Rags To Royalty / Anime & Manga

• Nadja Applefield from Ashita no Nadja is a big case of Sleeping Beauty. Nadja was raised in an English Orphanage of Love and always believed her parents died of illness; when she's about to turn 13 and leave, however, she's sent a trunk with her mom's very fine belongings and a card that says her mother is actually alive. What is not exactly explained in the card is that said mother is a member of an extremely rich and noble clan in Austria... and that many people want Nadja out of the way since she's the biggest candidate to be the heiress of said clan. Even when she only wants to find her beloved mother. From the moment Nadja finds out and leaves her Orphanage of Love to work with the Dandelion Troupe, she goes from Sleeping Beauty to Snow White: one of her goals is learning more about her mother and her biological family, as well as meeting up with her.
• In Attack on Titan, Krista Lenz is actually a Heroic Bastard unaware of their true heritage. She's actually Historia Reiss, the only surviving child of the real King that rules the lands within the Walls. After this is discovered, the Survey Corps plans a coup d'état to overthrow the corrupt elements of the government with them as a new figurehead. The rebellion succeeds, with Historia taking the throne and immediately going about addressing many of the injustices in society. She frees the people long trapped in the underground slums, settling them on land seized from corrupt officials. She re-purposes this land for orphanages and farmland, providing for her people after many years of oppression and starvation.
• The Band of the Hawk from Berserk are minor The Hard Way, as they're all common mercenaries elevated to knighthood. Griffith, however, is the biggest example (but also partly Cinderella). At his highest point he had a good chance of marrying Princess Charlotte and becoming heir to the kingdom. This is portrayed fairly realistically, though, as Griffith does have to deal with a couple of assassination attempts by disgruntled nobles. Its subverted when Griffith goes through a Heroic BSoD, gets captured and tortured by the King, and the Band of the Hawk become outlaws.
  • Ends up being a Double Subversion in Griffith's case, after much time and plot developments; he is now the leader of a reformed, even stronger Band of the Hawk (which is like that mainly because most of the Apostles are part of it), he's again set to marry Charlotte, is viewed by commoners, nobles and the Church of the Holy See as a messiah, and has miraculously established a new capital called Falconia on the site of Midland's old capital, now the site of The World Tree (what Emperor Ganishka became after Griffith tricked the Skull Knight into striking him with his Behelit sword) which is probably the only safe haven in the world now that all the creatures and monsters of myth and legend are again fact, and most are extremely hostile to humans (another intended consequence of the aforementioned strike). Not bad for someone who just a few years before was reduced to almost nothing in every sense of the word. All he had to do was stike a Deal with the Devil, activate the Egg of the King, and sacrifice all those he cared about to be devoured body and soul by The Legions of Hell to become a Demon Lord himself.
• Code Geass:
  • Empress Marianne would be a definite Cinderella case, a commoner by birth who rose to prominence as one of the Knights of the Round, before becoming one of The Emperor's imperial consorts.
  • Her children Lelouch and Nunnally also fit into this trope, as Snow Whites. They know they're royals, but have been sent away to the former Japan and then to a Boarding School for rich kids and thus few people (at the start) know who they truly are. Both Lelouch and Nunnally become Emperor and Empress respectively, while Lelouch posing as The Caligula by usurping the throne, all for world peace, while Nunnally stats her way as a potential The High Queen shortly after Lelouch's Thanatos Gambit, ushering the said era of peace.
• From Fushigi Yuugi, there's You Houki. She was a poor farm girl, taking care of her ailing father, when she was asked to join the emperor's harem (much to the ire of her former boyfriend Suu, later revealed to be a Goose Guy and Hotohori's half-brother). She didn't want to go at first, but her father pressured her saying she'd have a better life. Hotohori eventually chooses her to be his Empress Consort, and after he dies, she becomes a kind Empress Dowager who supports their son and future Emperor.
• Gundam Build Fighters provides a Cinderella-type with Aila Jyrkiäinen. After spending most of her childhood and teen years either destitute or under the thumb of those looking to exploit her unique abilities, she was ultimately transported to Arian, where she would eventually wed the Kingdom's crown prince, Reiji.
• A Cinderella-type, coupled with a Satchel Switcheroo and a complete idiot forms the basis for the Gag Series Himesama Goyoujin (Princess Be Careful).
• Vivio of Lyrical Nanoha is a Sleeping Beauty, being the clone of an Ancient Belkan king. She probably also wishes that she never found out about who she was considering how she hates being addressed as "Your Highness" and prefers others to just treat her as an ordinary (if exceptionally skilled) 9-year old.
• Deconstructed, like every other trope, in Martian Successor Nadesico: Little Miss Snarker Ruri learns that she's the long lost princess of a Lichtenstein-like Ruritania, finally meets the biological family she'd always wondered about, and promptly decides they're a bunch of idiots and wants nothing further to do with them.
