The Psychology of Princesses

Yesterday, I took my five-year-old neighbor, Lily, to the library. She is an energetic little girl with long blond hair and feminine dresses. I thought her mom could use a break, so I invited her along. No stranger to the library, Lily was thrilled when I suggested we visit the children’s section.

“What kind of books do you like?” I asked.

“Princess books. I like princesses.”

“Oh, what do you like about them?”

“I just like them. They have nice dresses.”

“Very true,” I responded. “I like queens because they’re in charge.”

“Well, but the king can tell them what to do. He’s really in charge.”

This little conversation was both cute and unsettling. At five years old, Lily already understands that kings have power over queens.

This is exactly what I found when I conducted quantitative research on the characters in all of the Grimms’ fairy tales. Kings have power and agency—they sometimes even imprison their wives. In contrast, queens have less power unless they’re evil, like Snow White’s stepmother. “Good” queens are generally powerless and victimized, and as a result, they exhibit the most sadness. Like queens, princesses have very little power and tend to be fearful. In contrast, princes are fearless and action-oriented, rescuing princesses from terrible situations. Happiness usually comes when the prince marries the princess.

“Which princess is your favorite?” I asked Lily.

“Belle.”

“How come?”

“I like her. She reads.”

“Reading is great,” I agreed. “But what do you think of that Beast? He’s not very nice.”

“He’s mean,” she responded

“Yeah, I don’t like that.”

“And he’s ugly.”

That was all Lily had to say about it.

When we got to the library, she darted through the stacks. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure what to recommend, so we asked a librarian for help.

“Can you recommend some princess books—maybe strong princesses?” I asked.

The children’s librarian led us to a shelf of more modern princess stories. Lily wasn’t interested.

“Do you have Cinderella? Or Beauty and the Beast?”

So we wandered over to the picture books with adaptations of traditional fairy tales and walked away with a version of Rapunzel. Apparently, if Lily didn’t recognize the illustrations as looking like the ones she’d seen on Disney+, she wasn’t interested.

I left feeling a little amazed. People often tell me that I take fairy tales too seriously and that they have little impact on children. But sitting with a five-year-old who rattled off every major Grimms’ fairy tale, surprised me. And she already understood the underlying power structure—that kings outrank queens, princesses wear beautiful dresses, and male characters can be beastly. It made me wonder if perhaps we don’t take them seriously enough.

Lily admitted during our visit that she can’t read yet. Most of what she knows about princesses comes from Disney+. That’s an enormous amount of cultural influence before a child even begins reading.

I was happy to discover that Lily also likes Moana, a much less traditional female character. Is she a princess? Apparently in one of her films, she explicitly says she’s not a princess—she’s the daughter of the chief. We ended up getting a Moana book. And we borrowed a Bluey book, which is a character who pretends to be a princess.

Maybe that’s what change looks like—not replacing old stories with new ones but placing some different stories and female protagonists alongside them.

I hope so.

Because yesterday reminded me just how important traditional fairy tales are to a child and how she’s already learned the power structure within them. These are significant lessons.

What do you think?