Headscratchers / The Princess Diaries

Books

• What the hell was this books series timeline anyway? In no way you can have shitty dial-up internet in your freshman year and then in your senior year everyone has fancy smartphones...
  • The same kind of timeline where you can be talking to the elevator operator in 4th grade and instant message your friend in 7th grade

Movies

• In both films, Queen Clarice seems to be ruling as queen in her own right, despite the fact that she said she cannot rule because she's only royal by marriage. There is no country in history that passes power to a monarch's spouse rather than a monarch's blood relatives. So, what's going on? As much as I try to rectify the more probable situation (that Mia's already queen and Clarice is serving as regent during Mia's minority), it just doesn't add up. Mia is consistently referred to as princess when she should in fact already be queen, coronation or not. And Clarice is treated as a queen regnant, not as the queen consort she actually is. So... what gives?
  • My theory is this: that when Mia's father, Queen Clarisse's son, died, he left the regency in the hands of his mother until Mia would come of age. This has happened in other countries throughout history, where the royal-by-marriage fits into the role of regent until the heir reaches maturity. For instance, consider Anne of Austria and her son, Louis XIV of France, as Louis XIII died when his son was only four.
  • This seems to be something of an Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole compared to the book - where the father was still alive but sterile from cancer and couldn't produce heirs. But going from the above theory, this does make sense with the Baron and Baroness characters' attitudes towards Mia. If she turns down the job of being a princess, then they inherit. So Clarisse only has power as long as Mia is to inherit the throne.
    • Except this issue with the Succession Crisis exists in the books, too, where Clarisse is the Dowager Princess of Genovia, meaning her husband has died, and her son (Mia's father) is still Prince. Who is ruling Genovia?!
  • We're sort of skipping the middle bit of this plot hole, which is that Mia's father is referred to as Crown Prince of Genovia and Clarisse is still ruling, despite the fact her husband has died and all evidence suggests she is Queen Consort. Mia's father should have been King and her being heir presumptive should have been an issue that would have presented itself years ago. It's plausible, given the marriage stipulation in the second film that applies only to princesses, that Genovia has male-preference primogeniture, and like in the book, it was expected that Philippe was to go on to have a male heir...but you'd think once Mia reached her teens and there still wasn't a male heir after her, that there would have been discussions with Helen about easing Mia into her role as princess.
  • After The Reveal, Helen does say that the plan was to tell Mia when she was eighteen years old. It's stated that King Rupert only died a year ago, and then Philippe only died two months ago. So perhaps for the last year, Genovia had all these legal procedures to sort through before Philippe could become king. We don't get clarification on how he specifically died, and Clarisse just says "that terrible accident." Maybe the accident itself wasn't fatal but it left him in a coma or with lingering problems he eventually passed away from. And outside of that, legal proceedings can often take longer than expected, so it might have taken them that year or few months to decide on approaching Mia about becoming the heir (there may have been opposition from the Baron and Baroness's side that Mia would be illegitimate since her parents were divorced and thus didn't have a claim).
    • Except there is no legal procedure for succession that would mean things are in limbo until that's completed—that would cause chaos, as a country would be left without a Head of State for an undetermined amount of time. The new monarch might not be formally crowned yet, but they still take over the title and duties. Whether or not Phillipe was "in a coma," he still would have become King Phillipe upon the death of his father, King Rupert, and Mia would become heir presumptive. While it's plausible that Mia might not yet be eligible to be a full reigning monarch because she's a minor, she would still inherit the title of Queen after Phillipe's death and have a regent. Who may or may not be her grandmother. The Succession Crisis in the films is weird.
  • Well, Genovia is a fictional country. It's possible that they just have unusual laws when it comes to succession. (After all, the marriage law itself is a strange and antiquated law in its own right — who's to say it's the only abnormal law the country has?)
    • Except if Genovia had "unusual laws" regarding succession, there wouldn't be the Succession Crisis the story is based on. It's implied they follow at least the basic framework every other constitutional monarchy follows.
• In the first film, Lana forces Mia to take off her hat by asking the teacher if the school hadn't banned wearing hats on class. But what if Mia had some kind of disease like cancer and that's why she was wearing a hat? The teacher shouldn't suppose that if Mia had a hat was for some reason?
  • She wouldn't have gotten cancer and lost all her hair since YESTERDAY. If she needed it for a reason, her parents would have spoken to the school.
  • And the teacher taking that class is dating her mother. If there were health issues, he's probably thinking that he would know.
• In the first film, the paparazzi who took photos of Mia in a towel shouldn't be charged of child pornography possession? Yes, Mia wasn't photographed naked, but she wasn't wearing anything under her towel and if Lana and her friends had pulled down the tent a little before, they could have photographed her wearing nothing and she was underage. At the very least, they couldn't be sued for it?
  • Possibly because Mia was covered up by the towel, they might get Off on a Technicality. But it seems that Clarisse isn't the sort of person to demand to press charges for things like this - as that would draw even more attention to the fact that the princess has an embarrassing photo in the paper. As this is 2001 and the internet isn't as widespread as it is today, it's possible Clarisse expects the story will blow over if they don't draw any more attention to it - since it's confined to just the newspapers. A lawsuit can take months, and the press would definitely cover it - frequently reminding the public that Mia was photographed in such a state. So maybe this is just a situation where they decide to pick their battles.
  • Clarisse does say she's doing damage control with the press, so maybe she did threaten legal action if they didn't pull the pictures and the stories.
• Threatening to take Mia downtown after she backs into the trolley? Yes, she was driving without a license, but that's the only crime she committed. Didn't the fact that Mia had the emergency brake 'in her hand' clue the police in to the fact that it was an accident, and she had tried to stop? What's this "destruction of public property" charge that Queen Clarisse had to bullshit Mia's way out of?
  • Well yes, Mia was driving without a license in a faulty car. Sure it was an accident but the accident wouldn't have happened if Mia hadn't been driving in the first place. She's legally allowed to drive at fifteen years six months as long as she's supervised under controlled conditions - her supervised driver has an expired license and she was driving through a busy city.
    • But as Clarisse said, licenses don't expire in Genovia, at least not for the Queen. And Clarisse had diplomatic immunity.
    • Clarisse has diplomatic immunity, but that doesn't protect Mia from being arrested or charged, nor does it automatically mean she's qualified to supervise Mia (there's usually rules about who can supervise, and a foreign license might not cut it). So Mia may have still been committing a crime.
    • Also, a quirk of the legal system is that if an underlying action is illegal, that kind of casts a shadow on other things that happen as a consequence of that, even if they could also have happened to a law-abiding person. So the fact that it was illegal for Mia to be driving in the first place might mean that the system would look more harshly on her hitting the trolley — even if it was a true accident — than it would for a properly licensed driver, basically on the theory that she was only in the position for that to happen because she was already breaking the law.
  • Sometimes cops do just want to throw the book at the little guy, and maybe in the heat of the moment they didn't consider the possibilities. Once Clarisse makes a big show of celebrating them for upholding the law, they may have had a Heel Realization that they were going a bit too far in trying to discipline a girl for an obvious mistake that she presumably wouldn't do again and there was no one hurt.
    • Also, if you don't cite someone immediately in a traffic case, it's much harder to do so later. So, particularly given the scope of the incident, they may have been thinking that they'd take Mia to the station in order to get everything on the record right away, knowing they can more easily drop the charges later if the evidence is in Mia's favor.