Then she hands me this book. She tells me she wants me to write down my feelings in this book, since, she says, I obviously don't feel I can talk about them with her.
She wants me to write down my feelings? Okay, I’ll write down my feelings.
I CAN’T BELIEVE SHE’S DOING THIS TO ME!
Like everybody doesn’t already think I’m a freak. I’m practically the biggest freak in the entire school. I mean, let’s face it: I’m five foot nine, flat-chest, and a freshman. How much more of a freak could I be?
The “she” is Mia’s mother. The thing which occurs before the then is Mia’s mother telling her daughter she doesn’t feel as though she’s being entirely honest. And so we have here the origin and genesis of the diary that makes up the narrative centerpiece of the title. This is where it all begins, in a moment of a sincerity and overreaction. Mia’s mother simply wants her daughter to begin being honest with herself, really, more than her with her. After all, you don’t give somewhere a diary in order for them to be honest with you. Do you? (Hint: not unless you are one very insecure beast.)
"You're not Mia Thermopolis anymore, honey," he said. Because I was born out of wedlock, and my mom doesn't believe in what she calls the cult of the patriarchy, she gave me her last name instead of my dad's.
As the opening indicates, Mia is a freshman in high school. Unless she is some kind of savant—and she’s not—that means she is around the thirteen/fourteen mark in age. Not a really long time chronologically, true, but in terms what occurs in those years, it is probably the most event-filled near-decade-and-a-half in anyone’s life. From nothing to crawling to walking to running to maybe even driving a car a little if you’ve got a cool parent. Mia does have one of those, but she also has a parent who is a bona fide prince. And is with the very next thing he tells her that she learns those thirteen or fourteen years have been a lie. Because she is, in reality, the Princess of Genovia. That’s the kind of moment that diaries were created for.
Somebody ought to warn the president she's here. I mean it; he really ought to know. Because if anybody could start World War III, it's my grandmother.
The reality of the situation is that Mia’s mom is utterly ill-prepared to guide her from gawky teen to Princess of Genovia. As for her father, well, remember what she wrote about her mom: the patriarchy likes to control everything, but they don’t know squat about how to actually go about it. Therefore, it all falls to the woman that Mia describes as more frightening than Freddy Kruger and that hockey-wearing freak from Friday the 13th put together: Grandmère. That’s French for grandmother and even though at first it hardly seems applicable, eventually it makes sense. At any rate, the meat of the domestic relationship in the story is not really that between Mia and her parents, but rather the slow realization that her grandmother isn’t as terrifying as she at first seems. And, after all, who is she going to rely upon to teach her how to be a princess? Her father? Good luck with that no matter what crown you might be the heir to.
