YA Spring Break Week: Guest Blogger Diana Peterfreund

UPDATE: The winner of an ARC of TAP & GOWN is nightdweller20. Please email your physical address to contests @ knightagency.net (remove the spaces in the email addy). Congrats!

THE MYTH OF PRINCE CHARMING

I never liked Prince Charming.

You remember him. That generic, stock character, two-timing Prince that snagged both Snow White and Cinderella in the Disney movies? He didn’t have a name, he didn’t have his own lines, he didn’t even have complex animated eyes (how you can tell you’re a real character in a Disney movie: irises.)

Though in the traditional fairy tales, PC goes onto to land Sleeping Beauty, too, the brilliant team behind the Disney version saw fit to grace him with both a name (Phillip) and an identifiable personality (his first appearance on screen features him, as a freckled child, wrinkling up his nose at the wrinkly infant princess he’s betrothed to). They also gave the Princess a name (Aurora), and they both, thank God, skipped over Coraline-style black button eyes.

Is it any wonder that Briar Rose/Aurora and Phillip’s love story was the first one that I, even as a youth, actually bought? They were in love before the curse hits, and you could see why they were actually a good match – so outdoorsy, and musical. When Phillip fights the dragon and frees Aurora, you feel like the two of them actually deserve their happily ever after. They are a real couple, one whose romance rings true.

“Prince Charming,” on the other hand is not a character to fall in love with; he’s a prize to be won. Get your foot in that glass slipper, look pretty enough in that glass coffin, and Prince Charming’s all yours. Consciousness? Him knowing your name? Eh, not important.

Talk about shallow!

You can’t fall in love with perfect and bland, and that’s all Prince Charming has to offer. No wonder he only hits on chicks in comas, or girls for whom the alternative is working as slaves for evil stepmoms. Any other girl would tell him to take a hike. It’s all in the name.

Prince = I’m rich, baby. Wealth and power, that’s right. You know you want it.
Charming = Handsome? Why yes, I suppose I am. I certainly have all the palace wenches after me.

Yeah. What a prize. I’d lay good odds on the idea that Prince Charming is the kind of guy who turns into scary abusive husband when his Princess Charming doesn’t stay as submissive and obedient as she was when she was unconscious. No. Thank. You.

Prince Charming was the template for the hero in the old fashioned romance novels. You know the ones, where the guy totally ignored the girl for the entire book and then three pages from the end comes back and explains why he was in love with her all the time? Yeah, I wasn’t a fan of those, either. He didn’t get a personality of his own. Again, he was just a prize to be won. It’s a common flaw in many chick lit novels, as well. A chick lit novel is about the heroine’s journey – I get that – but far too often, we see gorgeous guy just fall out of the woodwork at the end and be madly in love with the heroine. For no reason. With no real personality of his own. And, most of all, with no insight into why these two should be together.

Hey, I’m cool with writing stories where the romance is not the main focus. I do that myself. I’m even cool with the ending of “now that you, heroine, have your personal issues sorted out, I will award you with a new job, a fab apartment, a closet filled with the shoes of your choice, and oh, look, a gorgeous guy.” Romance-as-reward works for me, but it has to also make sense. A shoe can be beautiful and simple and perfect. Real people seldom are.

If there is a romance in the book, it should have a reason for existing. I need to know that there is something these two people see in one another for me to root for them to end up together. I need to believe there’s a reason these two are in love before I can believe that they actually are. It doesn’t need to be grand. It doesn’t need to be epic. Sometimes people are in love for very quiet, prosaic reasons. Common experiences. Mutual concern for a child. Shared passion for bird-watching, foreign films, or finding the perfect crème brulee. Whatever it is.

Do you know who doesn’t have these things? Prince Charming. He has no personality of his own. You can’t love that. Not really. I prefer Prince Charming-But-Damaged, or Prince Not-Really-All-That-Charming-But-Has-a-Good-Heart. Or a Good Right Hook. Or Your Back In A Fight. Those are the kind of princes who really make for Happily Ever Afters.

Be one of the first fans to read TAP & GOWN (Delta, May 2009)! Enter to win a signed ARC (advanded reading copy) by leaving your name in the comment section. The winner will be announced tomorrow morning.

Also coming soon from Diana: RAMPANT (Harper Teen, August 2009): Astrid Llewelyn has always scoffed at her eccentric mother’s stories about killer unicorns. But when one of the monsters attacks her boyfriend in the woods – thereby ruining any chance of him taking her to prom – Astrid learns that unicorns are real and dangerous, and she has a family legacy to uphold. Her mother packs her off to Rome to train as a unicorn hunter at the ancient cloisters the hunters have used for centuries. However, at the cloisters, all is not what is seems. Outside, the unicorns wait to attack. And within, Astrid faces other, unexpected threats: from crumbling, bone-covered walls that vibrate with a terrible power to the hidden agendas of her fellow hunters to – perhaps most dangerously of all – her growing attraction to a handsome art student… and a relationship that could jeopardize everything.

www.DianaPeterfreund.com