• Somewhat special case in Mei-chan no Shitsuji as Shinonome Mei whose family is described as 'just getting by' finds out she's actually the heir to the very rich Houga family after her parents are killed in an accident, and her friend and classmate Shibata Kento comes from a family of butlers that serve her family.
• Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch:
  • Lucia is a Sleeping Beauty in the manga (though she finds out her lineage very early) and a Snow White in the anime. Hanon, Rina and Caren are Snow Whites as well throughout the series.
  • Kaitou turns out to be a Sleeping Beauty, as the lost prince of a destroyed mermaid kingdom who was adopted by humans as a child.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: in the original game, Maria went from a commoner to being married to one of numerous nobles. However, even in this altered timeline it's noted that she's still going to end up with practically royal status based on her own merits because of her rare and powerful magic.
• My-Otome:
  • There's a reasonably clever subversion in the anime. From the start we're expected to figure out that Mashiro isn't the real princess - meanwhile, the main character, Arika, conspicuously has the same birthday and a prerequisite necklace and all. But as it turns out, that's a Red Herring, and in fact, it's Nina, the Rival Turned Evil, who unbeknowst to all was the princess. The scene in which Big Bad Nagi finds out is priceless. Ultimately thanks to Character Development, Mashiro turns out to be the one best suited to be a princess anyway. My-Otome Zwei hints that Mashiro might be a legit heir after all — she greatly resembles the Queen of Windbloom from 300 years ago.
  • The manga has a good subversion as well. The "Mashiro" we know in the story is an impostor for the real (deceased) Mashiro, that was clear from the first chapter. Then it turns out the real Mashiro isn't dead. THEN it turns out the impostor was Mashiro's twin brother, secreted away Sleeping Beauty style in case Mashiro went insane and/or died. In a few chapters he went from an impostor to nobody to the sole heir of Windbloom (once the real Mashiro bit the dust for realsies, anyway).
• Naruto is a mix between the Cinderella and the Sleeping Beauty types. First he starts as an outcast orphan who was regarded as a no-good troublemaker without a future. Then he slowly grows up into a respectable and eventually idolized figure as his achievements grow. Then it is revealed that not only was his late father the Fourth Hokage, but that his late mother's family was also related to the Senju, making him also related to the First, Second AND Fifth Hokage. In layman's terms, he has the blood of FOUR of the ninja equivalent of kings in his veins. But none of this is actually addressed by anyone in the manga. Then again, his relation to the Senju clan is incredibly distant. It isn't as distant as his mother's connection was, considering Mito Uzumaki married the First Hokage and is Tsunade's grandmother. In The Last: Naruto the Movie and the epilogue of the manga, he got Happily Married to Hinata, the eldest heiress of the Hyuga clan and the Byakugan Princess, so he married into royalty. Also in the epilogue, he becomes Hokage himself, further cementing his place in this trope.
• Asuna and Negi of Negima! Magister Negi Magi are both Sleeping Beauty types, turning out to both be members of the royal family of the Vespertatia Kingdom in the Magic World. It subverts the Genre Blind guardian bit, as they were probably both safer before they started getting involved with their legacies.
  • In the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, it's revealed that the Narutaki twins Fuka and Fumika picked up a pair of animals which turned out to be princes from the Magic World. Within five years they were married and already had their first kids.
  • Similarly, Cute Bookworm Satomi Hakase is implied to have become a Cinderella. She's a very smart student from Earth who's all but stated to have married a much older man in a very high position of political power in the Magical World. Said man is none other than governor Kurt Godel.
• In One Piece, in the Dressrosa arc, the Toy Soldier/Kyros was revealed to be a lowly street thug before marrying Rebecca's mother, Scarlett and becoming a member of royalty. However, it's subverted since Scarlett gave up her status as a princess and faked her death (with her family's help) so she could marry him. Kyros was never officially a member of the royal family.
• Ōoku: The Inner Chambers:
  • Chie went from an illegitimate daughter of Shogun Iemitsu the Elder (that he refused to even acknowledge) to the center of an El Cid Ploy to hide her father's death until she could produce a male heir to assuming power herself as Shogun Iemitsu the Younger, the first of the female shoguns.
  • Chikako went from a person who officially didn't exist (her mother covered up her birth to hide the fact that a child of Emperor Ninko was born missing a hand) to consort of Shogun Iemochi after swapping places with her brother Prince Kazu, who willingly went to hide in a monastery because he didn't wish to marry.
• Project A-Ko: C-ko is a long-lost alien princess. Sixteen years earlier, her people lost her, and she ended up crashing down to Earth. They do eventually find her, leading to this discovery (and invoking this trope).
• Reborn! (2004) uses this trope in the form of a "Rapunzel Style". Sawada Tsunayoshi is a normal high-schooler until the hitman tutor shows up at his doorstep and tells him he's a candidate for the tenth generation boss of a mafia. Hilarity ensues.
