The Princess Blog

I was elated to learn that the next visual novel in Time Princess  would be a return to noblebright stories about royalty! The now massive smartphone app originally premiered with a visual novel about Queen Marie , so it was only a matter of time before it returned to its roots. Twilight's Crown is a mix of history and fantasy, with a disclaimer that any relevance it has to real-life events is purely coincidental. However, the game is packed with references to famous princesses and queens. Its main character, Eleanor, shares a similar backstory to Queen Elizabeth in regards to living in a world where  primogeniture  laws favor male heirs over female ones and a series of unlikely events that lead up to her becoming a sovereign queen after her brothers die young. Her royal gowns feature a red and green flower insignia that strongly resembles one used on the iconic necklace from Anastasia  to prove her regal lineage. There are also visual and plot-related nods to "Beau...

There have been quite a few Broadway musicals  about royal ladies over the past few years, but most of them were closed before they truly had a chance to shine . Both Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella  and Britney Spears' Once Upon a One More Time  only lasted a few months on the Great White Way before they went dark . One of the most contemporary shows about female empowerment that has stood the test of time is Six , the British musical about the six wives of King Henry VIII. I recently saw this show six years after its 2017 opening, so it lasted at least as many years as its namesake. What is it that made this show dominate so many other contemporary female-empowering fairy tales? For one thing, Six stands apart because it is not a fairy tale. The six historical queens who are featured in it had miserable lives for different reasons. By encouraging its audience to learn more about history, Six benefits from the success of other historical musicals like Hamilton , which ...

Promoted on Sony's website as "Part One of the thrilling conclusion to the Swan Princess series," The Swan Princess: A FairyTale Is Born  marks the 11th film in the franchise  since The Swan Princess  came out in 1994, meaning it is expected to end with a total of 12 movies. That's still not as many as The Land Before Time , but it's close! With all the experience that Richard Rich and his team have making Swan Princess films, they had plenty of time to hone their skills with animation and plot development, which is why the last few movies have not been as nightmarish as some of the earlier CGI ones . This movie serves as a nice homage to its roots as a partial prequel that ties up any loose ends long-time fans of the series may have had about Queen Uberta's origins and the absence of Odette's mother and Derek's father along with some nostalgic orchestrations of memorable songs from the original film. Do you ever get the feeling that you've jus...

When Disney released the trailer for their upcoming Cruella  movie a couple of months ago, the internet had a lot to say. I decided it would be best to stay in my own lane. After all,  101 Dalmatians  and its subsequent remakes are not Disney Princess movies . Then, it was announced last week  that a new movie featuring Cinderella's stepsisters, Anastasia and Drizella, is in the works. Suddenly, Cruella  didn't seem so irrelevant after all. It looks like villain-centered remakes are the next step in Disney's ongoing trend of poor decision-making  and the general dearth of creativity in Hollywood . Don't get me wrong; I thought Maleficent  was an excellent movie in its own right and quite innovative for the time period, but I wasn't expecting it to be the mold for a series of cookie-cutter screenplays about sympathetic villains after Disney ran out of animated classics to convert into soulless live-action remakes . I've seen tons of backlash for...

Covid took away many once-in-a-lifetime experiences  from millions of people worldwide. I was content being locked away in my tower binging princess shows , but the one thing I missed the most this year was musical theater . The stage is a place for princesses to shine as they show off their stunning costumes , bell-like voices , and whimsical stories . Throughout the year, I learned about many new princess musicals  that I would have loved to see if the theaters had not shut down. Streaming musicals has become more commonplace than ever, but watching a show on a screen simply cannot compare to the magic of seeing it live . While Hollywood continues to rehash old ideas , Broadway is giving us a fresh perspective on history  with shows like Hamilton  and  Six . In the same way that Hamilton sets American history to contemporary music, Six takes the wives of Henry VIII and turns them into a pop band that performs Spice Girls-inspired numbers about their tr...

Yesterday, the Starz network  released the series finale of The Spanish Princess , concluding  The White Queen  trilogy of miniseries that began in 2013. Based on a book series called The Cousins' War  by Phillippa Gregory , the trilogy covers the women who stood behind the men in power in the English monarchy from 1464 to the 1530s, preceding the first two sovereign queens, Mary and Elizabeth. The White Queen , The White Princess , and The Spanish Princess  grant us a rare opportunity to see what life was like for medieval monarchs. Watching them reminded me of why I prefer the fairy tale versions of royalty. Those stories do not contain the gory deaths, gruesome births, and invasive politics that historical dramatizations like these exemplify. In fact, I had very little interest in watching the second season of The Spanish Princess until I watched some historical videos and learned that the king that Catherine of Aragon was married to was none other than King...

Queen Marie is the first visual novel that players can unlock in the Dress Up! Time Princess smartphone game app. It is the most user-friendly story in the game, but that doesn't mean it's easy to complete! It is the polar opposite of Swan Lake  with dynamic story branches that shift based on your choices and a myriad of possible endings. It also has the largest number of characters to bond with, although only two of them are viable love interests. The game allows you to play as Marie Antoinette from the perspective of a modern girl who is aware of her gruesome fate and has the ability to alter history, similar to the anime My Next Life as a Villainess . The interactive visual novel also allows you to unlock a full closet of extravagant French colonial-style gowns and wigs. Queen Marie gives Dress Up! Time Princess players the opportunity to experience the luxurious lifestyle of the pre-revolution French monarchy while making decisions that can alter history and potentially pr...

Believe it or not, History was one of my least favorite classes in school. I hated learning about wars and conquerors and men who made boring tax laws. Yet, without history, we wouldn't have princesses to weave into the fairy tales we tell today. Due to being home a lot lately, I spent the last few weeks binging historical dramas that focused on important female figures. I found that they were far more interesting than the things I learned about in school. These shows have gorgeous eye candy. The character dress in extravagant gowns that you would never see in modern culture . As a companion piece to my "Princess Shows to Binge in Your Tower" post , I thought it would be interesting to put all the historical dramas I've watched into chronological order to create a clearer picture of how women in power have evolved over time. Some of these are a bit of a stretch since the educational value doesn't always trump the entertainment value. Time travel shows are a lot...

Fairest of All  by Serena Valentino  came out a little over a decade again. It would eventually kick off a long series of official Disney villain fanfiction that, to the best of my knowledge, is still going to this day. I was aware of this book when it came out but was not quite motivated enough to pick up a copy for myself. It looked like an experiment by Disney to see if they could cash in on the success of  Gregory Maguire's Wicked . Five years later, the book was made into a series, and Disney's Maleficent  was released in theaters. Therefore, it would appear that the experiment was a success. I have read the first three books in this series and found that Fairest of All  about the Evil Queen from Snow White is by far the best, most likely due to being the only one that was not written solely to continue chugging out more money for the mouse. Fairest of All  covers the backstory of the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , who beco...