Essay Questions

What is thematically significant about Mia’s favorite musical being Disney’s Beauty and the Beast?

Disney’s animated film and the Broadway musical adapted from it as well as the fairy tale upon which the story is based all tale a tale as old as time: things are not always what they appear to be. Everyone in the castle is terrified of the Beast and he is viewed as a monster, while at the same time everyone in the village thinks highly of Gaston when he actually is a monster. The entire plot of the musical revolves around the idea of deceptive appearances, secret truths, and transformation. That also describes the entire plot of The Princess Diaries.

How does Michael’s opinion about Beauty and the Beast foreshadow the relationship between him and Mia?

When Mia shares her list of the three requirements necessary for her to sleep with Josh Richter to Michael, the only one that seems to trouble him is the final one: Josh must take her to a performance of Beauty and the Beast and not make fun of it. By this point it should seem clear enough to readers that Josh chooses to gloss over the first two (having dated for a year and Josh pledging his undying love to Mia) as things that aren’t never going to happen in a million years which is why he reacts to the third one with the snarky comment that nobody “with an ounce of testosterone” could possibly sit through the musical without vomiting. In this scene Michael has taken on the role of Beast while subjugating Josh to the role of Gaston. Through the use of irony, Michael—the sensitive artistic type—is performing in the role of the Beast by pre-emptively forcing Mia to question the masculinity of Josh—the insensitive jock—should he actually be able to meet her final requirement for qualification of going all the way. Just as in her favorite musical, eventually Mia will be going all the way with this Beast who isn’t really so beastly.

Which title character in Beauty and the Beast does Mia likely connect with more strongly?

There is no getting around it: The Princess Diaries is a modern-day reconstruction of the Cinderella fairy tale. But that is the easy way to analyze the novel. The significance of the fact that it the fairy tale that is most explicitly mentioned by name is Beauty and the Beast rather than Cinderella should not be casually dismissed because, at a certain level, it is perhaps as equally relevant to interpretation as Cinderella. What is interesting—though only to be expected—is that it is almost certainly not Belle with whom Mia connects so strongly with that she keeps going back to see the show again and again. Mia is the Beast, plain and simple. He is really a prince, but looks like a monster and she is really the Princess of Genovia but hardly looks the part.

Within the thematic blueprint of transformation of Mia's favorite musical, it is the Beast that most directly mirrors the transformation of Mia in her own story even more so than Cinderella. Cinderella is destined to become a princess only through a transformation which leads to marriage, but Mia is already a princess just like the Beast is already a prince. It is not the transformation of their outward appearances that makes them so. That outward transformation only makes who they really are inside suddenly become apparent to the outside world. Thus, both Mia and the Beast are actually insiders forced to play the of outsider through which they learn the important lessons that will guide them once they take publicly assumed their role of insider.