The Princess Blog

The wait for more Tangled episodes  ends tomorrow. During the interim, Disney rewarded us for our patience with something unexpected. Rapunzel and the Lost Lagoon  by Leila Howland bridges the gap between the Tangled  movie and the Tangled: Before Ever After  special from the television series. The book was a pleasure to read because it was written in a way that anyone could enjoy, as long as they are at least at a middle school reading level. It is written in first person and switches between the perspectives of Rapunzel and Cassandra. I read the ebook version and found it very informative and enjoyable. I highly recommend it if you want to know more of the backstory behind the series. Rapunzel and the Last Logoon  reveals all of the juicy details that were missing from the Tangled series about how Cassandra became Rapunzel's lady-in-waiting . Since half of the book is written from Cassandra's perspective, it answers a lot of questions we might have, such ...

I've mentioned  Rachel Bloom  in my  "Princess Parodies"  and  "Princess Rap Battles"  post. Did you know that her CW comedy/drama series,  Crazy Ex-Girlfriend , has quite a bit of princess inspiration behind it? It might seem unlikely, but it's true. Rachel has  said in an interview   “Our generation grew up in a particular unironic time of... Disney princess movies that were smart, but still a man is the solution. You know, I’m interested to see how Frozen will shape like little girls growing up because, for us it’s Beauty and the Beast, it’s Aladdin and Jasmine, it’s Ariel and Prince Eric." Sounds like a nod to  "The Rise and Fall of the Animated Prince,"  doesn't it? Crazy Ex-Girlfriend delves into the psychology of being passionately in love to the point where it becomes unhealthy. It serves as a cautionary tale about what happens when we take the romantic Disney Princess ideology too far. Rachel is a huge musical theater ner...

The official season 7 posters for ABC's Once Upon a Time were dropped recently, and I would like to share some of my initial reactions with you. Granted, these reactions are sure to change when I see the season premiere next week, but I'll work with what I have for now. To be honest, the season is not shaping out very well so far with its alternate realities and its identity crisis after half the cast left  at the end of the last season. Initially, Once Upon a Time was a refreshing new take on  princess offspring , with the daughter of Snow White growing up in the real world and not believing in fairy tales. It would have been a decent show if ABC's parent company, Disney, didn't get greedy by renewing the show for far more seasons than it needed in an attempt to subtly market their products. Since the Charming family is leaving the show, season 7 will be introducing us to a new cast of lead characters, featuring an adult version of Henry married to an ...

In 1995, I was temporarily obsessed with the movie  A Little Princess , based on a novel written 90 years earlier by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I know I wrote a book report on the novel in school and was impressed with Liesel Matthews' dream-like performance as Sara Crewe, but that's about all I remember. A friend of mine reminded me of my love for the movie when I was looking for suggestions for new blog posts. I decided to revisit it to see if it still had the same magic for me. During my research, I found a Buzzfeed article  written by someone who did the exact same thing, and I found that I agree with many of the author's points. The movie becomes a lot darker when watching it again as an adult, but it is still very magical. If you are unfamiliar with the story, A Little Princess  is about a girl named Sara whose father sends her to a luxurious boarding school where the uniforms look like formal party dresses while he goes off to war. However, when he loses his ...

Every fandom will inevitably have an endless amount of fan-made creations all over the internet. The Disney Princesses, in particular, seem to be an obsession among artists. They have been "re-imagined" in countless different styles, timelines, and alternate realities. In fact, the trend got so out of hand that roughly two years ago, a website called LuckyPeach posted pictures of  Disney Princesses reimagined as hot dogs  as a joke. The post went viral. It was everywhere. People just can't get enough of Disney Princess reimaginings no matter what form they take on. One of the most famous princess fan artists is Amy Mebberson , who is known for her ongoing comic series,  Pocket Princesses . What I love about Amy's art is that she shows the princesses interacting with each other, like in the above Acme Archives lithograph where Merida, as the only non-singing Disney Princess, is annoyed by everyone else's singing. I met Amy at the D23 Expo in 2013. She had ...

