The Princess Blog

In a little under two grueling weeks, I managed to complete the latest visual novel in Dress up! Time Princess , Romy and Julius, a reimagining of Shakespeare's classic,  Romeo and Juliet . Every time I start a new story, I think it will be because I've gathered so many items from the previous stories, and every time, the game proves me wrong. I was overwhelmed by the difficulty level in this book. At least it was more consistent than Helen of Sparta , which was easy at first and then suddenly got super hard at the end. Two levels in Romy and Julius required a pink set with a gown, headdress, and loads of accessories that were so difficult to obtain that you can forget about completing the story until you've collected every piece from the set. The story is the strongest of the three that were released since I began playing this game. It is a unique take on a beloved classic with several satisfying endings. As the title implies, you play this story as Romy Montague, a noble ...

I received  The Princess in the Opal Mask  as a gift along with The Princess Curse . Of the two books, this one was far superior. It is yet another retelling of The Princess and the Pauper , which seems to be a popular trope these days, especially among movies. It works surprisingly well in book format, as it allows readers to switch between the perspectives of both main characters. We all know the story of two girls who discover they look alike and decide to switch lives for a few days. However, this was a refreshing break from the standard "princess meets someone who looks just like her and decides she wants a vacation" format. This book goes deeper than that by exploring themes like identity, family, and self-fulfillment. After a few slow opening chapters, it picks up with an exciting investigation that tests both girls to their limits. Princess Wilha has been forced to cover her face with a bejeweled mask for as long as she can remember, never knowing why. The glittering...

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...

My friend sent me The Princess Curse  by Merrie Haskell  after letting me know that she didn't care for it quite enough to keep. Frankly, I can understand why. It fascinates me how many well-written family-friendly princess books there are out there by indie authors when a famous publisher like Harper Collins  would release a questionable book like this one through their children's market. I got the impression that the author wanted to write a princess story for adults , but the mainstream media likes to follow the misconception that anything involving fairy tales is solely for children , so they forced her to age down her protagonist and water down the story. Doing so turned the whole thing into a big mess of an adaptation suffering from a severe identity crisis. The Princess Curse  is an adaptation of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" and "Beauty and the Beast."  Right off the bat, it loses points for doing exactly what every other author who wrote an a...

It's been a rough year. Not only did three animated princess shows end , but it's been over a year since we got new episodes of Disenchantment . We need Matt Groening's dark humor now more than ever, so I am pleased to announce that it will only be a matter of weeks before Princess Tiabeanie makes her return to Netflix. A new trailer  was just released, and oh my goodness! There is an incredible amount of footage packed into this two-minute treat of a teaser! Mermaids, world-building, and familiar faces abound as Bean must decide if she wants to form an alliance between the kingdoms of Dreamland and Steamland. Part 3 of Disenchantment will hit Netflix on January 15th, 2021. You can check out the trailer below. The second season of Disenchantment  ended with a surprise re-appearance of Bean's mother, Queen Dagmar , a fascinating villain who was notably absent for most of the season. It looks like the next part will place more focus on her half-hearted attempts to recon...

The holiday season has begun, but like many other things this year , it is a mere shadow of its former self. That's why I was so pleased when one of my readers referred me to an animated version of "The Nutcracker" that I had missed during my childhood. The Nutcracker Prince  is by far the most accurate version of E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" that I have ever seen. After my overwhelming disappointment with Disney's The Nutcracker and the Four Realms , I thought that the Barbie movie was the closest I'd ever get to an accurate feature based on this classic fairy tale. I was wrong. The Nutcracker Prince  is an animated film released in 1990 with a surprisingly impressive cast of voice talent. Sadly, there's no chance of seeing it on Disney+  any time soon because it was distributed by Warner Brothers , one of the only major film studios that Disney does not own (yet). However, it is free to watch on YouTube for those o...

