Fallen Princess: Difference between revisions

 

 

 

But then something happens. She turns out to be [[The Chosen One]], perhaps, or gets covered in [[I Love Nuclear Power|radioactive]] [[Green Rocks|green goo]] that gives her [[Freak Lab Accident|superpowers]], or whatever. For whatever reason, the very thing that makes her a hero also makes her an outcast. Now she sits [[How the Mighty Have Fallen|on the outskirts of her school's peer groups]] with [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits|a rag-tag bunch of fellow 'losers']]. At first she regrets not being able to rejoin the jet set, but her drop in status opens her eyes to the goodness and decency of the people she once rejected. She becomes a better person, the ([[Hollywood Nerd|suspiciously attractive]]) geeks get a cool friend and all of them save the world and solve mysteries together. Awww, bless.

* Wallace Wallace in [[Gordon Korman]]'s ''[[No More Dead Dogs]]'' is a rare male example of this trope: he's a benchwarmer who accidentally scored the winning goal of the football final. The next year, he gets detention and can't play for the team. He ends up hanging out with the theater nerds and... you can figure out where it goes from there.

* In Joan D. Vinge's ''The Snow Queen'' and its sequels, BZ Gundhalinu is a male example: coming from the upper level of an extremely hierarchical society, he's thrown into unfamiliar circumstances by bad luck, attempts suicide because of the dishonor of it, and then realizes that life is actually better outside his former world.

* Neone Delft of [[Stationery Voyagers]] discovers she is actually {{spoiler|Princess Wendim Shinroff}} of Neomlot, and that Hidicky Delft was only some kind carpenter that adopted her after a particularly lazy [[Evil Sorcerer]] merely [[Ripped from the Headlines|abandoned her in a dumpster to die]]. She is finally reunited with her biological parents; only she views her new life as a Voyager as her true [[Mission From God]]. After a brief moment of happiness, they tell her that bringing the family back together was all for nothing: [[Downer Ending|Astrabolo is about to destroy everything and there is no hope]]. On the other hand, being unable to do anything whatsoever with her royal heritage doesn't get her too down: she had no intentions of actually saving Neothode anyway because [[Genre Savvy|she already realized it was hopeless]].

* Laurana in the ''[[Dragonlance]]'' novels is a [[Spoiled Sweet]] elven princess with a [[100% Adoration Rating]] until she runs away from home to try and win back her [[Halfbreed|half human]] ex-boyfriend. She is then completely ostracized for disgracing her family. When she returns home she is snubbed by everyone, her brother cruelly mocks her romantic difficulties and her father publicly calls her a whore and ends up [[I Have No Son|disinheriting]] her. {{spoiler|She still goes on though to become the [[Red Baron|Golden General.]]}}

* In [[Patricia A. McKillip]]'s ''The Book of Atrix Wolfe'', Saro, after the magic renders her mute and dazed, ends up a [[Scullery Maid]].

* Princess Vivenna of ''[[Warbreaker]]''. Leaves her country behind to rescue her little sister from an arranged marriage to {{spoiler|someone everybody thinks is}} a [[Physical God]] [[Evil Overlord]], falls in with a pair of mercenaries working against said [[Physical God]] who agree to help her {{spoiler|only they turn out to be working for the ''real'' [[Big Bad]] and Vivenna has to run for it, at which point she spends several chapters as [[Princess in Rags|a beggar and amateur pickpocket]] before finally getting back on her feet with a little help from [[Wild Card|Vasher]].}}

 

 

* ''[[Veronica Mars]]'' doesn't have any superpowers, but when her sheriff father arrests the town's benefactor for the murder of his own daughter, Veronica's best friend, pretty much everyone in her clique of high school elite friends turns against her, resulting in her being date-raped. This in turn leads to her transformation into the Veronica we know. As she pours her energy into solving her friend's murder, she, perhaps a tad implausibly, rapidly gains the super detective skills and world-weary attitude of a professional PI twice her age.

** ...except she already had those skills (her father taught her), she just hadn't really used them. Throw in some [[Properly Paranoid|paranoia]] and a nothing-to-lose attitude, and it makes more sense.

** Later seasons we have Holly J, a full fledged [[Alpha Bitch]]. During most of Seasons 7 and 8 she's a [[Jerkass Facade|complete bitch in social groups]], but in one on one interactions she's almost personable. Her family suffers a three season long [[Broke Episode]], her attempts to cover that up destroy her social circle entirely, and her only friend is her boss at the local coffee shop. It turns out she has trouble letting people get close. Over Season 9 and 10 she builds a new social circle, but still has very few close friends.

* Subverted in an episode of ''[[Sabrina the Teenage Witch (TV series)|Sabrina the Teenage Witch]]'', "Geek Like Me." Sabrina used magic to make Libby become a geek, intending that this fall from popularity would teach her to become a nicer person the way most Fallen Princesses do. However, she quickly proved that her usual personality was [[In the Blood]], too strong to be changed by magic. Before long, she had given herself a hot new [[Nerds Are Sexy]] look, and had made the science club into the same kind of exclusive clique (with herself as the boss) that the cheerleading squad used to be. And she was now picking on Sabrina for not being nerdy enough. This change was no better than the way things were before, so there was nothing for it but to [[Status Quo Is God|change Libby back]].

* Skylar Stevens in ''[[Jericho]]'' starts out as a spoiled rich kid, and then warms up to local misfit Dale Turner.

* On ''[[Glee]]'', [[Alpha Bitch]] Quinn becomes pregnant despite being president of the celibacy club. She is then embarrassed in front of the school, kicked off the cheerleading squad, and forced to move in with her boyfriend after her parents kick her out of the house. And it's only bound to get worse since the news that the baby's father is actually her boyfriend's best friend is starting to leak out.

* Averted in ''[[Lost]]''. Boone comes from a wealthy family and gave off the overall impression of a young man who had never worked a day in his life and had stuff handed to him. From the very start, he takes to island living easily and is probably the most likeable moral character in the series, characterised by his helpful attitude. Played straight with his sister Shannon though.

* Caroline Channing from ''[[Two Broke Girls]]'' is the daughter of a wealthy investor who was arrested for perpetrating a massive Ponzi scheme. With the family assets frozen, she is left homeless and penniless, eventually forced to work as a waitress in a [[Greasy Spoon]]. Now she is trying to build a cupcake business with her fellow waitress Max, using the skills she learned from party planning and business school.

* ''[[Kim Possible]]'' is the captain of her school's cheerleading squad, the person with the highest grades and the person of choice to do school chores, but is still practically an outcast from everyone but her <s>geeky friends</s> two friends.

** This might apply even more to Shego - she's got everything mentioned in the entry's first sentence, yet she still fell from hero status into the criminal underworld. [[Good Is Dumb|When being the good guy usually means being a total idiot]] she preferred to stay smart.

** Well, except for the alcoholism.

* ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' had Valerie; a shallow [[Rich Bitch]] who lived off her father's money until a ghost dog cost him his job. Fallen out of grace, she took up [[The Hunter|ghost hunting]] for revenge before making it a full-time job. Eventually, she starts to abandon her shallow views of the people she once rejected and even falls for [[Dating Catwoman|the unpopular Danny]].

* Rhonda from ''[[Hey Arnold!]]!'' became this when she realizes she needs to wear thick eyeglasses.