Can you believe this is my 50th post? It's been an uphill climb to bring you new and exciting princess topics every day thus far. Thank you to all of my readers for your support. As much as I would love to get to 100 posts as soon as possible, I'm afraid I might not be able to keep coming up with new topics every day. Keep your suggestions coming, and I will try my best. I changed the comments settings recently, so if you were having trouble posting comments before, please try again because I'd love to hear from you. Before I get started, I'd like to point out that today marks the 30th anniversary of the 1987 cult classic  The Princess Bride . Though this movie holds little significance in my life, it is a  live-action princess movie  that made a huge impact for many other people  Read on to learn about the impact that princesses have had on my life. The first movie I ever saw in theaters was  The Little Mermaid  in 1989. I fell in love with it instant...

Japanese company  Kuraudia Co. recently partnered with Disney  to create a new line of gorgeous Disney Princess wedding dresses. This is far from the only company that makes wedding gowns inspired by our favorite animated heroines. Though they  recently went out of business , the popular American bridal chain, Alfred Angelo,  had recently revealed several new designs  for Disney Princess inspired dresses that were more modern-looking than the ones from Japan. Designer Kirstie Kelly also unveiled a  Disney Princess inspired collection  several years ago, which has since been discontinued. Though the Americanized versions of these dresses hardly resemble classic  princess fashion , the correlation between weddings and princesses seems to date back an eternity. Do the two concepts go hand-in-hand like a bride and groom at the altar? Let's find out. Since the very beginning, most fairy tales that end with "happily ever after" included a wedding...

Previously, I wrote a little about why  Mulan is a Disney Princess  even though she doesn't have the actual title of "princess." Now, I'd like to talk about one of my favorite live-action movies with another unofficial cross-dressing princess, Sweeney Todd . This macabre musical strikes a perfect balance between dark themes of cannibalism and murder with romantic ideals of true love and faith (or lack thereof). Johanna is the naive daughter of the title character, which technically makes her the princess of the story. That's not the only reason I consider her a princess, though. Let's take a look. Like  Cinderella  and  Snow White , Johanna was raised as an orphan by an abusive parent. It wasn't until she fell in love with Anthony, the sailor who had rescued her father at sea, that she saw a hope of escaping her unfortunate situation. She spent most of her days locked in her room under close watch like  Rapunzel , singing to the birds about her de...

Earlier this week, the newest Barbie movie was released on Netflix . Though Barbie Dolphin Magic  is not technically a princess movie, it does have a mermaid in it and stars the Barbie, the part-time princess . It looks like Rainmaker is breaking their tradition of releasing the Barbie movies on DVD and switching to streaming media, which makes sense because DVD sales have dropped significantly in recent years . As a Netflix special, the movie has the shortest run time yet for Barbie, clocking in at only a little over an hour. So, is it worth watching? Here's what I think. In a word, yes. The short runtime makes it an easy watch, and it's paced much better than its prequel,  Barbie & Her Sisters in a Puppy Chase , which dragged on forever. This movie gets straight to the point with very little filler. Barbie and her three sisters, Skipper, Stacy, and Chelsea, are on vacation at a beach-side resort where Ken is interning for a marine biologist. Rumors abound of the ...

The fall of the Disney Prince  left a gaping hole in many princesses' hearts that could only be filled by a different type of love. Instead of focusing on  ladies-in-waiting  and stories about friendship like in the  Barbie movies , Disney decided to start giving their princesses siblings. Until recently, most of them were only children, and very few of them had two parents. I've written a little about Ariel's sisters in the past, but they come off as a separate entity from Ariel with the exception of a few episodes of the series. Modern princess  sisters spend just as much time together as they do apart and compliment each other's differences, teaching children how to get along with people who don't share the same perspectives as them. The first Disney characters to achieve this were not Anna and Elsa, but Sofia and Amber from Sofia the First . Once Upon a Princess , Sofia's 2012 premiere movie, was all about her rocky relationship with her new stepsiste...