Disney Princess/Characters

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The official girls of the Disney Princess line.

Princess by birth

Snow White

Considered the "fairest in all the land" in her movie, she incites the jealousy of her vain stepmother, Queen Grimhilde. She later runs away with the help of her would-be murderer sent by the queen and befriends the seven dwaves in the woods. Her prince is unnamed, though early production notes had him named Ferdinand, which is good enough as far as the fans are concerned.

Tropes exhibited by Snow White include:
  • And Zoidberg: Because of her different singing voice, appearance, and lack of personal activity in her movie, Snow White tends to get hidden somewhat in merchandise. Most notably in their song "If You Can Dream", where they had all the voice actresses singing, plus replacements for Cinderella and Aurora, but Snow White wasn't there, and only appeared in one clip in the music video.
  • Cinderella Circumstances: Although it's never seen quite how the Queen behaved to seduce the king, the Evil Queen certainly follows through with the latter part of the trope, putting her husband's daughter to work, and dressing her in filthy rags to cover her beauty.
  • Damsel in Distress: Like the other two original princesses, Snow White is generally not helpless out of choice, but nonetheless fits this role—when the Huntsmen tries to kill her, he spares her out of pity and shame, and so she needed no rescuing. In the forest scene, the only thing she seemed to be running from was her fear. And when she was offered the poisoned apple, she simply didn't know any better.
  • The Ditz: Toned down from the original fairy tale, where the Evil Queen in crone form comes no less than three times to try and kill Snow White, and Snow White falling for it every time. In this case, Snow White's acceptance of the fruit is a result of her complete innocence.
  • Faux Death/Back from the Dead
  • Friend to All Living Things: Unlike the other princesses, save Tiana in frog form and Aurora (as Briar Rose) in the forest, the audience gets to watch her befriend the animals of the forest.
  • Hot Mom: She has a son in the comics.
  • "I Want" Song: "I'm Wishing", "Someday My Prince Will Come".
  • Official Couple: With Prince Florian (contrary to popular belief, the "Ferdinand" Shirley Temple mentioned when she awarded the special Academy Award to Walt Disney was referring to Ferdinand the Bull, not Snow White's significant other; Disney has neither officially acknowledged nor denied the Prince's full name).
  • Parental Abandonment
  • Pimped-Out Dress: Like all of the princesses.
  • Princess Classic
  • Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: "Lips red as the rose. Hair black as ebony. Skin white as snow." Snow White is probably at least a contender for Trope Codifier.
  • Shallow Love Interest: The prince with no name (named Florian in the comics and certain spinoffs), Alternative Character Interpretation aside.
  • Shiny Midnight Black: As discussed two tropes earlier and the same is likely true for the Evil Queen.
  • So Beautiful It's a Curse: Despite the Evil Queen's efforts to make her uglier by dressing her in rags and making her work, Snow White still becomes the fairest in the land by thirteen, so the Queen demands her death.
  • Supreme Chef: Suggested. She's iconically associated with the pie she makes for Grumpy, but it's never actually tasted.
  • True-Blue Femininity
  • True Love's Kiss
  • Younger Than She Looks: Walt Disney was aiming to make her look to be around 14 years old, though she still seems a tad older than that.
    • She still does look younger than most of the other Disney princesses, though.

Aurora

She was betrothed to Prince Phillip, a prince of a neighboring kingdom in hopes that both hers and his would be united. She was given the gifts of beauty and song from the fairies Flora and Fauna, but the evil Maleficent cursed her to die on contact with the spindle of a spinning wheel. The third fairy Merryweather mitigated the curse somewhat, changing its effect from death to an enchanted sleep that could be broken by True Love's Kiss, but the fairies took her away to live as a peasant for her safety.

