Umileah: How To Identify A Disney Princess

It somewhat recently came to my attention that three of Disney’s most recent breakout protagonists, Anna, Elsa, and Moana, have not yet been inducted into the official Disney Princess lineup. (This despite appearing alongside the eleven official Princesses in Wreck It Ralph 2.)

This really calls focus to the seemingly arbitrary criteria Disney uses to select their Princesses. The official lineup is, in order of induction, Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, and Merida. But what criteria do these eleven meet that Anna, Elsa, and Moana fail to? Not to mention, Esmeralda and Tinkerbell (both of whom were part of the official lineup at some point before being kicked off), as well as Megara, Jane Porter, Alice, and Wendy Darling (who are sometimes assumed to be part of the lineup), and even getting into such obscure characters as Eilonwy and Kida. And, of course, Vanellope Von Schweetz, whom the official eleven (plus Anna, Elsa, and Moana) joyously declared to be a Princess in her latest appearance.

Knowing that the simplest solution is usually the correct one, I have decided to try and crack this criteria. There is some “iff” clause, fulfilling which is both necessary and sufficient to be considered a Disney Princess.

"What do you mean I'm not a princess? My name has all the vowels!"

Here were some of the first possibilities I looked at:

•  Being a literal Princess is neither necessary (Mulan) nor sufficient (Anna, Vanellope, Eilonwy).
•  Being entirely animated is necessary (thus excluding Giselle) but not sufficient (all the rest).
•  Being created by Disney Animation Studios is neither necessary (Merida) nor sufficient (all the rest).
•  We can get around this with the somewhat awkward phrasing “created by an animation studio owned by Disney at the time of creation,” which allows for the exclusion Anastasia, but inclusion of Merida.
• Being human by the end of the movie seems to be necessary (after Tinkerbell was eliminated) but not sufficient. (Note: Vanellope is literally made up of code, and therefore arguably not human, and only a representation of a Princess, rather than one in her own right. Thus, obviously, within the confines of her movie, she'd be considered a Princess, but would not be one in the overarching Disney universe. Remember, the people who declare her a Princess are not actually Snow White, Cinderella, etc. They are code made to think they are Snow White, Cinderella, etc.)
• Singing is neither necessary (Merida) nor sufficient (standard contingent).
• Being the movie's protagonist is neither necessary (Aurora, Jasmine) nor sufficient (standard contingent).
• Some minimum height threshold would easily eliminate Alice, Wendy, and Vanellope (not to mention Tinkerbell) and possibly Eilonwy as well, but I don’t have a list of the heights of Disney characters to check against.

So none of these are it. The three absolutely necessary (being a Disney character, being animated, and being human by the end of the movie) are also met by Megara, Esmeralda, Eilonwy, et cetera.

In Moana, the character of Maui suggests a twofold test. "If you wear a dress, and you have an animal sidekick, you're a princess." He is arguing that Moana, for meeting these criteria, is a princess, but obviously Disney doesn't think so. So Maui's argument can't hold water. Or can it?

It could be argued that Moana's outfit is not technically a dress because of that big gap in the middle separating it into two pieces, and so Maui's criteria may be correct, he's just wrong in saying Moana meets them. On the other hand, Jasmine's outfit is even more unambiguously not a dress than Moana's, and she is in the lineup.

What about the animal sidekick? Does that hold water? Well, very loosely, for a given definition of sidekick. I'm not convinced that the woodland creatures who dance around Aurora and Snow White qualify. And Belle's horse hardly has the personality associated with sidekicks like Flounder, Rajah, and Pascal. On the other end, Tiana doesn't really have an animal sidekick either, because Louis and Ray are fully developed characters in their own right. If Belle has her horse count, surely Alice's cat Dinah should count, as should Nana for Wendy. Does Gurgi count as a sidekick for Eilonwy, or is he really Taran's sidekick, if a sidekick at all? Eilonwy has her Bauble as an unambiguous sidekick, but it isn't an animal, though it fills much the same function.

And, of course, Esmeralda both wears a dress and enjoys the company of a plucky animal sidekick in the form of her goat Djali. (Note: Djali was actually in the original source material, so maybe there's a rule that Disney has to add an animal sidekick? Which would account for Dinah and Nana and the Bauble.)

In Wreck It Ralph 2, it is suggested that the primary criterion is the appearance of dependency. That is, as Rapunzel asks Vanellope, “does everyone assume all your problems got solved because a big strong man showed up?” Which is all well and good for most of the early Princesses, but it doesn’t hold up on examination, with at least two Princesses in the lineup (Mulan and Merida) being specifically designed to defy it. (And, just saying, Eilonwy defied it first.)

None of this is helping. It seems every line we can draw has an exception. It could be some meta-criteria, like someone at Disney arbitrarily deciding that Megara is too adult, or Kida too obscure, or Eilonwy too still-under-the-original-copyright, to merit inclusion. But if Elsa, Anna, and Moana, are all excluded, it must be incredibly arbitrary meta-criteria, and that is unacceptable.

There must be some single simple rule that separates this list of eleven names from the rest of them. I think it's time for a game of RegEx Golf!

I typed up a list of all the official Disney Princesses, and then a list of all the characters I could think of who seemed like obvious shoo-ins for the lineup, and started searching for a suitable Regular Expression. And it turns out that all Disney Princesses, and only Disney Princesses, will capture the RegEx: (U|[HRTM]I|L[EA]|AH)

This is a simple test that holds up for every Princess included so far, and excludes all the seemingly ineffable snubs. Therefore, it must be entirely accurate, and what Disney tests against when deciding who to induct into the franchise.

I look forward to the shoo-in coronation of future Disney Princess Umileah.

***

NOTE: Since the original writing of this post, Moana has been officially coronated as a Disney Princess. The regex has therefore presumably been updated to: (U|[HRTM][OI]|L[EA]|AH)