in Japan as a genre of anime called  "mahou shoujo."  No one knows exactly how it started, but it is believed that the first magical girl appeared in 1966 as  Sally the Witch . Though individual stories vary, all the series in the mahou shoujo genre contain grade school-aged girls who receive sparkly trinkets that allow them to transform into pretty superheroes. They fight bad guys by screaming magical words and releasing different types of spells, usually in a pretty sequence of recycled animation. The concept seems rather silly from an outside perspective, but it definitely sells. Not all magical girls are princesses, but it is a common overlying theme, most likely because the genre was created for the same target audience. The most princessy magical girl anime would probably have to be  Go! Princess Prett...