This topic has been hotly debated by reviewers and there was even an entire unit devoted to it in one of the media studies courses I took in college. For that reason, I will not dive that deeply into it, but I would like to take the time to analyze the different roles the princesses of the Disney franchise have had to take on. The Princess Diaries aside, the animated princesses have all gotten their share of praise and flack for how they are portrayed. In some cases the term "princess" is loosely bandied about when it applies to any female protagonist being promoted to the young female audience. It is because of this that Alice and Kairi are two of the seven "Princesses" of Heart in the Kingdom Hearts games, but I'll leave that alone for now.
A "princess" refers to a female character either of noble birth or the bride to a prince. One complaint from reviewers is that even when the princess' parents are out of the equation, they are still referred to as a princess instead of a queen. While they are correct in pointing this out, there are also reasons why this occurs. One reason is age, which can be subjective. If the person in question is too young to make decisions for the kingdom, that role is usually passed on to an older guardian like a dowager or an uncle until that person is old enough. However, this is Disney, and how often have we seen dowagers and uncles seize this power with the intent of keeping it and trying to kill their young charge? TOO OFTEN. I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that something similar happened to King Tut. It doesn't only happen in fiction.
This brings us to the question asked in the title: what is the role of a princess? From what I can tell in the older Disney movies like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, it's to marry a prince for true love, hopefully without being killed by a wicked stepmother or evil witch first. My college course covered this, so I won't harp on this point too much. I will mention that the reason I like Cinderella so much despite this premise is the two movies that Disney made later depicting life after marriage. What is the role of a princess then, you ask? In Cinderella II, Cinderella is having trouble adjusting to life in the palace. Although everyone else likes her for who she is and has no problem with what she does (except Holland Taylor, who took care of these things when there wasn't a woman in the castle), she is forced to comply with tradition and tend to matters she knows next to nothing about, like preparing a banquet "the right way" and "acting like a princess." She wasn't raised as a princess, so it's not like she can just pick up these precise skills and knowledge overnight. After struggling to become someone she is not, doing what comes naturally to her works out in the end. Jennifer Hale does such a great job voicing her too, as she has a history of voicing such kick-ass characters as Ivy from Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? and Sam from Totally Spies.
There's also the idea that female leaders are princesses if they're good and only queens if they are evil. Take for instance the MLP:FIM setup (not Disney, but the same holds true). Celestia is the all-powerful ruler but is given the title of Princess (we have never seen her parents except in fan art, as well as the alicorn depiction of creator Lauren Faust) while her sister and lesser co-ruler Luna is also Princess. As is Cadence, and now Twilight (because alicorn status automatically equals royalty apparently, but Shining Armor remains the same as he is a prince by marriage - I guess when he and Cadence took over the Crystal Empire he had to give up being captain of the royal guard). But I digress. The real issue here for comparison is Queen Chrysalis the Changeling. She was the antagonist of the season 2 2-part finale. But is she really evil? In a sense, yes, she was trying to take over Canterlot and using the power of Shining Armor's love for Cadence to do so. On the other hand, we would have to consider her whole race evil as she was doing it for them to find them a new home to conquer. Not that ponies have been getting along spectacularly for thousands of years, what with banishings to the moon and imprisonment in stone statues and bickering bringing about wyndigoes bringing about land-destroying snowstorms and all. The closest thing we have is Elsa, who becomes queen and is demonized at first because of her ice magic. I guess if we're being technical we can include Princess Aurora's mother and Rapunzel's mother, but they weren't given much to do.
So it would seem that a role of a princess is no longer as romanticized as it once was. Now it's more like the role of a princess is more like doing everything you're told to do without question. Take the sequel to Mulan for example. Pat Morita - I mean the Emperor - must forge an alliance with a neighboring province or else China will be invaded again like the last time, except by Mongols instead of Huns. To do this, he must send his three daughters to this province to marry its princes without actually having met them before (turns out these princes are much younger than them, but this ends up being inconsequential as you'll see later). The Emperor is reluctant to do this, and even the princesses express their displeasure - in song of course - at the personal sacrifices they need to make for the sake of their kingdom. In the end, thanks to Mulan's advice and Mushu's meddling, they are released from this deal and run away to live like normal girls by marrying the men of their choice - Ling, Yao, and Chien Po. At least the classic Disney message of marrying for love is still intact.
Then came Squenix with Kingdom Hearts and its "Seven Princesses of Heart" concept. This refers to seven female individuals whose hearts (or essences, since we're not talking about actual organs or even souls) are pure light. Right away this concerns me for a number of reasons. How does one determine whether or not someone's heart is pure light or not (Even, your writer-given foreshadowing powers do not count)? Also, there are several female protagonists to choose from, but they went with Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora, Jasmine, and Belle, plus Alice and then Kairi. Aside from Kairi, who's original to the game, how are these six the only ones without darkness, supposedly? Alice isn't even a real princess, either. In the game Wendy from Peter Pan is turned down as a candidate. Ariel is still a mermaid, so kidnapping her and taking her to Hollow Bastion would be hard, I guess. There are others I'm forgetting, I'm sure, but do you see my point? Do they have the slightest bit of darkness that disqualifies them or something? Personally I think having your heart be pure light or pure darkness is unnatural. It's best to have a balance of both because you're more relatable that way and we all have varying ratios. While Birth By Sleep does somewhat resolve some of the plot holes of the series, it leaves several others in their place that annoy the heck out of me (Masters Xehanort and Erauqs piss me off as well). And then there's the matter of the Organization Nobodies. Their hearts may not have been pure light or pure darkness necessarily, but they had another quality to them that made them special. Hopefully this will one day be resolved, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
In closing, I will say that we have come a long way since the early days of Disney. While Disney currently tries to hearken back to those days with a modern twist in some cases, the princess issue is still problematic. Writing this as a woman in her twenties who was raised on this schlock, I can tell you that there is no easy road for a modern woman to take. Instead, I refer you to a cutscene between Terra and the Fairy Godmother in which the Godmother states that you need to believe in dreams in order for them to come true, while Terra insists that you have to work at it. Squenix calls Disney out on its crap, which I enjoy, that is until Squenix shovels its own crap on top of it. Rant over.
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