by Meg Cabot
Mia’s Random Act of Princess:
Be like Wonder Woman: Wear your bathing suit proudly. Don’t slouch or try to look inconspicuous, no matter how big you think your thighs are, or how little you’ve got going in the chestal area. Anyone can look good at the beach or pool, if she’s got the most important accessory of all: confidence.
PRINCESS LEIA
Leia Organa, adopted daughter of Bail Organa, viceroy of the doomed planet of Alderaan, has a complicated—some would say convoluted—family tree. Her birth mother (see page 101) split Leia and her twin brother up at a young age, raising Leia herself, until her own death.
Leia was a born leader, and became a senator at a very young age, striving to help her people, whom she saw as oppressed by the Imperial government. An active member in the rebellion against galaxian emperor Palpatine, Leia little expected to be captured and held a political prisoner by a man who would later turn out to be her own father… or that she would be rescued by a man who later turned out to be her own brother. Or that she would fall in love with a smuggler with a heart of gold, and later be forced to wear a slave-girl outfit while serving drinks to that same smuggler’s mortal enemy, Jabba the Hutt….
[I had to cut Michael off here. His thing on Princess Leia went on and on! Who knew there was so much to say about her?]
Mia’s Random Act of Princess:
Be like Leia: Experiment with new hairstyles! You’ll never know what looks good on you until you’ve tried a lot of different looks. Who knows? Maybe the real you is all about buns on either side of your head! Even if you do something as radical as shaving all your hair off, or dying it pink, no worries: The great thing about hair is, it grows back!
QUEEN AMIDALA, OR PADMÉ, PRINCESS LEIA’S MOTHER
Amidala, also known as Padmé Naberrie, was elected queen of her planet at the age of fourteen. Some might say it was unwise of the people of her planet to elect such a young queen. To them I say… didn’t you see her in Attack of the Clones? She looked totally hot in that white pantsuit. I mean… What I meant to say was, Queen Amidala served her term on the throne and later became a senator, serving her people wisely and well, until that Hayden Christensen guy came along and messed it all up—
[I had to cut Michael off AGAIN! He was getting kind of wound up… the same way he gets about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, only worse.]
Mia’s Random Act of Princess:
Be like Padmé: Don’t wear whatever style is “in” just because everyone else is doing it. Find what looks best on you, whether it’s long and flowing or sporty and formfitting. Don’t let the in crowd dictate what goes on your body. Choose the look that you feel comfortable with—and look good in.
PRINCESS AMELIA MIGNONETTE GRIMALDI THERMOPOLIS RENALDO
Mia Thermopolis, also known as Princess Amelia Renaldo, only came recently to the throne of her native land, Genovia, but has already made great strides in rectifying many social problems affecting the tiny nation, including the crippling parking problem there (by implementing parking meters). Mia has also cleaned up the Port of Genovia and decreased the incidence of sea mammals getting their snouts caught in plastic six-pack holders by almost 60 percent.
Mia continues to show great promise in an area that used to trouble her greatly: Algebra. She is funny and smart, and, though she doesn’t necessarily agree, is also totally gorgeous, and looks great no matter what she’s got on, overalls or ball gown. Plus, her kindness and generosity to others knows no bounds. Which is why I love her.
[!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I swear I didn’t tell him to write that
MM + MT =
TRUE LOVE 4-EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
Michael’s Random Act of Princess:
Be like Mia: Don’t litter or smoke, and try to walk, ride your bike, or take public transportation instead of burning more of our precious natural resources. And spit your gum out in the nearest trash receptacle: Birds can be attracted to the color if you spit it on the ground, and they eat your gum and get their beaks stuck shut and starve to death.
VI.
A Note from
Her Royal Highness Princess Mia
For some reason writers seem to think that if they throw a princess into a story, people will pay more attention to it. This must explain why there is a plethora of princesses in fairy tales, which were originally conceived (back in the days before the Cartoon Network and Seventh Heaven) to warn kids about the dangers of modern-day society.
But since these stories were written in the year 1200 or whatever—and modern-day society was, like, a cluster of thatched cottages protected by a feudal lord—the warnings, instead of telling the kids to say no to drugs and not get into cars with strangers, are all about the dangers of trading the family cow for magic beans or stealing cabbages from the local witch’s garden.
Still, considering the fact that most of them were written a millennium ago, these stories have some staying power….I mean, they are still around. And while personally, I don’t see the appeal of using royalty as a vehicle to propel your narration—I mean, who cares if the person playing with the spindle is a princess or just your average serf? The message is the same: Use caution when handling sharp objects! I guess it does make the story more memorable or whatever.
The following are a few of my favorite PC princesses, in no particular order.
