The Princess
protagonist · human · the sleeper
The girl the whole story is about, who is asleep for most of it and has no name at all.
How we meet them
As a reason for a party. She is a baby being given gifts by strangers and has no say in any of it.
Personality
Curious in the one way that matters, and perfectly unbothered when she wakes.
What they want
To find out what is at the top of the stairs. That is the whole of it, and it is enough.
How they change
From a baby who is given every gift and asked nothing, to a girl who touches the one thing in the kingdom nobody explained to her, to a young woman who wakes after a century and immediately complains about the wait.
How they speak
Almost nothing, and then one of the best lines in the story, which is a complaint.
How the story treats them
Everybody adores her and nobody asks her anything. The kingdom rearranges itself around her twice, once by burning every spinning wheel and once by growing a forest, and she is not consulted on either occasion.
One surprising thing
She has no name in Perrault. Aurora is the name of her daughter in the second half, and it only became the princess's own name much later, through Tchaikovsky's ballet.
If they were real today
She would be the one who touched the wet paint. Everybody had been told. She had not.
Key moments
Can I try
She finds an old woman spinning in a tower nobody uses, and asks to have a go, because she has never seen anybody spin and nobody ever told her why.
“She asked if she could try.”
You have kept me waiting
She opens her eyes after a hundred years, looks at a complete stranger kneeling by the bed, and greets him as though he is late.
“Is it you. You have kept me waiting.”
Four hours
They talk for four hours and do not get through half of it, which is the only detail the story gives about what she is actually like.
Who they know
The Seventh Fairyguardian
She is the only person in the story who thinks about what waking up would actually be like.
The King's Sonfriend
They meet at the exact moment the clock runs out, and she blames him for the wait.
Characters like The Princess
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