Rags To Royalty / Film

• In In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, Farmer is a simple farmer with no aspirations other than to grow crops and be a good husband and father. When his son is killed and his wife captured by the Evil Sorcerer Big Bad, he goes to try to get her back and avenge his son. Meanwhile, the kingdom of Ehb is under siege from the sorcerer's mindless horde of creatures called the Krug. King Konreid meets Farmer and is told by his wizard that Farmer is his long-lost son. Farmer neither believes him nor does he care. During the first battle with the Krug, the king is betrayed and mortally wounded by his nephew Duke Fallow. On his deathbed, he convinces Farmer that the latter is his son. Farmer becomes King Camden Konreid.
• Jupiter Ascending has the titular Jupiter, illegal Russian immigrant maid who is secretly (genetically) the queen of Earth.
• The eponymous King Ralph is a male Cinderella, though he's not exactly sweeping princesses off their feet. Rather, he comes by his office by accident of birth, after every other member of the royal family dies in an explosion. He eventually finds proof that his chief advisor Cedric has more right to the throne than him, but initially refused the call because he feared being king and had no heirs. Ralph abdicates in Cedric's favor after securing a deal that ensured thousands of jobs for Brits, though considering Cedric's still childless, it's likely Ralph, or his son Ralph II, will inherit eventually anyway.
• Kingsman: The Golden Circle: Eggsy, who grew up poor and surrounded by degenerates, marries Tilde, crown princess of Sweden. Doubles, technically speaking, as a Warrior Prince.
• Maid in Manhattan, with Jennifer Lopez as a hotel maid (Cinderella), Ralph Fiennes as a Congressional candidate staying at the hotel (The Prince), Natasha Richardson and Amy Sedaris as airheaded socialites also lusting after him (the Wicked Stepsisters), Lopez' coworkers as a collective group of fairy godmothers, and the museum benefit where things come to a head (the Ball).
• The 1987 Ally Sheedy vehicle Maid to Order (1987) offers a modern King Thrushbeard in the story of Jessie Montgomery, a wild, spendthrift Beverly Hills heiress who is magically banished into the working class to learn humility, compassion, and the value of a buck, thanks to Stella, her Fairy Godmother.
• In The Man in the Iron Mask, Phillippe is in rags in prison. He ends up ruling France, with his Evil Twin Louis in prison.
• Overboard has a similar plot, only it was a case of accidental amnesia and the scheme of a lower class workman (that the spoiled heiress had earlier insulted) that sent her to live the life of a poor housewife. She regains her memory and wealth at the end of the story, and marries the poor workman after dumping the loathsome husband she'd had before the accident.
• Pan's Labyrinth has Ophelia as a Sleeping Beauty; she's the reincarnation of a fairy princess, but must pass many tests to prove she is still more royalty than human, and hasn't been corrupted by living among us. Word of God is it's all true, not a mere trick or her "escapism" method to try coping with a truly horrid life in the middle of the Spanish Civil War.
• The whole plot of The Prince & Me is that American medical student Paige falls in love with the young King Edvard of Denmark, and becomes a Cinderella who must find a way to prove her worth to the people of his country.
• A male example in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, where young Dastan, orphaned urchin, impresses the king by his courage and valor, thus becoming titular prince.
• The fantasy film Quest of the Delta Knights, which may be best remembered as having been shown on MST3K, had a Sleeping Beauty character. The two young heroes, Tee and Leonardo da Vinci, rescue a prostitute named Thena from having to spend the night with evil Lord Vultare. The trio are captured by a group of warriors from a neighboring country, the leader of whom takes Thena aside for a private interview. She tells him a short form of her life story, and he comes to the (rather incomprehensible) conclusion that she is none other than his own long-lost younger sister, Princess Athena.
• Spaceballs merges the Goose Girl and Cinderella types. Down-on-his-luck mercenary Lone Starr wins the heart of Princess Vespa, and then finds out that he's an orphaned prince just in time to marry her.
• Star Wars:
  • Han and Leia are a special case in that an insignificant smuggler of no importance ends up with the adopted daughter of a powerful nobleman from one of the oldest and most prestigious human planets, who already had her own career in the highest levels of galactic politics.
  • While far from poor, Emperor Palpatine started his life as a member of a small noble family of the lowest rank on the tiny backwater planet Naboo. Instead of working his way up through the political hierarchy of the Galaxy, he instead staged a conflict that made his people look like victims in the power plays of the major powers and showed the face of a humble older man just wishing to save his home, which got him enough of a sympathy bonus to be selected as a trustworthy and impartial caretaker for major reforms in the Galactic Republic.
  • If Star Wars Legends is taken into consideration, Han could be a descendant of the family that ruled Corellia in the distant past. Could because 1) the claimant to the throne Han's descended from could be an impostor, 2) number 1 could have just been said to make Han's heritage more opaque by his request, 3) Corellia's a democracy anyway at this point, and 4) the whole point of that was to prove that Han had the heritage and credentials to marry Princess Leia... but they weren't going to let anything stop them from doing that anyway, especially since the only real threat to their engagement found love elsewhere. If this is taken into consideration, it means their three children and granddaughter also are descendants of royalty. Then again, their granddaughter is already a Snow White, the lost heir to the Hapes Consortium.
• In The Wizard of Oz, the young farm girl Dorothy learns that she's the lost Princess Dorothea of Oz. Years ago, she was taken away and left on the doorstep of a couple.
• In the film Working Girl, Tess McGill starts as an overworked and unappreciated secretary living in Staten Island with a deadbeat boyfriend. By the movie's ending, she pulled off a major business merger, gained a new job and a Wall Street analyst lover.
  • Her first boyfriend wasn't a deadbeat, he had a perfectly good blue-collar job and before the movie ended had achieved his aim of owning his own boat. However he had no sympathy with her white-collar aspirations and he cheated on her.

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