Yeah, another interlude, but beer with me. There are often discussions about why some princesses/heroines are included in the line-up and others not. To me, the selection makes mostly sense, although I’m sure that Disney decides mostly based on the success of the movie and marketing strategy. But there actually is a set of rule which includes the current princesses and excludes most of the other ones.

1. The Movie has to be based on a Legend of a Fairy Tale, not on a book of an original story (which excludes nearly all the other aspirants). The sometimes inclusion of Alice makes no sense at all, but since that’s only a thing of Kingdom Hearts, I can overlook this.

At date, there are 14 films which are based on either a fairy-tale of some kind of legend: The ten which already are part of the line up, and “The Sword in the Stone”, “Robin Hood”, “Hercules” and “Atlantis: The Lost Empire”. It should be obvious why “The Sword in the Stone” and “Robin Hood” are not part of the line up: The former has no leading lady at all, the latter leading lady is a fox. Which brings us to the seconde rule:

2. The heroine has to be human.

A case can be made for Megara and Kida. And I wouldn’t mind having them in the line-up. But, box-office success aside, there are other reasons not to include them. And I don’t mean the fact that Megara is not necessarily a princess and Kida is queen at the end of the movie. I don’t think that the titel should make a difference. But Megara is not the heroine of her movie, that’s Hercules, and she is originally one of the villains. A very likable villain which eventually changes into a heroine, but a villain nevertheless. And Kida doesn’t even turn up until her movie is half over (and spends the seconde half mostly as glowing orb). jasmijn isn’t the leading lady of her movie either, but her role is nearly as big as Aladdin’s, so it makes sense to include her.

All the other “honorable princesses” (Jane, Esmeralda, aso) are great heroines, but to me their inclusion into the line-up wouldn’t make sense. I considered to include a review of “Hercules” in this series of articles, because the movie is using the typical Disney fairy tale formula and would fit in quite nicely between the others, but I decided against it, mostly because of the numerous pop cultuur references in it. It simply doesn’t have the same timeless feel to it the official Disney Princess films have.