The Princess Blog

The latest ARC I received from NetGalley was The Princess Knight  by Cait Jacobs. This book has a generic-sounding title , which made me expect something along the lines of the overdone warrior princess trope . I was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually had a feminine protagonist who wasn't much of a fighter. The book is actually a stealth medieval retelling of Legally Blonde , particularly the Broadway version. Being a huge fan of the musical, I had a lot of fun catching the many references to it peppered throughout the book. For marketing purposes, I do wish the title made it more obvious that this is a retelling because I think that would help widen its reader appeal. I'm not sure exactly what it should be called to do that, though. Royally Blonde ? Legally Knighted ? Legally Princess ? Princess Clia is in an arranged marriage with Prince Domhnall to forge an alliance between their kingdoms. She is blindsided when Domhnall unexpectedly breaks off the engagement for...

I used to think that Revolutionary Girl Utena  was the most innovative, unique, and original anime out there. After watching  Princess Knight  and now The Rose of Versailles , I realize that it drew inspiration from older anime sources. All three of these series feature women who don swords and take on the role of a man to protect the innocent. They each have their own queer-coded attributes  that combine all the best things about noble heroes  and damsels in distress . The Rose of Versailles, which came out in 1979, right in the middle of the 30-year gap between 1967's Princess Knight and 1997's Utena, stands apart from its surrogate cousins because it is set in a historical setting rather than a fairy tale world. The Rose of Versailles takes place prior to and during the French Revolution. It spans the decades of Marie Antoinette's life from her engagement to King Louis XVI to her beheading at the guillotine. If you haven't already guessed, the show does not h...

Princess Knight  was referred to me as the anime that started the "shoujo" (girl-oriented) genre in Japan. That seems like a pretty big claim considering how immensely popular that genre has been over the years and the fact that I've never heard of this show. It came out in 1967, which was well before anime became popular in America. Upon watching it, I found it contained many similarities to one of my favorite anime series, Revolutionary Girl Utena . I thought Utena was pretty progressive for a '90s series, but I had no idea something similar had already been done all the way back in the '60s and had likely inspired it. By today's standards, Princess Knight would probably be considered transgender or queer  even though she has a male love interest. The show begins with an in-depth explanation of why she feels obligated to pretend she's a boy. As the daughter of a queen and king, she has a responsibility to inherit the kingdom of Silverland, whose law stat...