wherein Liz thinks about princesses, sorceresses, and names

[edenfalling]

Apropos of nothing in particular, I was thinking about phases girls are often said to go through -- among them the princess phase and the horse-crazy phase -- and it struck me that while I definitely did the horse-crazy thing, I never wanted to be a princess. Not once.

As far back as I can verifiably remember (so, six years old) what I wanted to be -- what I imagined myself as in all my daydreams and self-insert characters -- was a reality-warping all-powerful sorceress. When I told myself interminable superhero epics in first grade, I was a sorceress who gave one of the other heroes his powers, and who directed the team on missions because I could see what the enemy was planning. When Vicky and I did baby's first LARPing with our neighbors, I was a sorceress and had magic wand duels with the kid who played a wizard. When I first invented Small, I self-inserted as a mysterious sorceress who lived in a tower in the woods and could have solved all the questing characters' problems in two days if she hadn't been more interested in catching up on her reading. When I dreamed up a sort of self-insert fanfic continuation to Pamela Service's Tomorrow's Magic series, it featured a girl who was basically me by another name as the child of a family who'd kept magic alive through the dry times -- in other words, a sorceress -- and who accidentally cast herself into the future when the nuclear holocaust hit.

All these figures were from explicitly ordinary backgrounds, which is not surprising since they were all based on me. And while I could imagine myself phenomenal cosmic powers at the drop of a hat, it never occurred to me to imagine myself an aristocratic backstory, let alone a royal one. (The time-traveling sorceress fantasy, in fact, was centered around recreating democracy in the radioactive wastes of the former eastern seaboard. And also constructing a town with nice brick houses and a functional sewer system. Look, I like logistics, okay?)

The thing is, I am not certain if that persistent fantasy pattern is an intrinsic part of my character, or whether it's an unintended side effect of my name.

You see, my legal first name is Diana. I was born in 1982, one year after Diana Spencer married Prince Charles. They were highly public figures. So I spent my childhood with adults asking me in sugary-sweet voices whether I was named after Princess Diana. And as far back as I can remember (five years old, in this case), my knee-jerk indignant response was, "NO! I'm named after the Roman goddess!" And then I'd seethe to myself that this weirdo princess who I didn't know and didn't want to know had stolen my name, grr argh, how dare she!

That is not a situation likely to foster positive feelings toward princesses in general.

I mean, I'm quite sure I'd have fantasized having phenomenal magic powers in any case -- as I've said before, I have a hell of a power kink, and it clearly goes way back -- but I do wonder if I might have imagined myself as a magical princess if not for that coincidental confluence of names.

Comments

[sapote]

Oh man, I love the idea of being the sorceress who's off in the woods somewhere, being perfectly capable of fixing problems if everyone would just take her perfectly-good advice. I feel like that person gets a lot of comfortable robes and her own kitchen where no one bothers her. I remember my favorite game with my American Girl Doll was Felicity's Adventures As An Herbal Healer in the Postapocalyptic Wasteland, which is kind of a sorceress figure. Though I was old enough that she had a will-they-won't-they with the local warlord.

I don't know if I would have been susceptible to plain-old princessing otherwise, but my magnificent nerd of a mother kept saying things like "You know, modern real life princesses don't really have that much fun, we could play Beautiful Princess Attends The Ribboncutting of a Municipal Wastewater Plant!" or "you really don't want to have been a medieval princess, in my opinion, lots of sad things happened to them, but we could play Queen Regent whose husband got bumped off in the Crusades!". (There was probably also some impact from Princess Di in this story, as I was hitting the dress-up stage right as it was obvious to everyone that she was not enjoying being a princess at all).

[edenfalling]

In re: the sorceress in the woods with her comfortable robes, nice kitchen, and good advice: There are reasons Morwen is my favorite character in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. :-)

Felicity's Adventures as an Herbal Healer in the Postapocalyptic Wasteland sounds like an excellent game to me! Vicky and I never got that creative with our dolls. The most exciting thing they did was form a punk rock band called Bloody Mary.

Heh. You know, if my mother had suggested playing Beautiful Princess Attends the Ribboncutting of a Municipal Wastewater Plant, I might have gone for it -- especially if diagrams of the plant were involved. It sounds like something that could easily be turned into a Magic Schoolbus style adventure. But playing Investigative Reporter Sneaks into a Municipal Wastewater Plant Chasing Rumors of Malfeasance/Mutants (take you pick) sounds more fun. Because hey, sneaking! :-) (You could probably spin that story with a socially conscious princess trying to help her people, but the princess thing is largely irrelevant to the plot of the game/story.)

[sapote]

Morwen was a) the best b) one of the best portrayals of a middle-aged lady having a nice life I can think of in any media, so of course I love her. So many cats! Tea! Reading! Perfect!

[marmota_b]

Ouch, well-intentioned questions that get on your nerves. I feel like I know exactly what that was like, except that I can't lay my finger on what it was in my case. I suspect what I really had in mind was everyone's total shock at my being able to function without a TV. Which kind of made me go the exact same knee-jerk way of thinking "of course I can, I never ever want to have a TV, just to prove you wrong." (I guess the contemporary equivalent would be having no computer and no internet, which, sadly, I really can't function without.)

I did have a horse phase, and I did have a princess phase, but very soon stumbled on the practical problem of "I would have to be a lost princess, and there are only so many countries I could be a lost princess of." So I kind of dreamed about being a lost princess for a while (in a sort of Princess Diaries way, before there was Princess Diaries?), and then decided it was boring and unrealistic or something. And anyway, it was completely overshadowed by the preceding Slavic-fairy-slash-Narnian-Naiad-or-Dryad phase, and the following maker-of-things-and-dreamer-of-worlds phase, which, to be honest, hasn't left me yet and has been with me since my earliest memories as well.

[edenfalling]

My family had a television. We just didn't use it much. I was ten years old before I watched anything other than PBS, the evening news, and an occasional football game. This is kind of weird in retrospect, since I remember knowing how to change the channel... and yet it just never occurred to me that there might be shows on the other stations that I might find interesting. I might have gone even longer without much TV-exposure if not for my friend Cat, who insisted that I start watching the old Fox X-Men cartoon so she could squee about it with me.

Slavic fairies sound much more interesting than princesses! But then again, I am not an unbiased judge. *wry*

[marmota_b]

Heh. Interest is never unbiased, anyway.