PRINCESS LILY
IN THE MOVIE LEGEND
Princess Lily (played by the luminous Mia Sara) has a problem: She is in love with Tom Cruise, who in the movie plays some kind of elf or something—I was never too clear on just what, exactly, Tom is supposed to be. Anyway, Lily, aka Mia (ha!), throws this ring into the river and tells Tom that if he finds it he can marry her (which if you ask me is being way demanding, even for a princess. I mean, guys are scared enough of commitment without us making things even more complicated by forcing them to go deep-sea diving for our engagement rings. But whatever.). While Tom is underwater looking around for the ring, some kind of troll-like thing who looks a bit like Satan takes over the kingdom (it could happen) because he is in love with Mia Sara too (who wouldn’t be?).
The thing is, everything would have been okay, if Mia/Princess Lily had listened to Tom and stayed away from the unicorns. But no, she had to go and pet one, and well, there’s this whole thing about how virgins are the only ones who can catch unicorns, which is like this legend from King Arthur days, which Lilly Moscovitz says is totally sexist, and that the unicorn’s horn is this phallic symbol and that you shouldn’t like them because if you do it means you want to touch boys’ you-know-whats, but whatever. The POINT IS (get it???), because Lily-in-the-movie touches the unicorn, Satan Troll’s henchmen are able to trap it and drag it and Princess Lily to their underground lair, where Lily is forced to dance around in a tacky black dress that looks like the one Cher wore when she won the Oscar for Moonstruck. After a lot of networking with dwarves and fairies and a couple of deadly battles, Tom is finally able to save the day and put things back as they were.
But none of it would have happened if Princess Lily hadn’t thrown that stupid ring into the river. So the moral of the story is, Don’t try to force guys to perform over-the-top feats of athleticism to prove their love for you. Be happy with what you have.
Mia’s Random Act of Princess:
Be like Lily: Admire the pretty unicorns from afar, but for God’s sake, DON’T TOUCH THEM!!!!!!!!!!
THE FROG PRINCESS
Okay, so there was this princess and she was all snotty because she had all this long, shimmery blond hair and a perfect body and all the guys in the kingdom were in love with her and she was captain of the junior varsity cheerleading squad….
Oh, no, wait. That’s somebody else.
Anyway, this princess was all perfect and stuff, and so one day when she was playing with her golden ball (whatever… just go with it. Golden balls are what princesses used to play with before there were Gameboys) and it fell into the royal po
nd, she was way bummed out, because nothing bad like that had ever happened to her before. Obviously HER dad never made her take Algebra. But whatever.
So when this big, ugly frog hopped out of the pond and was all, “I’ll get you your ball back if you kiss me,” the princess was like, “Ew, gross, no way,” because kissing a frog has got to be even worse than kissing a mouth breather who wears a bionater and tucks his sweater into his pants….
Oh, no, wait. That’s also somebody else.
But the princess really wanted her ball back, so she told the frog she’d kiss him, and like a lame-o he went and gave her her ball back before making her follow through on her end of the dealio, which if you ask me is like paying the cab driver BEFORE he gets to the airport, but whatever. Anyway, the princess was so overjoyed to have her ball back she took off (no big surprise). Well, the poor frog really had no choice but to hop in and interrupt the royal dinner that night and tell the king how his daughter wouldn’t keep her word. The king was understandably embarrassed (although if a frog hopped into the dining room at the Palais de Genovia and started talking, embarrassed would not be the word to describe my dad’s reaction), and told the princess she had to kiss the frog. The princess was pretty grossed out by this but she had no choice: She kissed the frog.
And of course the minute her lips touched the frog’s, he turned into a prince, who was not only good-looking but also willing to marry her on the spot, which if you ask me is the most unbelievable thing in the whole story, because hello, it took some of us, like, eight years to get our handsome princes even to ask us out, let alone propose, but whatever.
The moral of the story is: Don’t judge amphibians by how they look.
Mia’s Random Act of Princess:
Be like the Frog Princess: If you’ve done something wrong, don’t make up excuses: Just apologize. And then don’t do it again! People—even princes—will respect you for it.
SNOW WHITE
There’s no point in even going into this one, since you all know it so well. I mean, some of us even had Snow White birthday cakes when we turned six, and dressed like her for Halloween four years in a row, and memorized all the songs from the movie and went around singing “Someday My Prince Will Come” until our mothers threatened to buy us Free to be You and Me, so we’d learn that it is both inappropriate and unwise in today’s day and age to wait for princes to come rescue us….
Mia’s Random Act of Princess:
Be like Snow White: Don’t take fruit from strangers. This includes people you meet on the Internet. Sure, they SEEM nice, but you never know if that guy claiming to be a Justin Timberlake look-alike might actually be an evil queen out to destroy you.
PRINCESS MONONOKE
Princess Mononoke, a character in a Japanese anime movie of the same name, grew up in a forest populated by animal gods, and was herself raised by the Wolf God. When a young prince is infected by an incurable disease thanks to the bite of a Boar God, he travels to the forest in the hope of throwing himself upon the mercy of the all-powerful Deer God, who might be able to save him. When he gets there, however, he finds San (aka Princess Mononoke) who is more than a little hostile toward him thanks to the encroachment of man—in the form of a nearby ironworks— upon her forest. The ironworks is slowly exploiting and killing the forest dwellers, and Princess Mononoke is determined to put a stop to it… even if it means killing her own kind.
