Why prince charming

They may refuse their royal duties Simba , be jerks at first though they later improve Beast , Kuzco , start off as commoners who rise to the status of prince through marriage Aladdin , Flynn Rider , appear charming but turn out to be a womanizing Manchild Naveen , or even the Big Bad Hans. Shrek : Inverted in the sequels, as Prince Charming is vain, selfish, a sissy coward and in Shrek the Third , arguably evil. Charming : Played with, as the prince's "charm" is part of a curse — as long as it's in effect, no woman can love anyone other than him.

The central plot revolves around him trying to get rid of his charm, only to get the real non-magical version in the process. Films — Live-Action. He's good-natured, handsome, and heroic, but he's kind of thick. And it turns out he's not the right man for Giselle—but when he realizes this, he gallantly steps aside for her true prince. While Snow White and the Three Stooges almost squandered the leads, the prince had a greatly expanded role compared to the actual fairy tale.

Played straight in Prince Charming , a made-for-television film starring Sean Maguire. It is the story of a prince who gets turned into a frog due to dashingly rescuing a damsel in distress, who starts trying to reward him.

They are all braggarts and cowards, and eventually they help themselves to the royal treasure - while the three princesses, as well as the king himself, get married to commoners in the end. Mirror, Mirror is one of the very few modern movies based on fairy tales which play this trope almost completely straight with Andrew Alcott, a character with most of the usual Prince Charming traits. Subverted in Snow White and the Huntsman as the prince has become an Action Survivor due to the queen's tyrannical rule.

Into the Woods : Cinderella's prince is an Exact Words version. Specifically he's The Charmer : "I was raised to be charming, not sincere. Played with in A Brother's Price : Prince Alannon was a dignified, quiet-spoken man, who was very handsome and liked to take regular baths.

Very charming. However, his marriage to the protagonist's grandmothers came about not by him rescuing one of them, but by his being kidnapped by them. He eventually seems to have consented to marry them, which is not such a big surprise considering that the best he could have hoped for would have been an Arranged Marriage , if not imprisonment or death, since his branch of the family was on the losing side of the war.

And they did build him a bathhouse. Given how soon it was written after the term originated, The Picture of Dorian Gray is likely one of the first subversions. Dorian is called this by extremely naive actress Sybil who he seduces and abandons, driving her to suicide. Another lover also apparently called him this, and uses the nickname scornfully when he encounters her several years later as a prostitute. Ella Enchanted exaggerates this. The prince's name is Charmont, which is sorta like Charming and borders on charmant , which is French for "charming" and comes from the Fairy Tale " The Blue Bird " where the hero was called Le Roi Charmant "the charming king".

He prefers to be called Char, though. John Moore 's Slay and Rescue has a professional hero who really is a prince named Charming, sent by his father's chancellor to rescue fair maidens all over the place the theory is that it keeps him too busy to try to take over the throne. Nonetheless, he's also basically decent. His brother Prince Tommen, however, is genuinely kind and sweet-tempered though he's only eight. Sansa even says she would have preferred to have married Tommen.

In Terry Pratchett 's Unseen Academicals , Glenda objects to Trev as Juliet's love because Juliet is special and all she needed was a prince — and she remembers her own fantasies. Juliet and Trev do end up together, and Glenda ends up with a king to be. Justified in the contemporary book Dream Boy written by Ann Reit, which stars a charming, but immature teenager who learned it from his father. Deconstructed in The Folk of the Air.

Prince Dain at first appears this way. He is one of the few fae to be kind and respectful towards the main character, and acts as a mentor towards her. In reality, he has worked to create this image in order to gain the favor of the court and his father. Additionally, he uses this image of honor and kindness in order to trick others. The favoritism from his father and the court has only furthered his entitlement to the throne, and he will do anything to ensure he inherits the throne after his father.

This includes framing a child for murder and murdering his lover. And oh boy is he a lover - right up until he meets Thayet, anyway, and she steals his heart and his ability to speak in all of ten seconds. In Isabel: Jewel of Castilla where it takes less than two hours for Fernando, Prince of Aragon and King of Sicily, to steal the princess's heart with his humor, authority and imagination.

Interestingly zigzagged in Marie Antoinette: Princess of Versailles. At first Antonia is repulsed at fat and ugly Louis Auguste but as time goes on, he reveals that he's shy, sweet and even becomes devoted to her.

While she doesn't fall in love with him, Antonia does call him her friend. Prince Kai from Lunar Chronicles : Cinder. The princes of four different fairy tales Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White get the short end of the stick when their stories are popularized because everyone remembers the princesses' names, but their names Fredrick, Gustav, Liam and Duncan respectively are lost and are just called "Charming", even though all four are radically different people.

They eventually team up and become a league of Princes Charming. In The Stormlight Archive , Adolin Kholin displays many traits of Prince Charming: he is genuinely kind, caring, and a gallant warrior to boot, and is one of the only people to hold the full trust of his father until it's revealed that it was Adolin who murdered Highprince Sadeas, that is. In many ways, he is also a subversion of this trope, having great difficulty with forming meaningful relationships with women.

Indeed, he is a serial womanizer with a colorful dating history. Live-Action TV. Game of Thrones : Joffrey intentionally puts on this act for Sansa. It lasts for about half an episode before his true colors are revealed. Prince Charming is a character in Sesame Street , using the same puppet as Guy Smiley and Don Music, who can be relied upon to totally mess up any fairy-tale he's involved in he's not a Prince Charmless , just incompetent and not very bright. He also works as a dance instructor, under the name Prince Cha-Cha-Charming.

Gossip Girl : Nate Archibald is all but explicitly based on this trope. He is described as charming with extreme regularity, and has the tendency to fall passionately in love with various girls and deliver romantic speeches occasionally hilariously out of context while rescuing them from some emotional or social dragon. He is in the books given the epithet "prince of the upper east side" and it is said that he can "snap his fingers and have any girl he wants.