Right on the heels of  yesterday's Winx disaster , Disney swooped in to save the day with a barrage of new announcements about their upcoming content. Just when I had made a video  wondering what there was to look forward to in the coming years, Disney answered my question to the extreme. Not only are there two new princess cartoons coming out within the next couple of years, but we also now have concrete release information about a number of movies  that Disney has been teasing  us with. If you're not already subscribed to Disney+ , you'd better do it soon, or you're going to miss out on a lot. The biggest and possibly most surprising of the announcements is that after a complete dearth of original animated content on Disney+, Disney's premiere streaming service is working on not one, not two, but four exclusive animated series based on popular Disney film franchises, two of which are princesses. I'm particularly excited to see Tiana join the ranks of Ariel ,...

It's official. Hollywood is dead . If the Mulan  remake wasn't bad enough, even our non-Disney childhood favorites are being turned into gritty soulless live-action shadows of their former selves. Remember when things like this used to be a joke? Those days are over. Now we have hyper-realistic Riverdale spinoffs that aren't actually realistic because they feature teenagers with superpowers. They are just realistic enough that all of the whimsical fantasy elements that we loved as kids are now gone, but not so realistic that they are beyond things like vampires, werewolves, or seances. What sort of world are we living in when a show about faery princesses  does not even portray its fairies with wings? I suppose you can argue that maybe they didn't want to reveal the wings in the trailer, but isn't that the entire point of Winx Club ? See for yourself. Does this look the Winx you remember? So yeah, this is Fate: The Winx Saga , which is coming to Netflix on Januar...

When the developers for the Dress up! Time Princess app  asked fans what type of story they would like to see next in the game, an overwhelming majority of people requested Greek mythology. Many were expecting a classic myth such as Hades and Persephone . The developers of this game are always full of surprises and like to incorporate some history  into their visual novels or retell an old story in a new way . Therefore, it wasn't too much of a surprise when the latest visual novel turned out to be Helen of Sparta , a fantastical reimagining of the Greek legend about the most beautiful woman in the world who acted as a catalyst for the Trojan War . Don't worry, though. There isn't any war or bloodshed in this visual novel. In fact, there isn't a whole lot of anything aside from breathtakingly beautiful costumes. Before I started playing Helen of Sparta, I wasn't very familiar with the legend of Helen of Troy except that her beauty caused a bunch of thirsty men to k...

Last Friday, Disney released a wealth of princess movies  on Disney+ . One of them was an original film created exclusively for the streaming service. This movie went under the working title of Frills  for a little while, but switched back to its original title, Godmothered , later in the year. Many princess fans were hoping Godmothered would be a prequel to "Cinderella"  that would chronicle the life and times of the beloved yet mysterious Fairy Godmother character. Instead, it was close to the Kristin Chenoweth series that ABC promised a few years ago and never delivered. Like the trailer suggests, Godmothered  has the look and feel of a poor man's version of Enchanted , Disney's 2007 live-action and animated hybrid about a woman from the fairy tale world trying to navigate the pitfalls and cynicism of reality . Fans of the animated sequences in Enchanted  will be rewarded for sitting through the entirety of Godmothered  with a stylistic treat just be...

 "Ghost Princess" Princess Starlight loved ghost stories. She spent most of her childhood collecting artifacts that belonged to the kings and queens who came before her, in the hopes that she could meet their ghosts. They came to her a few times in her dreams, but she was never certain whether it was real or just a dream. Her parents grew concerned about her strange behavior and worried that she might never find a prince to marry because of her obsession with death. Meanwhile, in a faraway kingdom, Prince Edward was crowned king after his father passed away from an incurable disease. His older sister, Princess Leah, passed away shortly afterward due to the strange illness, even though she seemed to be in perfect health. Shortly after his coronation, Edward sent word far and wide that he was seeking a princess to marry and secure his place on the throne. Princess Starlight had little interest in marrying a prince, so she ignored her parents when they encouraged her to attend E...