Princess Mononoke is the avenging angel of the environment, and I can’t help wishing that instead of being princess of Genovia, I were princess of the forest she lives in, and that instead of Grandmère, the Deer God were my mentor in all things royal.
But that probably wouldn’t work out, because Fat Louie is really more of an indoor cat, and I don’t know how long he’d last outside, due to his weight problem and addiction to Tender Vittles, which I don’t think you can get in the woods.
Mia’s Random Act of Princess:
Be like Mononoke: Keep your local parks and nature preserves pollution- and litter-free. Your animal friends will thank you. Probably not by rushing to your rescue if you find yourself imperiled in the woods or anything, but you never know.
PRINCESS AURORA,
AKA SLEEPING BEAUTY
Princess Aurora got into trouble for something that wasn’t even her fault: Her parents “forgot” to invite the wicked angel to her christening (kind of like my mom “forgot” to invite her parents to her wedding to Mr. Gianini—thankfully Grandmère remembered for her). The evil fairy was pretty peeved about the whole thing, and so laid a curse on poor Princess Aurora, saying that on her sixteenth birthday she would prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die (fairy curses were way harsh back then).
Well, this other fairy tried to soften the blow by amending the curse so that instead of dying, Princess Aurora would just sleep for a hundred years, but as you can imagine, her parents were not comforted. They banished all the spinning wheels from the kingdom—which begs the question, what did they wear for the next sixteen years? Because without spinning wheels, nobody was making any clothes. It wasn’t like they could just mosey on over to the Gap.
Well, anyway, Princess Aurora managed to find a spindle in spite of the ban, and of course she touched it and slipped into a coma, and if you go by the Disney version, so did everybody else in the castle, and if you go by the original version, everybody else just died. Aurora slept for a hundred years, until this prince came along and laid a big wet one on her kisser. Which of course can only make you question the prince’s motivation: I mean, do YOU kiss every sleeping person YOU happen upon? But maybe he was lured into it by her tempting cherry lips or something.
Anyway, Aurora woke up, and so did the rest of the castle, and she and the prince turned out to have a lot in common, or something, because they got married and lived happily ever after.
The moral of the story is, not surprisingly, DON’T TOUCH SPINDLES!
Mia’s Random Act of Princess:
Be like Aurora: Embrace, don’t alienate, your relations. You never know when they might put a curse on your offspring! Instead, just PRETEND to like them. You won’t be sorry, even if they don’t turn out to be evil fairies.
VII.
A Note from
Her Royal Highness Princess Mia
Let’s face it: there are a lot of princesses out there. It can get confusing sometimes, trying to figure out who is really a princess versus who just acts like one. Hopefully, this little chart will help clear things up.
Gwyneth Paltrow
Looks like a princess, dresses like a princess, has possibly played princesses in movies, and has even dated a prince, but Gwyneth is not, as of this writing, technically a princess.
Britney Spears
Frequently referred to as a pop princess, Britney did briefly exchange e-mails with Prince William, but that does not make her a princess.
Christina Aguilera
Ditto, minus the Prince William part.
Barbie
A lot of people think Barbie is a princess, but the truth is, Barbie only DRESSES like a princess. She is not actually the ruler of Mattel any more than she is actually a flight attendant, Olympic figure skater, veterinarian, nurse, schoolteacher, lawyer, doctor, space-shuttle pilot, dog groomer, or cheerleader. Although she does have some of the best princess clothes I have ever seen.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Dubbed Princess Alice by the press, the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt was not, in fact, a princess. Still, you have to give her props for having her own car at a time when most people in America were still driving horses and buggies.
Mulan
Listed by Disney as one of their many princesses, Mulan is, in fact, a commoner, and remained one even after marriage, since that hot soldier dude she marries isn’t royal, either. Sorry.
Sara Crewe of A Little Princess
She acts with the nobility and grace of a royal, but Sara Crewe never actually became a princess through the whole of the Frances Hod
gson Burnett book about her. Still very much worth reading, though.
Smurfette
Even though Smurfette was the only female Smurf in the kingdom, she was not its princess. Smurfs appeared to have formed an early democratic society, over which Papa Smurf, in all of his wisdom, presided.
Grandmère’s sisters, Tante Simone and Tante Jean-Marie
Much as they might like us to believe the contrary, Grandmère’s sisters are not actually princesses. They are in fact distant cousins—as is Grandmère—to the royal family of Monaco. However, they certainly act like princesses, particularly in the whining category.
Strawberry Shortcake
Not a princess. Okay?
VIII.
A Note from
Her Royal Highness Princess Mia
There are any number of people in this world who, through some trick of fate, ended up not being princesses, when, by rights, they really should have been. If we could elect our princesses, instead of them having to be born or marry into the title, I would nominate the following women, for their joie de vivre, their chutzpah, and their generally princesslike behavior.