He sings "How can I repay—" but Buffy cuts him off with "Whatever" given that she's in her depressed period. Unfortunately, though, it has become all too common in our culture to shame girls for their fantasies. Much of the vitriol aimed at boy bands , romantic comedies , and Twilight is precisely because girls enjoy them. The world of superheroes is replete with ridiculous dialogue, magical powers, and over-the-top plots, yet comic books and films based on comic books are annually treated with more seriousness and reverence by scholars and critics alike.

This is despite the fact that the world of superheroes is often heavy on violence and scant on romance. Which is more likely to be a relatable experience: falling in love, or killing a supervillain to save the planet? In , literary critic Leslie Fielder published the provocative Love and Death in the American Novel, in which he argued that the American novel is incapable of dealing with sex, and instead focuses on violence and death in a prolonged state of boyish immaturity.

Yet he could have been writing about the state of American films today where violence gets more audience-friendly ratings than sex from the MPAA in a culture dominated by superhero franchises that are primarily aimed at boys. The title was changed from The Snow Queen to Frozen just like Rapunzel became Tangled to reassure boys that it was not a fairy tale.

Jaffar has a similar goal, but to the extreme. We need more Princes like him who challenge the expectations of male heroes. Our bills are paid by our wonderful patrons. Could you chip in? Mythcreants is an ad-free publication. If our work has helped you, please keep us going by chipping in. Danita Rambo The Nat20 Bard. Your patronage keeps this site running. Become a patron. Oh, Lillian, this so well written, so well thought out. A dissertation of sorts on—of all things—Disney girls and boys.

Applicable in every middle and high school. Pretty good observations. The princess characters and female characters in general should be role models for little boys just like they are for little girls. The alpha male role is also often more a birthright which much be reacquired….. Excellent article, and one I just had my daughter 13 years read.

That I saw it with my sisters 11 and 9 years respectively , as well as my own kids, made it all the more meaningful. Elsa was just one big advert for how freely expressed female sexuality is bad bad bad.

Was horrified by this movie. Thanks Disney. Theirs a reason her trump song is all about being free to be herself. But you can also see her as a symbol of female sexuality. Just as women have been taught for a long time to ignore their own sexuality and just seen themselves as a means for men to get theirs out. Great analysis. Thanks for making the important point that the Prince Role was being overlooked, as well as the importance of the opposite gender as the model for attraction.

Now if only we could have a Disney film in which BOTH the prince and the princess have competence and agency and in which gender equality is treated as a given rather than as a focus of the storyline! Excellent article.

Though, the bit about personal sacrifice for the male lead to get the girl is, unfortunately, not just in Disney-type fairy tales. Personally, I hate that message because it promotes an incredibly unhealthy double-standard. In reality, that line of thought leads to abusive relationships. Because women are just looking for partners to love them then, as opposed to partners that are actually good for them and pay attention to their needs.

I would like to point out that Eugene sacrificing himself for Rapunzel was a HUGE plot point in his character development. Because sometimes it HAS to be in the story. Why should a man have to die for someone else? As in have to? Your attitude devalues human life, and illustrates the problem with these tropes. Should women also be willing to die for their men? Maybe you believe that about love, and if that is indeed their choice, then that is their choice.

But it has to be just that. A choice. See, if I die for someone, what if the situation were reversed. Would they really choose to die for me?

Honestly, most of the time, I think not. If it was someone that I really truly cared about, who I knew would do the same for me, then I would do it maybe. But only if I felt that it was worth it.

In the scene above, though, Rapunzel is prepared to not die, admittedly, but sacrifice any kind of future she might have, just for the chance to heal Eugene.

If Judd Apatow can do it, nobody else has an excuse. Can anyone name me some counterexamples? Preferably some non-R-rated ones, so that the people who need these messages the most can actually be exposed to them? So what? Does it matter? Eugene and Rapunzel did it too. Not to mention that even though Rapunzel and Jasmine were their new dreams, Eugene and Aladdin still got to live in a castle, just like they stated at the start of the film.

Just saying. Eugene and Rapunzel were willing to put each other before themself. Beast was willing to let Belle go home so she could take care of her dad. But since Gothel never allowed the hair to be cut, there was a descent chance that cutting it might interfere with the magic. If Belle fell in love with the Beast as it was, then suddenly being with a handsome prince should actually have been something of a disappointment. In at least one telling of the story, Belle is a bit disappointed with Beast transforming, and he decides to grow a beard.

And in one of the stage play versions, the actor who plays Gaston also plays the Prince. Actually, I agree with you on Eric. Why would he recognize her? He was drowning and only saw her for a moment. Songs make more of an impression on us than pictures, sound memory is very strong. I always felt like Ariel was just using Eric to get away from her own life.

I would probably agree with the comments above — this is very well written and thought through. However, in my opinion which is therefore totally subjective! Coming to the second point, what is wrong in the idea of a love-sacrifice?

And yes, violence is undesirable and extreme, but I just think again very subjectively that it helps with that missing bit of reality, at least a bit. Because despite their rarity thanks goodness there are situations in life when you will have to participate in a fight to protect either your family or property etc.

And there are wars, terrible wars that possibly, touch the wood, will never happen in our or any other country, but they could. When you have a war you kill or die, with rare exceptions.

This is violence, this is horrible, but all people need to be aware of it. Hercules has a strong female character in my mind. She is under the thumb of Hades because she made a mistake and sacrificed herself for someone she loved.

It turned out badly for her and to earn her freedom she has to work for the big bad of the movie. In the end, Hercules does exactly the same thing for her, they both make a sacrifice.