Little Princess is a book series by Tony Ross, about a very spoiled princess. The first book, I Want My Potty (published 1986), was popular enough that it spun off an entire series of books, and resulted in King Rollo Productions creating an animated series based on the character. In 2006, The Illuminated Film Company (no relations to Illumination Entertainment) picked up the rights to produce a new animated series for the show; this series ran three seasons with a total of 100 episodes. The show is also so popular it overshadows the booksnote , and still repeats on Channel 5's Milkshake block in the UK to this day.
Not related to Alice Soft's Little Princess, and in fact targets a completely different audience. Not to be mistaken with A Little Princess, The Little Prince or LilPri. Not to be confused with Little Miss Princess, even if both are British.
Tony Ross' Little Princess consists of the following tropes:
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal:
- In “I Don’t Want to Go to the Hospital!”, a cat wears the Chef’s hat.
- In the Princess’s dream, then later at the party, in “I Want a Party!”, the pets wear party hats.
- In “I Want TWO Birthdays!”, Puss wears a pendant.
- In “I Want a Boyfriend!”, the Princess puts baby bonnets on the pets.
- Absent Animal Companion: In “I Want to Go Home!”, the family and servants have seven pet rabbits. However, they’re never seen again, and in “I Want a Bunny!”, the Princess not having a pet rabbit is a plot point.
- An Aesop: “I Want My Dinner!” has a moral about saying, “please”.
- Age-Appropriate Angst: Little Princess makes a big deal out of things, but lots of preschoolers do.
- Angry Dance: In “I Want My Dinner!”, when the Princess starts eating the monster’s dinner, he angrily stomps and waves his arms.
- Animal Lover: The Princess has never met an animal she didn't like. In fact, in "I Want a Sister", she initially wants another dog (specifically a puppy) instead of a sibling.
- Animated Adaptation: "I Want My Potty" was the first book of the series and came first, and the TV series came much later.
- Annoyingly Repetitive Child: In “I Want a Bedtime Story!”, the Princess annoys the adult residents of the castle (except the King, who’s away) by demanding more and more bedtime stories.
- Anthropomorphic Food: In “I Want a Bedtime Story!”, the King tells the Princess a story about a naughty, living sandwich, while the Gardener tells one about a carrot who’s afraid of the dark.
- Ate It All: Subverted – In “I Didn’t Do It!”, someone apparently eats all of the Chef’s chocolate cake. He thinks it was the Princess, but it was really the prince next door. Then, it turns out he saved the Princess a slice.
- Bad Mood Retreat: “I Didn’t Do It!” establishes that the Princess and the neighbour prince have a “Sulky Tree” to sit in when they sulk.
- Baffled by Own Biology: In "I Want My Tooth!", when the Princess gets her first loose tooth, she yells, "AAAHHHH!!! One WOBBLES!".
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: In one of the animated skits not part of the TV series, the Princess falls from a tree and her skirt blows up and she's not wearing underwear, but her vulva is not seen.
- Big "NO!": In “I Didn’t Do It!”, the Princess yells, “NOOOOO!” when the Admiral asks if she sunk all his (toy) ships.
- Birthday Episode: In “I Want Two Birthdays”, the Princess has a birthday and wishes it could be her birthday every day. She gets her wish, but comes to regret it when the adults run out of good presents to give her.
- Bittersweet Ending:
- In “I Want to Win!”, the Princess finally wins a trophy, without anyone throwing the match or having to cheat, but it’s just a small trophy for “trying the hardest”.
- ”I Want My Mum” – The Princess has overcome her clinginess toward the Queen and is having fun at a sleepover, but the Queen is crying because she misses her.
- Black Comedy Burst: Two in “I Don’t Want to Go to the Hospital!” – first, the General is tempted to remove the lump in the Princess’s nose with his sword, then the Princess is tied up in order to be taken to the hospital against her will.
- Blatant Lies: In “I Don’t Want to Go to Bed!”, the Princess lies that Gilbert (a stuffed bear) is thirsty, then that he’s afraid of monsters, to try to stall going to bed.
- Book Dumb: Downplayed for the Princess – “I Want to Win” establishes that she does badly in school, though no worse than the average four-year-old, and “I Feel Sick” has her trying to avoid going to school.
