Princess and dragon is anarchetypical premise common to manylegends,fairy tales, andchivalric romances.[1]Northrop Frye identified it as a central form of thequest romance.
The story involves an upper-class woman, generally aprincess or similar high-rankingnobility, saved from adragon, either a literal dragon or a similar danger, by the virtuous hero (seedamsel in distress). She may be the first woman endangered by the peril, or may be the end of a long succession of women who were not of as high birth as she is, nor as fortunate.[2] Normally the princess ends up married to thedragonslayer.
The motifs of the hero who finds the princess about to be sacrificed to the dragon and saves her, thefalse hero who takes his place, and the final revelation of the true hero, are the identifying marks of theAarne–Thompson folktale type 300, the Dragon-Slayer. They also appear in type 303, the Two Brothers.[3] These two tales have been found, in different variants, in countries all over the world.[4]
The "princess and dragon" scenario is given even more weight in popular imagination than it is in the original tales; the stereotypical hero is envisioned as slaying dragons even though, for instance, theBrothers Grimm had only a few tales of dragon and giant slayers among hundreds of tales.[5]
One of the earliest examples of the motif comes from theAncient Greek tale ofPerseus, who rescued the princessAndromeda fromCetus, a sea monster often described as resembling a serpent or dragon.[6] This was taken up into otherGreek myths, such asHeracles, who rescued the princessHesione ofTroy from a similar sea monster. Most ancient versions depicted the dragon as the expression of a god's wrath: in Andromeda's case, because her motherQueen Cassiopeia had compared her beauty to that of the seanymphs, and in Hesione's, because her father had reneged on a bargain withPoseidon. This is less common in fairy tales and other, later versions, where the dragon is frequently acting out of malice. The homosexual variety of the tale is also found in Greek mythology; similar myths existed inCrissa andThespiae of a terrifying beast that ravaged the place unless a young man was sacrificed,Alcyoneus in Crisa andCleostratus in Thespiae to them. In both cases a man who is in love with the youth (Eurybarus andMenestratus respectively) and steps in to take the youth's place and slay the monster.[7]
The Japanese legend ofYamata no Orochi also invokes this motif. The godSusanoo encounters two "Earthly Deities" who have been forced to sacrifice their seven daughters to the many-headed monster, and their daughterKushinadahime is the next victim. Susanoo is able to kill the dragon after getting it drunk onsake (rice wine).[8]
Another variation is from the tale ofSaint George and the Dragon. The tale begins with a dragon making its nest at thespring which provides acity-state with water. Consequently, the citizens had to temporarily remove the dragon from its nest in order to collect water. To do so, they offered the dragon a dailyhuman sacrifice. The victim of the day was chosen by drawing lots. Eventually in thislottery, the lot happened to fall to the local princess. The localmonarch is occasionally depicted begging for her life with no result. She is offered to the dragon but at this point a travelingSaint George arrives. He faces and defeats the dragon and saves the princess; some versions claim that the dragon is not killed in the fight, but pacified once George ties the princess' sash around its neck. The grateful citizens then abandon their ancestralpaganism and convert toChristianity.
A similar tale to St. George's, attributed to Russian sources, is that ofSt. Yegóry, the Brave: after the kingdoms of Sodom and Komor fall, the kingdom of "Arabia" is menaced by a sea-monster that demanded a sacrifice of a human victim every day. The queenly stepmother sent the Princess Elizabeth, the Fair, as the sacrifice. Yegóry, the Brave rescues Elizabeth and uses her sash to bind the beast. To mark her deliverance, he demands the building of three churches.[9]
In a tale fromTibet, a kingdom suffers from drought due to two "serpent-gods" blocking the streams of water at the source. Both dragons also demand the sacrifices of citizens from the kingdom, men and women, to appease them, until prince Schalu and his faithful companion Saran decide to put an end to their existence.[10]
When the tale is not about a dragon but atroll,giant, orogre, the princess is often a captive rather than about to be eaten, as inThe Three Princesses of Whiteland. These princesses are often a vital source of information to their rescuers, telling them how to perform tasks that the captor sets to them, or how to kill the monster, and when she does not know, as inThe Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body, she frequently can pry the information from the giant. Despite the hero's helplessness without this information, the princess is incapable of using the knowledge herself.
Again, if afalse claimant intimidates her into silence about who actually killed the monster as in thefairy taleThe Two Brothers, when the hero appears, she will endorse his story, but she will not tell the truth prior to them; she often agrees to marry the false claimant in the hero's absence. The hero has often cut out the tongue of the dragon, so when the false hero cuts off its head, his claim to have killed it is refuted by its lack of a tongue; the hero produces the tongue and so proves his claim to marry the princess.[11] In some tales, however, the princess herself takes steps to ensure that she can identify the hero—cutting off a piece of his cloak as inGeorgic and Merlin, giving him tokens as inThe Sea-Maiden—and so separate him from the false hero.
