Prince Charming

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2008)

Prince Charming meets Cinderella in a 1912 book of fairy tales.

Prince Charming is a stock character who appears in a number of fairy tales. He is the prince who comes to the rescue of the damsel in distress, and typically must engage in a quest to liberate her from an evil spell. The name has been given to the heroes of a number of traditional folk tales, including Snow White and Cinderella.

These characters are often handsome and romantic, a foil to the heroine, and are seldom deeply characterized, or even distinguishable from other such men who marry the heroine. In many variants, they can be viewed more as rewards for the heroine rather than characters. ^[1]

"Prince Charming" is also used as a term to refer to the idealized man some women dream of as a future significant spouse^[2].

History of term

In the eighteenth centurey, Madame d'Aulnoy wrote two fairy tales, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks, where the hero was named Avenant, and The Blue Bird, where the hero was Le roi Charmant ("The Charming King," in French). When Andrew Lang retold the first (in 1889) for The Blue Fairy Book[1], he rendered the hero's name as "Charming"; the second, for The Green Fairy Book, as "King Charming".

Although neither one was a prince and the first was not royal, this may have been the original use of "Charming."

Then, Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray refers ironically to "Prince Charming," perhaps the earliest use of the exact term. The main character, Dorian, is supposed to be a young actress's "Prince Charming," but he abandons her and in despair she commits suicide.

In the early Disney animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) when Snow White tells the dwarfs about her prince, she says, "Anyone could see that the prince was Charming, the only one for me." The logical antecedent of "one" in this lyric is "Charming" because of the placement of the pause. However, he is never referred to specifically as "Prince Charming."

Adaptations

The prominence of the character type makes him an obvious target for revisionist fairy tales.

The character of Prince Charming is deconstructed in the 2004 movie Shrek 2 (wherein he is a Bad Fiancé, he has a personality not unlike that of Gaston in Disney's Beauty and the Beast). "Prince Charming" is the title of a 1981 album and song by Adam and the Ants. Prince Charming is also the title of a 1999 movie starring Andy Lau and Michelle Reis. Meet Prince Charming is the title of a 1999 movie starring Tia Carrere and David Charvet.

Prince Charming is a prominent character in the Fables comic book; in that version, he successively married Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, each marriage ending in divorce due to his compulsive womanizing. He himself comments: "I always truly love a woman when I first pursue her...I'm just no good at the happily-ever-after part." He parlays his charm into election as the mayor of Fabletown, the underground "Fable" community, and finds the job more difficult than he had anticipated.

This aspect of his character is also explored in the Broadway musical Into the Woods, where there are not one but two prince Charmings, brothers going after Cinderella and Rapunzel, then, later, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White after they marry their first loves. Cinderella's Prince even has an affair with the Baker's Wife, and when confronted about his womanizing, states "I was raised to be charming, not sincere."

The concept of the Prince Charming is also parodied in Enchanted when Prince Edward looking for Princess Giselle in New York. While knocking the doors he finds a pregnant housewife holding 3 kids, who tells him, in a scoffing voice, "You're too late."

In The Sisters Grimm, Prince Charming is the mayor of Ferryport Landing, a town inhabited by fairy-tale characters- or everafters. He is shown to be rude, arrogant and boastful, but turns out a valuable ally to the antagonists of the series. He is shown to have married many of the girls in this town, among them Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.

See also

• Făt-Frumos

References