- Bratty Half-Pint: In “I Want My Dinner!”, the Princess angrily yells the title, so the Queen says, “Say please!”.
- Buffy Speak:
- “I Want TWO Birthdays!” has the pseudo-word “hmmmed”, meaning to say, “Hmmm”.
- In “I Want My Mum”, the Doctor owns two medicines labelled “Smelly Stuff” and “Sticky Stuff”.
- Bunnies for Cuteness: In “I Want a Bunny”, Petronella’s pet rabbit Chuckie is described as the “fluffiest, cutest, brownest bunny rabbit ever”, then the Princess’s rabbit Chalky is described as “the fluffiest, cutest, whitest bunny ever”.
- Calling Your Bathroom Breaks: Princess does this frequently. One story is even called "I Want My Potty".
- Camping Episode: In “I Want to Do it by Myself!”, the Princess tries to camp in the backyard, not accepting any help, but when she forgets several belongings including her tent, the adults help her behind her back.
- Cassandra Truth: In one of the books, the Little Princess is blamed for eating the Chef's chocolate cake, walking on the Maid's sheet, walking on the gardener's radishes, and muddying the house. She says she didn't do it, but nobody believes her. Turns out, the real culprit was their neighbour, a prince the princess's age. Though he did save her a piece of cake.
- Comically Missing the Point: In “I Want a Sister”, the Queen announces she’s pregnant by saying that there’s going to be “someone new in our family”. The Princess responds, “Oh goody! We’re going to get a dog!”.
- Dem Bones: The ghost boy from “I Want My Light On!” keeps a skeleton dog as a pet.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: In "I Want My Dinner!", the Princess brazenly tells a large monster off for not saying, "please" or "thank you".
- Disease-Prevention Aesop: In "I Don't Want to Wash My Hands", the Maid tells the Princess to wash her hands at certain intervals because of "germs and nasties", which she claims live "in the dirties and on the animals and in the sneezes".
- Does Not Like Spam: Subverted in “I Want My Mum”. The Princess claims to hate eggs, but she changes her mind when the Queen calls it a “dinosaur egg”.
- Downer Ending: “I Want My Potty” ends with the Princess wetting herself.
- Dramatic Irony:
- In “I Want to Do it by Myself!”, the Princess never finds out that the adults brought her the stuff she forgot.
- In “I Want My Dummy!”, the Princess never finds out that the Queen is the one taking her dummy.
- Episode Tagline:
- The book "I Want My Potty" has the Princess saying the title a lot but it also has "the potty's the place", which highlights the fact that it's about her learning to use the potty.
- In “I Want a Bedtime Story!”, everyone tells the Princess a story, but she just responds, “That’s not as good as Daddy’s story!”.
- In “I Want My Dinner!”, everyone says, “Say please”, and when the Princess gets what she wants, she says, “Lovely”.
- In “I Want My Light On!”, everyone says, “Don’t be silly, there are NO such things as ghosts!”.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Amusingly enough, the only regular characters that have actual names are Little Princess's pets, the dog Scruff and the cat Puss. The title character is called either "Princess" or "the Princess" on the show itself. There's also the King, the Queen, the Chef, the Prime Minister, the Admiral, the gardener and the general. Some of the minor characters, such as Polly and Chalky the rabbit, also have names.
- Everyone Has Standards: In “I Want My Dummy!”, the Admiral and General may be grown men who play with toys, but even they think it’s weird to still use a dummy (pacifier) at age four. So does the Prime Minister, even though he’s an old man who still rides a tricycle.
- Faeries Don't Believe in Humans, Either: Zigzagged in "I Want My Light On". Nobody believes in ghosts except the Princess and maybe Gilbert. However, at the end, a mother and son ghost are seen and the mother ghosts said there's no such thing as little girls in particular but she never said anything about humans in general not existing, and it's kind of odd that she'd disbelieve in little girls because if she's the ghost of an adult woman, then surely she used to be one herself.
- Fiendish Fish: In “I Want a Bedtime Story!”, the Admiral tells a story about a threatening, giant fish.
- Filthy Fun:
- In “I Want Snow!”, the General tries to cheer a grumpy Princess up with a mud fight.
- In “I Don’t Want to Wash My Hands”, the Princess enjoys playing in the dirt with her wheelbarrow.