Tropes exhibited by Aurora include:
  • Everyone Loves Blondes
  • Dangerous Sixteenth Birthday: While the curse in Disney's adaptation of Sleeping Beauty has a 16-year time period to be fulfilled instead of a certain day, the curse was fulfilled on Aurora's 16th birthday, just moments before its time was up.
  • Damsel in Distress: Although one usually doesn't suggest comatose people help fight in battle, she still ends up as a princess needing to be saved.
  • Friend to All Living Things: It seems the woodland creatures were her only companions outside of her "aunts".
  • Hair of Gold
  • Has Two Mommies: Aurora has three, not counting her birth mother. Although it's not nearly as sexy as it sounds (they were aging fairy foster-mothers).
  • Hypnotize the Princess: Maleficent hypnotizes her with a green ball of light, in order to make her prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel.
  • The Ingenue: Her most prominent character traits are her romanticism and innocence.
  • "I Want" Song: "I Wonder".
  • Locked Out of the Loop: The only people she can remember knowing have been hiding a large secret from her for sixteen years.
  • Official Couple: With Prince Phillip.
  • Perfectly Arranged Marriage: They even met before they knew they were to be wed.
  • Pimped-Out Dress
  • Princess Classic
  • Princesses Prefer Pink: Aurora herself never chooses the color of her dress. Flora and Merryweather got in a fight over the color of the dress - pink or blue. It's mostly blue throughout the movie. In the merchandise, it's usually pink. Older fans of the princesses generally prefer blue, but there can be some fighting over which color is better. Occasionally Disney puts her in a violet dress as a compromise.
  • Shallow Love Interest: Phillip has more personality than previous princes (he's the first one to have a name, for starters), but since the good fairies move most of the plot, he and Aurora exist mostly to fall in love with each other and get menaced by Maleficent.
  • True-Blue Femininity
  • True Love's Kiss: Rather than a condition of the spell, like in Snow White, True Love's Kiss being a cure was added by Merryweather.
  • Violet Eyes
  • Younger Than She Looks: Some fans have a hard time believing that Aurora is meant to be sixteen, with some going as far to say that she looks to be in her twenties. She's drawn somewhat taller than the other princesses and much like her successor Pocahontas, this just makes her seem older.

Ariel

A rebellious mermaid princess, she desired most to live above the sea, despite her father's wishes. After rescuing Prince Eric, prince of a dry land kingdom, and falling in love with him, she became even more determined to live out of the water.

Tropes exhibited by Ariel include:

Jasmine

Jasmine is the Princess of Agrabah. Rebellious much like Ariel, she refuses to marry of the princes that her father, the Sultan wants her to, and will only marry for love. She later falls in love with a peasant named Aladdin, who later becomes Prince Ali with the Genie's help, unbeknownst to her.

Tropes exhibited by Jasmine include:

Pocahontas

The daughter of the chief of the Powhatan tribe in Virginia, she's not xenophobic toward the white colonists, unlike the rest of her tribe. She eventually falls in love with John Smith, one of the settlers, but had to part ways with him. She later falls in love with John Rolfe.

