The Royal Who Is Really Something Else

Zahler's book The Thirteenth Princess brings up the classic archetype: the royal disguised as a servant or ordinary person.

Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, of course, tackles the royal disguised as a peasant and the peasant disguised as a royal. 

I'll focus on the royal disguised as an ordinary citizen here. 

The book retells the fairytale of the Twelve Princesses. The tale is a great one since it offers so much scope to writers. The Twelve Princesses can be heroines. They can be snobs. Their parents can be cursed. They can be tyrants. The kingdom to where the princesses go to dance can be evil, amoral, or protective. 

And everything in-between! 

Zahler makes interesting choices. For one, Zita, the thirteenth princess is being raised as a servant. I'm not providing spoilers because the book begins with Zita already knowing. In fact, everyone already knows. 

I don't entirely buy the reason for Zita being raised as a servant. I think there was a more likely reason lurking in the corners of the book (and I'm not sure why the author didn't use that reason). The king later gets upset about what neighboring kings think. A man who worries about what neighboring kings think would treat his princess daughter as a princess, not matter how much he personally fears or hates or blames her for something. 

However, the "disguise" provides motivation for Zita to take on the quest. In addition--and here I thought Zahler provided excellent insights--Zita comes to realize that her sisters are in many ways as limited as she is. When I watched Manor House, I was struck by this truth. In many ways, the servants--who did not have easy lives--had better social relationships than the "uppercrust." The single sister of the lady of the manor got so depressed at her lack of scope (she was a working woman in contemporary life) that she left. In reality, of course, she would have had other singles and charity work to occupy her. However, her reaction does dovetail with accounts of women of that time. 

The middle classes truly always have been better off: not too poor to starve; not too rich to be forced into limiting social expectations. 

Zita is a good "fly on the wall" of the fairy tale! 

This final character analysis segues quite nicely into the next A-Z List. I enjoyed covering characters so much that the next list will do the same, only this time, the characters are characters transform: that is, their true personalities are revealed either because they take off an actual disguise or because they change over time. 

The next A-Z list will go by character rather than by author.