Princesses Behaving Badly

Once Upon a Time: An Introduction

Seven Warrior Queens of Antiquity

A Family Affair: A Word about Royal Incest

Wei’s Way

The Sorceress Princesses

The War Booty Princess

Marriage or Insane Asylum?

Six Ways to Fake Princesshood

The Dollar Princesses

Princess Excess

Death and the Victorian Age

Three Princesses Who Chucked Their Crowns for Love

Three Mad Princesses (and One Who Probably Wasn’t)

Beware the Black Dwarf

Royal Hotline to Heaven

Famous Last Words

Lindy, from Alex Finn’s
Beastly

Every
little girl? Not quite.

When I was growing up, I didn’t want to be a princess. I wasn’t a tomboy or anything; I just wasn’t into them. Horses, yes, especially the unicorn or winged or, best of all, winged unicorn kind. But then again, when I was a little girl, the Disney princess wasn’t the glittery pastel-colored juggernaut it is today. You could be a little girl and not limit your dress-up choices to Belle, Ariel, or Cinderella (or Mulan or Merida, if you’re feeling feisty).

Nowadays, princess obsession is the default setting for many little girls. In 2000 Disney decided to market the doe-eyed denizens of its feature films by their primary identifying characteristic: their princess titles. And thus was born the princess plague. Princesses are now
the
biggest industry for the pre-tween set. In 2012 the Disney Princess media franchise was the best-selling of its kind in North America, outselling
Star Wars
and Sesame Street and earning more than $4.6 billion worldwide. Add to that all the collateral stuff—
The Princess and the Popstar
Barbies, the Melissa & Doug Decorate Your Own Princess Mirror sets, countless pink-spangled princess T-shirts—and you’ve got what social commentators and worried parents are calling the “Princess Industrial Complex.”

In her fascinating book
Cinderella Ate My Daughter
(Harper, 2011), Peggy Orenstein examines the obsession with bundling girls into “pink and pretty” princess costumes. Orenstein, among many others, worries
that princess play presents unrealistic expectations of feminine beauty, is overly restrictive (pink ball gown, or purple?), and is turning little girls into budding narcissists. So do I. Though no direct evidence supports claims that the ubiquitous princess culture harms girls’ self-esteem, it seems to me that the phenomenon smacks of an unjustified sense of entitlement, a kind of fake power derived not from good decision-making skills or leadership or intelligence but physical attractiveness, wealth, and relationships with strong male characters. “Princess” is a title that establishes bizarre expectations of how one should be treated, of what has value, and of what women will or should achieve in their lives.

Obviously, most little girls don’t grow up believing that life is all dress-up heels, fairy godmothers, and Prince Charmings. But the princess fantasy is one that we don’t ever really give up. Witness the fascination with Kate Middleton, the pretty girl-next-door commoner who married Britain’s dashing Prince William in April 2011. Though she’s technically not a princess—her official title is Duchess of Cambridge—Catherine’s story has all the hallmarks of a fairy tale. The royal wedding even looked like a cartoon—I almost expected to see twittering bluebirds carrying Kate’s train.

Sweetly two-dimensional “Princess Kate” was the image that tabloids the world over traded on, despite the grim reality of what happened to the last British princess given the fairy-tale treatment. Blonde blue-eyed Diana
was
Cinderella, a similarity not lost on media then or now. Diana’s real story, however—her marriage of convenience, her husband’s infidelity, rumors of her own unfaithfulness, struggles with fame and eating disorders, her courtship of the British press, and her eventual death after being chased by paparazzi—is distinctly
not
the happy fairy tale everyone hoped for.

Perhaps the best way to make sure that the fairy tale doesn’t become the expectation is to talk about real princesses and to stop turning their lives into fairy tales. Some real princesses were women who found themselves in circumstances they couldn’t control. Sophia Dorothea of Celle, for example, was forced to marry a man she called “pig snout,” a man who violently assaulted her, cheated on her, and, after she retaliated by having her own affair, locked her in a castle for more than three decades
until her death. Others, like Anna of Saxony, were genuinely mentally unstable—a limited gene pool can be just as corrupting as absolute power. Pretty Grimm.

But some princesses found ways to shape their own destinies. Empress Wu of China showed that princesses can be just as Machiavellian as any prince. Some, like Sarah Winnemucca, used their titles (both real and imagined) to draw attention to a higher cause. Others were just out for a good time, like the American Clara Ward, a so-called Dollar Princess who left her Prince Not-So-Charming to run off with a gypsy violinist. And more than a few weren’t even princesses at all, like Caraboo or Franziska, the Polish factory worker who claimed to be the lost Romanov princess Anastasia.

Historical princesses have been capable of great things as well as horrible things; they’ve made stupid decisions and bad mistakes, loved the wrong people or too many people or not enough people. They are women who lied, murdered, used sex as a weapon, or dressed like a man to hold on to power. They weren’t afraid to get a little dirt, or blood, on their hands. These women were human, but the word
princess
, along with its myriad connotations, often glosses over that humanity.

For each of the women described in the following pages, I’ve tried to strip away the myth and portray something as close as possible to the real person. But history is only as accurate as those who record it, and that goes double when the subject is a woman. I’ve made every effort to track down stories from the most reliable sources, but, as with any reconstructing of the past, some of the tales must be chalked up to rumor, gossip, and assumption.

Nevertheless, here are the stories of real princesses and real women. They may begin once upon a time, but they don’t always end happily ever after.

Alfhild