This dragon-slaying hero appears inmedieval romances aboutknights-errant,[12] such as the RussianDobrynya Nikitich. In some variants ofTristan and Iseult,Tristan winsIseult for his uncle, KingMark of Cornwall, by killing a dragon that was devastating her father's kingdom; he has to prove his claim when the king's steward claims to be the dragon-slayer.[13]Ludovico Ariosto took the concept up intoOrlando Furioso using it not once but twice: the rescue ofAngelica by Ruggiero, andOrlando rescuing Olimpia. The monster that menaced Olimpia reconnected to the Greek myths; although Ariosto described it as a legend to the characters, the story was that the monster sprung from an offense againstProteus. In neither case did he marry the rescued woman to the rescuer.Edmund Spenser depicts St. George inThe Faerie Queene, but while Una is a princess who seeks aid against a dragon, and her depiction in the opening with a lamb fits the iconography of St. George pageants, the dragon imperils her parents' kingdom, and not her alone. Many tales of dragons, ending with the dragon-slayer marrying a princess, do not precisely fit this cliché because the princess is in no more danger than the rest of the threatened kingdom.
An unusual variant occurs inChild ballad 34,Kemp Owyne, where the dragonis the maiden; the hero, based onYwain from Arthurian legend, rescues her from thetransformation with three kisses.[14]
Mythological comparativist Julien d'Huy ran an analytical study of the antiquity and diffusion of the snake- or dragon-battling mytheme in different cultural traditions.[15]
Scholarship suggests a connection between the episode of the dragon-slaying by the hero and the journey on an eagle's back, akin to the Mesopotamian myth ofEtana.[16]
In the 1959 animated filmSleeping Beauty,Walt Disney concluded the tale by having thewicked fairyMaleficent transform herself into a dragon to withstand the prince, converting the fairy tale to one with the princess and dragon theme.[17]
InIan Fleming'sDr. No, both the book and film versions feature a tank in the shape of a dragon that protectsDr. No's island from superstitious intruders.James Bond andHoneychile Rider are menaced by the "dragon", destroy it, have their friend Quarrel killed and are captured by the crew of the Dragon tank. Ann Boyd's 1967 bookThe Devil with James Bond explores the theory of the updating of the Princess and dragon genre.[citation needed]
In modernfantasy works, the dragon may hold the princess captive instead of eating her.Patricia Wrede spoofed this concept inDealing with Dragons.
A feminist subversion of the concept for young readers isRobert Munsch'sThe Paper Bag Princess, in which a princess outwits a dragon to save a prince (her betrothed, whom she proceedsnot to marry upon him insulting her makeshift clothing instead of thanking her).
InJay Williams's taleThe Practical Princess, a dragon demands that a king should sacrifice his daughter to him so that he will leave the rest of the kingdom alone. But the princess saves herself by making a "princess dummy" out of straw and filling it with boiling pitch and tar. The princess dresses thestraw dummy in one of her own gowns, then goes to the dragon's cave where she offers herself as a sacrifice. The unwitting dragon swallows the dummy whole, and the pitch and tar explode inside the dragon's stomach, killing him. Afterwards, the princess observes, "Dragons are not very smart."
In theIsaac Asimov short storyPrince Delightful and the Flameless Dragon, it is revealed that Dragons used to be slain as part of a passage from princehood to adulthood, though after a while, they became a protected species. Contrary to popular myth, they do not eat princesses as they tend to smell of cheap perfume and give indigestion.
In animated television seriesWander Over Yonder episode, "The Hero", Sir Brad Starlight, the bumbling knight who believes in fairy tales, sets off to rescue the princess from the dragon king. However, it turns out that the princess and the dragon king are in love with each other and are engaged to marriage; as the dragon himself is actually a good guy and the princess herself does not need to be rescued.[18]
In his study on the historical roots of thewondertale, Russian scholarVladimir Propp interpreted the dragonslaying tale (ATU 300) as aninversion of the ancient ritual of a maiden sacrifice to a river to ensure good crops. Propp speculated that, in regards to this practice, the hero would be seem as a "profaner" of the ritual, but, as time passed, the maiden sacrifice was discarded and the hero was elevated.[19]
In some stories, mostly in more recent literary works, the cliché involving princesses and dragons is somehow twisted to create a more exciting or humorous effect. For example, inThe Paper Bag Princess, the princess came to realize that her prince was even more obnoxious than the dragon, and refused to go with him, preferring to skip off into the setting sun alone instead. In some versions, the princess may also befriend, tame, personally defeat, or even be turned into a dragon herself. Indeed, there are a few examples when a curse or spell transforms a princess into a dragon or similar creature (e.g. an alligator, giant bird, or fictional reptile species). In such stories, the transformed princess usually aids her sweetheart in a battle against a force of evil. InThe Swan Princess, for example, Princess Odette is transformed into aswan, and she helps her lover triumph in a battle against the sorcerer Rothbart, who has the power to transform himself into a hideous beast (a manifestation of alion,wolf,bear andbat).
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