Finally, part 4 of this series will bring us up to speed with the latest Disney Princesses in cinema history. Before we bring it to conclusion, I’d like to mention a few Disney female characters who I feel deserve to be on the list as well:
- TIGERLILY – Okay she’s a Disney original and officially has “Princess” as part of her name. Why did she never make it to the list?
- NALA – While never explained in the movie, I believe this lioness was a daughter to the king who ended up marrying a son of the same king… making her doubly eligible to be on the princess list, right?
- JANE – She ended up with the male human who took the throne of the gorilla clan… yes, that’s rather stretching it to call her a princess. But the same goes for Mulan and Tiana.
Alright, that’s it with that part of my whining. Let’s turn our attention to…
MERIDA
Like Ariel, Jasmine, and Pocahontas, she wasn’t happy with her family’s arrangement for her future. Unlike many of her predecessors who did stupid things that put her own loved ones in harm’s way, however, she went out of her way and sought to harm her own mother. What the hell. Okay I don’t plan on having a healthy dialogue with my daughters about this one, because they won’t be watching this movie.
“Just make me something that’ll get rid of my mom… don’t bother telling me the details, because why would I care?”
RAPUNZEL
Consider how she had been locked up all her life in a room, Rapunzel was extremely intelligent, social, articulate, strong, and articulate. She tamed bandits and a horse, fought like a pro with a frying pan, and used her hair to pull off Batman-styled stunts. Her healing magic was also quite useful, unlike Elsa’s ice power.
Not even Tarzan could do this. Nor Batman if he weren’t rich.
ELSA AND ANNA
From what I can remember, no Disney Princess was worshiped by as many little girls as Elsa from Frozen, who technically was a queen for the majority of the movie.
I get her appeal: Elsa was a good-looking royal person with a badass power. But that’s about it. She was unable to control her power and struggled with fear all her life. She refused to communicate with even her closest family member, and did not seek help for her problems. She nearly killed her own sister three times: the first time was accident, the second time was negligence, and the giant snow monster was an inexcusable attempt to murder.
“Your sister loves you so much, that you must now drop down this cliff.”
Elsa abandoned her kingdom on the same day she was crowned, leaving her people (and more) to suffer in the “eternal winter”. When confronted with the disaster that she created, the only thing she could come up with was “you just have to let me go”. Finally, due to her personal issue with one person, she decided to end all her kingdom’s trade with supposedly their largest trading partner. She showed completely no regard for the kingdom that she was supposed to rule, in bad times or good. Wow.
“Look, I really don’t give a fuck that you and a million other people are cold, okay? Let me go and I promise I won’t make the situation any better.”
Anna, on the other hand, was a far more likeable Disney Princess. Despite her general cluelessness and “raised in a barn” manners, she was kind, loving, and brave. The whole movie was about her risking her life to save her sister and the entire kingdom, so it’s a rather bummer that subsequent marketing pushed young girls to idolize Else rather than the younger sister.
The real good guy in the Frozen movie, hear me out, is Prince Hans of the Seven Isles. He took care of the people in Arendelle when its queen and princess both abandoned it, managing to hand out blankets, firewood, and soup to the commoners. He led a successful search and rescue party, defeating the giant snow monster himself. He was the only person in the entire story who possessed any diplomacy, keeping Elsa from harming and being harmed by others. He did more than everyone else combined to attempt restoring summer. And, hey, he was more charming than many Disney Princes, too.
The 13th prince from a remote island cared more about the folks in Arendelle than their own queen
Prince Hans KOing the snow monster. He’s among the very few Disney Princes who took on monsters without any magical assistance
Yeah, yeah, the movie painted him like an ass toward the end. But was he really? Let’s see what people would blame him for:
- Having no true love for Anna – not a crime, is it? His motives were quite understandable because princes and princesses marry each other starting with Snow White. I mean, did Prince Phillip have any true love for Aurora? They did decide to get married on the day they just met, too.
- Leaving Anna to die – if his kiss wasn’t going to have the true love’s magical power, he couldn’t honestly have done anything anyway
- Attempting to kill Elsa – well, nobody had any better idea for how to restore summer, so slaying the monster was the natural last resort. Note that for the most of the movie, he had gone out of his way repeatedly to protect Elsa. In fact, he understood that the unfortunate only way to keep the people of Arendelle alive was the death of both the royal sisters – since if Anna remained in power, she would remain unhelpfully idle rather than allowing anyone to take any action against Elsa. Therefore, what he did to earn such a bad name in the end was out of true love for the people… and it was a shame that the story got spun against him
Hans saving Elsa’s life
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