• In Reborn to Master the Blade, protagonist Inglis's first life was as an orphaned boy who became a mercenary to survive, eventually developing fighting prowess, leadership skills, and political acumen to successfully found a kingdom and make it prosper until his inevitable death. In her second life, she finds herself born as the daughter of a Knight-Captain and thus already nobility, but she has no desire to become royalty once more; if anything, now she just wants to be a Squire to her cousin, Rafinha.
• There are three in The Rose of Versailles:
  • Jeanne de la Motte/Valois, a Cinderella type (in the very fictionalized manga/anime and Real Life). And the most twisted Cinderella ever. A beautiful peasant girl raised by the seamstress Nicole Lamorliere, she claims to be a long lost Valois princess and manages to get an old noblewoman to listen to her plight, then kills her benefactor to inherit her riches. It gets worse, and worse, and worse...
  • Jeanne's stepsister Rosalie Lamorliere is a sort of Sleeping Beauty type. Her mother gave Rosalie up to the aforementioned Nicole Lamorliere (who apparently was her former maid) when she was a teenage girl and Rosa was a baby, thus Rosalie has no idea of how her biological mom has gone Rags to Riches in the meantime and considers herself the biological daughter of Nicole for a long while. she later becomes the confidant and companion of Oscar Francois the Jerjays, a very high-ranked noblewoman.
  • And to finish the thread, Rosalie's aforementioned biological mother, Yolande Martine Gabrielle de Polastron aka the Duchess of Polignac was a Cinderella, also both here and in Real Life (though the ROV version was... highly fictionalized too). She was a minor noblewoman born in an Impoverished Patrician family and married to an equally impoverished count but she used her beauty, charm, singing talent and manipulation tactics to become Marie-Antoinette's poisonous friend.)
• In Sailor Moon:
  • Usagi/Serena is a Sleeping Beauty, being a reincarnated princess with the forces that destroyed her kingdom hot on her heels. She does find out the bad guys are after her early on, but not that she's a princess until late in the first season/arc.
  • Her boyfriend/future husband Mamoru is a Gender Flip Sleeping Beauty, he eventually finds out he was heir apparent to the Earth Kingdom back in the past.
  • And in the manga, all the main senshi are Sleeping Beauties, former princesses of their respective planets. (Except Pluto, who is probably closer to a Snow White since she never lost her memories of the Silver Millennium, and spent her time guarding the Door of Time.)
  • Chibiusa is a Snow White type, coming back in time to before her mother rose to power to receive senshi training and having to live like a civilian with Usagi and her family. Subverted in the sense that the senshi already know she's a princess. After all, she's Mamoru and Usagi's future daughter, though they don't learn that detail until later.
  • Princess Kakyuu is also a Snow White, who made her way to Earth to find either Sailor Moon or the Light of Hope (depending on what continuity one looks at) after Shadow Galactica attacked her home planet.
• Sumi Kitamura from Stepping on Roses. She's a Sleeping Beauty because she's Aiko, the sister of her arranged husband Soichirou's rival Nozomu Iijuin; she went lost as a very little girl, and was found by a then teen-aged Eisuke Kitamura in a rose garden.
• Esther Blanchett of Trinity Blood is a Sleeping Beauty type. She is the daughter of the late Crown Prince Gilbert of Albion who was spirited away after her parents' assassination by the knight, Edward White, to protect her and raised by the Bishop Laura Vitez to be a nun, unaware of her true lineage. The anime ends with her origins being revealed and her succeeding her grandmother as queen.
• Youko Nakajima from The Twelve Kingdoms is a Sleeping Beauty who started out the series as an Ordinary High-School Student, became Trapped in Another World and then discovered that she was actually the appointed ruler of one of the series' titular countries. Unlike many Rags to Royalty stories, this one doesn't end with her getting the throne—she has to fight wars, consolidate her power and deal with the treacherous nobles and officials who plot to overthrow her.
  • Similarly, Naotaka Komatsu aka Shoryuu was another Sleeping Beauty... sorta. He was a nobleman on Earth, but by the time he found out he was the appointed ruler of the Kingdom of En, he had lost everything in a brutal local war, making him a sort-of Goose Guy. Then he switched to Sleeping Beauty as he was revealed to be the King, and like Youko he had to fight off treacherous courtesans and officers to make sure he wouldn't lose either his power or his life.
• Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle has an unusual variation of this trope: everyone knows that Lux and Airi are the last surviving royalty of the Old Empire, including themselves. They have no power because the Old Empire no longer exists. But at the end of the series, Lux becomes king of the New Kingdom thanks to a variety of factors, like Lux's military achievements and the previous ruler's downfall.
• In Vampire Knight Yuki Cross turns out to be Yuki Kuran, one of the last pure blood vampires in existence and heir to the wealthy Kuran family.

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