- In “I Want TWO Birthdays!”, one of the things the Princess misses about having “unbirthdays” when it gets to be her birthday every day is getting dirty.
- The Princess plays in the mud at the end of “I Want to Go Home!”.
- First Day of School Episode: "I Don't Want to Go to School" focuses on Princess's first day of preschool.
- Food as Bribe: In “I Don’t Want to Go to the Hospital!”, the Doctor tries to get the Princess to cooperate with going to the hospital by promising candy.
- Food End: “I Don’t Want to Wash My Hands” ends on the Princess eating cake.
- Friendship Denial: In “I Want a Friend!”, the group of outcast kids complain about having no friends… but all the while, they’re happily socialising with one another.
- Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: The elephant version of the Prime Minister in his story in “I Want a Bedtime Story!” still has all his clothes.
- Funny Animal: In “I Want a Bedtime Story!”, the Prime Minister’s story about his big nose has him as an elephant.
- "Getting Ready for Bed" Plot:
- In "I Want My Light On", the Princess has to go to bed but is worried that her room is haunted.
- In "I Want a Bedtime Story", the Princess only wants the King to read her a bedtime story.
- In “I Don’t Want to Go to Bed!”, the adults try to get the Princess to go to bed when she doesn’t want to.
- Girls Have Cooties: "I Want a Boyfriend" ends with the Princess and Donald declaring "I don't like boys" and "I don't like girls" respectively.
- Going Commando: In one of the animated skits not related to the TV series, Princess's skirt blows up and it reveals that she's not wearing underwear.
- Go-to-Sleep Ending: At the end of “I Don’t Want to Go to Bed”, the Princess goes back to bed after a sleepless night.
- Green-Eyed Monster:
- “I Want a Bunny” establishes that the Princess is friends with a girl named Petronella, but that she considers Petronella “awful” because she has many things that the Princess wants but doesn’t have.
- In “I Want TWO Birthdays!”, the initial reason the Princess wants more than one birthday is because the Queen gets two birthdays (one real birthday and one public holiday).
- In “I Want My Dad!”, the Princess is jealous of the Chef, General, Admiral, and Gardener’s children, because their fathers are taller than the King, and the Chef’s a better cook, the General can ride horses while the King’s allergic, the Admiral can swim and the King can’t, and the Gardener takes his kids on adventure walks but the King has no sense of direction.
- Green Is Gross: The stink lines in “I Feel Sick” are green.
- Guys are Slobs: Discussed in “I Want a Sister”, where the Princess hopes her new sibling won’t be a boy because “brothers are smelly”. However, the Maid points out that girls can be smelly too.
- Happy Dance: In “I Want a Bunny!”, the Princess dances with joy upon learning that she can have the bunny she wants.
- Her Codename Was Mary Sue: In “I Want a Bedtime Story!”, the Queen tells a story about a fairy queen that resembles herself.
- Here We Go Again!: Defied at the end of “I Want a Bedtime Story!”. The Princess has finally found a story she likes, but now wants the Maid to read all the other books as well… but the Maid isn’t having it and switches the lights off.
- How Unscientific!: Both the books and the cartoon are mainly like the real world with the exception of the Nearly Normal Animal's, however:
- "I Want My Light On", reveals that there are ghosts at the top of the castle. It also shows Gilbert the teddy bear with a thought bubble.
- “I Want My Dinner!” has a giant monster in it.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: “I Want a Friend!” focuses on the Princess, plus a whole lot of her schoolmates, feeling lonely and wanting friends. They eventually befriend one another.
- I Want My Mommy!: One of the books is titled "I Want My Mum!" (U.S. "I Want My Mom!") The plot is described as follows: "All day there had been disasters - the water pot went all over the latest painting; the Little Princess fell off the seesaw and banged her knee; and worst of all, there was a monster under the bed that night. The castle had been ringing with the constant shout of 'I Want My Mum!'. And Mum always knew exactly the right thing to sort out the problem..."
- Loose Tooth Episode: In "I Want My Tooth", which featured in both the book series and the TV series, the Princess gets her first loose tooth and enjoys playing with it until she loses it, and then it goes missing. In the book, she never finds it (but believes her brother, who grew a new tooth, stole it), but in the cartoon, the adults find it.
