Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
213,518
edits
The Princess Diaries: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) m (markup fix) |
No edit summary |
||
| (8 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown) | |||
Line 2:
[[File:PrincessDiariesBook1Cover.png|frame]]
'''''The Princess Diaries''''' is a [[Young Adult]] book series by [[Meg Cabot]] following the exploits of Amelia "Mia" Thermopolis, a teenager who goes to Albert Einstein High School and lives with her strongly liberal single mom. Her life changes drastically when her father comes for a visit. After being treated for testicular cancer, he is no longer able to have children. Because of this, he finally tells Mia a secret he, her mother, and her grandmother ("Grandmere") have been keeping from her for years: he is really the Prince of the fictional country of Genovia. Because of his illness and treatment, Mia is now Her Royal Highness of the country and the heir to the throne of Genovia.
Upon first hearing the news, Mia objects to the idea of having to become a princess and having to rule over Genovia. She also fears that this new status will make her an outcast at her school and would rather just be a normal teenager. The series follows Mia as she slowly adjusts to becoming a Princess and coming to terms with the idea of being a ruler.
In 2001, the first book was adapted into [[The Princess Diaries (film)|a movie]] starring [[Anne Hathaway]] and [[Julie Andrews]]. It was followed by a sequel in 2004, ''The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement''. Both movies have a [[Broad Strokes|large number of changes]] from the novels; most notably, the setting of the first movie is changed from [[New York City]] to [[San Francisco]], the situation with Mia's father is entirely different, and the second movie's plot does not resemble any of the books.
{{tropelist}}
* [[Adaptation Decay]]: The movies are referenced humorously as [[In-Universe]] examples. Almost every time they come up in the books, Mia makes a snide remark about how horribly they portray her life.
Line 58 ⟶ 59:
* [[Perverse Sexual Lust]]: More than once Mia's friends tease her about her weird love for two-dimensional guys, including "[[Hellboy]], [[Tarzan]], [[Beauty and the Beast|the Beast]], [[Mulan|and that hot soldier guy]]".
* [[Pettanko]]: Mia.
* [[Pinocchio Nose]]: Mia's nostrils flare when she lies. She starts practicing with Grandmere to learn how to lie better.
* [[Quirky Curls]]: Mia started out with them but her make-over flat-ironed them away.
* [[Race For Your Love]]: Subverted. {{spoiler|Mia races to the airport to meet Michael before his plane leaves for Japan. She's too late - his flight has left.}}
* [[Reality Ensues]]:
* [[Real Women Never Wear Dresses]]: In-universe: Mia spends a couple of pages wangsting about how her grandmother took her to an expensive hairdresser. Same goes for painted nails. To be fair, part of her complaints are that they make her look like [[Alpha Bitch|Lana]].▼
** ''Party Princess'' has Lilly get the bright idea to run a school literary zine titled ''Fat Louie's Pink Butthole'' to feature stories from the school body, including the ones that she and Mia submitted to ''Seventeen'' that got rejected. She puts four of her stories in, and charges money for them while selling copies in the cafeteria. For the only time ever, Principal Gupta enters the cafeteria with the gym teacher to drag Lilly to her office, while the teachers confiscate the copies and promise refunds to the students. Why? Because Lilly's stories were NC-17, in a magazine aimed at underage teenagers, and it's revealed she didn't show the advisor, creative writing teacher Mrs. Mantler, the contents or get the title approved. Mrs. Mantler is reprimanded and ordered to review every copy of ''The Zine'' as the magazine is renamed, while Lilly's parents have to come in to talk with Principal Gupta about this latest act of stupidity. Selling items on school property is also [[Serious Business]].
** After she develops a crush on him, Mia says that Michael is the perfect boyfriend and way out of her league. Thing is, Michael's idea of flirting with her in book one was jokingly blackmailing her about her mother dating Mr. Giannini, and walking around shirtless on a day Mia was sleeping over. She forgets that Michael may seem more mature on the surface, but he is still a teen. After they get together and he graduates, Michael pressures her to have sex, completely forgetting that Mia is a minor, may not be emotionally ready for such a life-changing decision, and is super health-conscious. {{spoiler|While Mia blames herself for breaking up with Michael after he lets it slip that he slept with Judith Gershner, the teen genius, just as Mia is about to initiate their first time, Michael himself admits two years later he should have disclosed this fact way earlier. Why? Because 1)Mia has a lot of insecurities about the fact that Judith Gershner cloned fruit flies and seems closer to Michael's type, 2)Michael didn't mean to lie but he did hide he was no longer a virgin and 3)Mia is health-obsessed and would want to think about STDs.}}
** Thanks to her actions in ''Princess Mia'', Lilly is no longer Mia's closest friend in the sequel ''Royal Wedding''. Tina becomes Mia's best friend instead. {{spoiler|Making a hate-site about your former best friend and loudly announcing it in the cafeteria is pretty unforgivable, as Lilly herself notes, all because her ex-boyfriend manipulated Mia into dating him. Michael read her the riot act when he found out, as Lilly tells Mia in ''Forever Princess'', and all of Mia's friends took her side following the cafeteria meltdown, with not even Tina having nice things to say.}}
* [[Real Women Never Wear Dresses]]:
▲*
** In the last book when Mia's trying to publish the romance novel she wrote many people fuss over the fact it's a ''romance'' novel. Never mind that it's 400 pages long, she did tons of research on medieval times, she spent two years working on it, and it's actually one of the hardest genres to write well.
* [[Rich Bitch]]: Lana and Trisha. {{spoiler|They both get better.}}
* [[Ridiculously Cute Critter]]: [[Fat Cat|Fat Louie]].
* [[Rousing Speech]]: Mia gives two. One when she's running against Lana for the post of student body president, and another when she gets invited to speak at a Domina Rei function.
* [[Ruritania]]: Genovia is a fictitious European Principality, a teeny place (one mile long, with a population of 50,000) which is supposed to be between France and Italy (reminiscent of Monaco, or, maybe, Seborga) or between France and Spain (like Andorra) in the movies where it's a Kingdom. It's pretty nice, if a bit dull.
* [[She's All Grown Up]]: Boris, who actually manages to turn hot later in the series.
* [[Shipper on Deck]]: Tina tends to ship her friends, especially Mia.
Line 75 ⟶ 82:
* [[The Talk]]
* [[Their First Time]]: {{spoiler|In the later books, Mia and Michael plan for this, but it is called off by Mia when it turns out it ISN'T [[A Man Is Not a Virgin|his]] first time.}}
* [[
* [[Unreliable Narrator]]: Mia, while she doesn't mean to lie in her diary she often has memory lapses, a rose-tinted or melodramatic reaction to what is going on around her and often completely misinterprets peoples motives.
* [[Wide-Eyed Idealist]]: Tina, whenever romance is involved. {{spoiler|Subverted a bit when Tina reveals to Mia that she's been sleeping with Boris regularly for about a year or so, but she still has an overly idealistic attitude about love.}}
Line 81 ⟶ 88:
{{reflist}}
{{The Big Read}}
[[Category:Chick Lit]]
[[Category:Romance Novel]]
[[Category:Young Adult Literature]]
▲[[Category:Films of the 2000s]]
▲[[Category:The Princess Diaries]]
| |||