Tropes exhibited by Pocahontas include:
  • Action Girl: Sort of.
  • And Zoidberg: Because of her being in Braids, Beads, and Buckskins, she sort of has a hard time blending in well with the other princesses with their pimped out dresses. As such she is almost always the one who gets cut out of merchandise.
    • The sequel does give her a reasonably pimped out dress when she first arrives in England, this is almost always the outfit used in accessories.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished
  • The Chief's Daughter
  • Daddy's Girl
  • Does Not Like Shoes
  • Dramatic Wind: With her army of leaves at the ready.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: She was the only one who could prevent the plot from going into a bloody massacre.
  • Friend to All Living Things: She's shown communing with several different types of animals, but her animal sidekicks are Flit, the hummingbird, and Meeko, the raccoon. Later Percy, the pug, is added.
  • Generation Xerox: According to her father, she takes after her mother.
  • Indian Maiden
  • Inexplicably Awesome: Her shamanic powers go unnoticed for most of the characters, but she actually accomplishes quite the feats with them; she talks to trees, summons up spirits, leaps over ravines through neigh levitating, survives crashing down in the water from a cliff, and.. learns English within three seconds.
  • "I Want" Song: "Just Around The Riverbend".
  • Missing Mom: DVD commentary states that the wind that travels around her is meant to be the spirit of her mother.
  • Ms. Fanservice
  • Official Couple: With John Smith.
    • She did in fact get together with John Rolfe at the end of the DTV sequel, but Disney merchandising (as well as a disproportionate amount of the fans) keeps her with Smith.
  • Rebellious Princess: She laughs at her father's assumption that the river is steady.
  • Shiny Midnight Black
  • Star-Crossed Lovers: With John Smith, until she marries John Rolfe.
  • Statuesque Stunner: And how. Definitely (alongside Aurora of Sleeping Beauty), the tallest of the Disney Princesses.
  • Tall, Dark and Bishoujo
  • The Power of Love: Utilizes it to stop a genocidal war.
  • Tempting Fate: "Should I choose the smoothest course?" She should not.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Under the guidance of Grandmother Willow, she goes from whining about her problems and sitting around, to taking action and defying her (very!) authorative father.
  • Tragic Keepsake: Her deceased mother's necklace. Even more so after Kocoum destroys it while falling to his death.
  • Wise Beyond Their Years: The only person in the entire movie, besides Grandmother Willow, to understand that war is not a plausible option, as it will leave both sides devastated and even farther away from a peaceful resolve. Her father comes close to saying this trope word for word describing her. "My daughter speaks with wisdom beyond her years."
  • Unexpected Successor: It's implied that she is taking Kocoum's place as her father's successor, especially in the closing scene.
  • Younger Than She Looks: Many fans indicate her age as 25 years old, enabling her romance with Smith (close to his thirties in this adaption) furthermore. In actuality, the fact that she was still unmarried makes her 17–19 years old at best.
    • Ironically, the real life figure she was based on was 9–11 years old at the time this story (allegedly) took place.

Rapunzel

The Princess of Corona. Born of a queen who was healed with the power of a flower born from a drop of sunlight, her hair was infused with its healing powers. She was kidnapped as a baby by a wicked woman named Mother Gothel who desired to use the healing powers to keep herself young forever, and was locked up in a tall tower to keep the kingdom from finding her for eighteen years. However, she manages to convince a Lovable Rogue who hid in the tower named Flynn Rider whose birth name is Eugene Fitzherbert to show her the outside world, particularly the floating lights that seem to appear every time on her birthday.

Tropes exhibited by Rapunzel include:

Moana

Caption

A description of the character goes here.

Princess by marriage

Cinderella

Born to a wealthy rich man who was later widowed, her stepmother, Lady Tremaine, was jealous of her beauty in comparison to her own daughters. She was forced to work as a maid under her care after her father died, and she wanted to go to the royal ball that was to be held by Prince Charming. With the help of her Fairy Godmother, she was able to meet and fall in love with the Prince, but not without leaving behind a glass slipper.

Tropes exhibited by Cinderella include:

Belle

Born a young French peasant woman who has a thing for reading, her father, Maurice, gets into trouble with a Beast who is a cursed Prince, named Adam. The Beast only releases him when she agrees to stay with him forever. The two later form a bond after the Beast starts to treat her better.

Tropes exhibited by Belle include:

Tiana

Famous for being the first black Disney Princess, she was born in New Orleans in an all-black neighborhood. She has had a talent for cooking since she was younger, and she aspires to own a restaurant. She meets the exiled Prince Naveen, turned into a frog by voodoo magic, but she too is turned into a frog herself. The two then try to get out of the bayou back to New Orleans.

Tropes exhibited by Tiana include:


Not-actually-a-princess-but-still-in-the-line-anyway

Mulan

A flighty girl who is the daughter of a retired soldier, and the black sheep of her ancestors. When her father is enlisted for an oncoming war, she secretly takes his place in the field of battle.

Tropes exhibited by Mulan include:
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