- Merchandise-Driven: As with all book-based properties, the western animation series was originally created to sell the books. But then the market became flooded with various other merchandises after the show came out.
- Lethal Chef: In “I Want My Dad!”, the King is revealed to always burn the cakes he bakes and the Princess makes hers too hard.
- A Lizard Named "Liz": “I Want a Bunny” features a stick insect named Sticky.
- Living Toys: Though not normally alive, Gilbert is shown as alive in “I Want My Light On!”, and in “I Want My Potty”, another teddy bear moves on its own.
- Loose Tooth Episode: “I Want My Tooth!” focuses on the Princess losing her first tooth.
- Lost Food Grievance: A monster in “I Want My Dinner!” yells, “Hey, that’s my dinner!”, then throws a tantrum and yells the title of the book, after the Princess steals its dinner.
- Making Room for Baby: In “I Want to Go Home”, everyone moves to a larger castle, since the Queen feels the first one is too small now that the Little Prince is around.
- Meaningful Name: The white rabbit from “I Want a Bunny” is named Chalky.
- The Medic: A recurring character is a doctor with red hair and spots all over.
- Messy Pig: In “I Want a Sister”, the Princess and Maid imagine smelly kids with pig heads.
- Monstrous Germs: “I Don’t Want to Wash My Hands” has illustrations of germs with faces and features like horns, bat wings, and devils’ tails.
- Nasal Trauma: In “I Don’t Want to Go to the Hospital!”, the Princess is hospitalised for a painful lump in her nose.
- Nearly Normal Animal:
- Puss is mostly a regular animal, but sometimes can be seen making humanlike gestures or holding objects. The same applies to Scruff the dog.
- The rabbits mostly behave normally, but one can be seen standing on its hind legs and sticking its tongue out in “I Want My Dad!”.
- New Baby Episode: In "I Want a Sister", the Princess learns that the Queen is pregnant. She wants a sister, because she thinks brothers are smelly, but when she gets a brother, she thinks he's a cute baby.
- No Animals Allowed: In “I Want to Go Home”, one sign reads, “NO GOATS”_
- Not Allowed to Grow Up: Zigzagged. The Princess stays four, while her brother (who does not appear in the show) seems to have aged two years.
- No, You: In “I Want a Boyfriend!”, during the Princess and Donald’s “breakup”, Donald says flowers are boring, and the Princess replies, “So are you!”.
- One-Episode Fear: The Princess develops a fear of ghosts in “I Want My Light On!”, but it goes away.
- Out-of-Character Moment: In “I Want My Tooth!”, the Princess turns down sugar for it being bad for your teeth, despite being fine eating it in other books.
- Pet Dress-Up: In “I Want a Boyfriend!”, the Princess puts baby bonnets on the pets for a game of house, making them scowl.
- Platonic Kissing: In “I Want a Bunny”, the King kisses the Princess on the nose to cheer her up.
- Playing House: In “I Want a Boyfriend!”, the Princess wants to play house with her “boyfriend” Donald as the husband and the pets as the kids.
- Playing Sick: "I Feel Sick" is all about the Princess claiming she feels sick in order to slack off.
- Plot Allergy: “I Want My Dad!” reveals that the King is allergic to many animals, including mice.
- Pet Dress-Up: In “I Want a Bunny”, the Princess puts Puss in a bow, but she scratches it off.
- Potty Dance: Downplayed in “I Want My Dinner!”, where the Princess is shown with legs crossed, but not really “dancing”, when she’s asking for her potty.
- Potty Emergency: In “I Want My Potty!”, the Princess is seen running frantically to her potty and she’s described as being “a long way away from her potty when she needed it most”, then later, she starts calling out for her potty, only to wet herself when they find it.
- Potty Failure: At the end of "I Want My Potty", the Princess has wet herself.
- Real After All: In "I Want My Light On", the adults insist that ghosts don't exist, but at the end, two ghosts are seen at the top of the castle.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: In “I Want to Do it by Myself!”, the Princess is correct that she’s being forgetful. However, she thinks that she’s forgotten that she brought her things camping, when actually she forgot to bring them and other people brought them for her.
- Self-Deprecation: In “I Want a Bedtime Story!”, the Prime Minister tells a story about his big nose, that stars him as an anthropomorphic elephant.
- Shared Family Quirks: In “I Want My Dad!”, it’s revealed that the King and Princess are both bad at baking, swimming, and nature walks.
- Shipper on Deck: In “I Want a Boyfriend!”, the Princess’s teacher picks a boy named Donald as the Princess’s boyfriend when she wants one.
- Shout-Out: In “I Want a Bedtime Story!”, the Princess likes Goldilocks since the King had it when he was a young prince, so she sees it as “Daddy’s story”.
- Single Tear: In “I Want a Party!”, the Princess cries one tear when she realises she forgot to send her party invitations.
- Slapstick}: In “I Want My Potty”, the Princess falls over while using her potty.
- Sleep Deprivation: At the end of “I Don’t Want to Go to Bed!”, the Princess is tired due to not having slept well the previous night.
- Rhyme Theme Naming: The book "I Want to Make a Friend" features three mean kids: two girls and a boy. The girls are named Molly and Polly.
- Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: In the book "I Want a Sister", the Little Prince (Princess's brother) is born. In all the other books, he's about two but the Princess is still four.
- Spoiled Brat: Princess herself, although much more in the books than in the show. Here's a girl who demands that her potty be brought to her instead of her going to the potty (which she doesn't know the location of, but still she doesn't actively search for it). Additionally, when she makes a request, the castle's inhabitants would try to do their best to please her. And if she doesn't get her way, she throws a tantrum.
- Still Sucks Thumb:
- The Princess sometimes is shown sucking her thumb in bed, especially in her sleep. Justified since she’s only about four.
- ”I Want My Dummy!” shows a different young princess sucking her thumb.
- Stock Animal Diet:
- Chalky, the rabbit from “I Want a Bunny!”, is shown eating a carrot.
- In “I Don’t Want to Go to the Hospital!”, the cat eats a fish skeleton.
- Stock Animal Name:
- The dog’s name is Scruff.
- ”I Want a Bunny” has a goldfish named Goldie.
- Sweet Tooth: The Princess is commonly seen eating cake or candy.
- Technicolor Science: In “I Want to Win!”, the Princess and a boy named Darren try to do chemistry using multicoloured liquids.
- Tempting Fate: In “I Want My Dummy!”, the Princess says she’ll never lose her dummy (pacifier) again, only for the Queen to take it again.
- Things That Go "Bump" in the Night:
- Discussed in “I Don’t Want to Go to Bed!”, in which the Princess lies that a monster is in her wardrobe, then that Gilbert thinks one is under the bed, to try to trick the King into not putting her to bed.
- Also discussed in “I Want My Mum”, in which the Princess mistakes a teddy bear (not Gilbert) under her bed for a monster.
- Toilet Humour:
- In “I Want My Potty”, the Princess plays a “trick” on her potty by wearing it on her head, and then later, she falls over while using it, then still later, she jumps on her butt with it tied to her.
- In “I Feel Sick”, the Queen asks the Princess to help her clean Puss’s litter tray, but Princess plays sick to get out of it.
- Toilet Training Plot: "I Want My Potty" focuses on Princess learning to use her potty.
- Tropey, Come Home: In “I Want a Bunny”, the Princess’s pet goldfish Goldie swims away in the lake and is never seen again, then later her rabbit Chalky runs away never to be seen again.
- Unsuccessful Pet Adoption: In “I Want a Bunny”, the Princess adopts a stick insect named Sticky, but loses him in a tree, then she adopts a fish named Goldie, but she swims away never to be seen when Princess lets her swim in the lake. Finally, she adopts a rabbit named Chalky, but he runs away into the forest.
- Vague Age: It’s unclear how old the Little Prince is beyond “younger than the Princess”, whose age is stated to be four on the official website. The Princess doesn’t seem to have gotten any older since his birth, and he only has one tooth, but he can walk, talk, and use a potty chair.
- Visible Odor: In “I Feel Sick”, the smell of Puss’s litterbox is shown as wavy green lines.
- Wearing It All Wrong: In the book "I Want My Potty", the Princess wears her crown on her butt as part of a trick.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In “I Want a Bedtime Story!”, the Gardener tells a story about a carrot who’s afraid of the dark.
