Good Princess, Evil Queen

A back-to-back example.

Princesses are an especially prevalent part of fiction and have been the leads of many stories going back millennia. They're frequently romanticized as feminine ideals, having money and power without any of the immediate pressures of ruling (yet). Little girls love them. So it's not surprising that fictional princesses are usually on the heroic side.

So of course, there's no better foil and antagonist for the lovely young princess than an evil queen.

Queens contrast princesses in several obvious ways. The queen is usually older than the princess, which may play into the plot — for example, the queen might be jealous of the princess's youth, beauty, and potential. Because of Beauty Equals Goodness, the Queen will be ugly, or at least less beautiful than the princess. Alternatively, she's inarguably beautiful, but the princess will almost certainly have the purer and "more wholesome" type of beauty. In terms of powers, princesses who are The Chosen One or bear other types of magic will have powers of traditionally heroic alignment like light magic or healing, while the Queen will be a Vain Sorcerous Overlord.

This is especially prevalent in fairy tales and works that draw on them — the story of the virtuous princess "Snow White" being rescued from the machinations of her jealous Wicked Stepmother is very influential. In works that utilize this trope, the heroic princess will have a Wicked Stepmother, Evil Aunt, malicious sister, or another older relative who holds the rank of Queen, Queen Regent, or Queen Mother (the latter might be the case if the heroic young girl isn't royal by blood but her love interest is, tying this into Obnoxious In-Laws). Whatever her relation to the princess, the queen will usually be ruling the country as a tyrannical despot, and the plot will involve ousting her. If the princess is the rightful heiress to the throne, she'll become the next ruler. This may also lead to Princesses Rule, distinguishing the good princess from her evil predecessor, or she'll specifically become a benevolent queen.

The princess's mother is usually exempt from this. The princess's goodness is usually attributed to her being the daughter of The Good King and/or The High Queen, and Deceased Parents Are the Best, after all. However, one can still make the Evil Queen the Good Princess's mother, such as by having an Evil Matriarch queen with an adored, pure and cloistered daughter, or a daughter who participates in villainy at first but will later undergo a Heel–Face Turn and spurn her morally corrupt family, similar to the Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter. Another variant will be to have this contrast apply to the same character — an evil queen might have a Used to Be a Sweet Kid flashback to her time as a good princess before magic, power, fear of death, The Chains of Commanding, or something turned her bad.

Subtrope of God Save Us from the Queen!. Contrast Older Hero vs. Younger Villain, since the queen is usually older. See also Aristocrats Are Evil, where all the blue-blooded women below the princess (countesses, baronesses, duchesses, etc.) are also evil. Related to Women Are Delicate — this trope treats the younger woman in the weaker political position as purer and more moral, while the older woman in the more powerful position is unstable or evil. The Warrior Princess, Pretty Princess Powerhouse, and Villainous Princess might scoff at that, though, each in their own way.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Berserk: Played for Drama. The kind and naive Princess Charlotte is contrasted with her Wicked Stepmother the Queen of Midland, a cold and elitist woman who tries to stage a plot to assassinate Griffith. However, Charlotte is exceedingly naive, which is exploited by Griffith, who treats her as Meal Ticket to getting a kingdom.
• Daimos:
  • Princess Erika defects from the Baam-seijin because she opposes King Olban's commands of taking over the Earth.
  • While he has some politically incorrect views, Richter ultimately isn't evil. However, it was the lengths he went to that truly cemented his status as a villain. Olban, on the other hand, masterminded the death of his father, brainwashed and killed several Baam because he desired nothing but mindless slaves, and tried to force Erika to kill Kazuya.
• Daltanious: While both Emperor Dolmen and Prince Kloppen are villainous, Emperor Dolmen shows no mercy to anyone under any circumstances while Kloppen felt sadness when Dolmen ordered him to kill Dr. Namil, his surrogate father figure, and eventually sacrificed himself to save Prince Harlin.
• Magi: Labyrinth of Magic: The evil empress regnant Gyokuen Ren started out as a Hot Consort, married her dead husband's brother after claiming responsibility for his death and the deaths of their older sons, and later usurped the throne. She is the leader of Al-Thamen to boot. By contrast, the country's two most plot-important princesses^note Kougyoku also has seven older sisters who don't figure into the story lean towards being the White Sheeps of the court. Her daughter Princess Hakuei is a wise and idealistic general, and her niece/stepdaughter Princess Kougyoku is a warrior with sweet personality. Played With, however — Gyokuen used to be a good person before Demonic Possession via Arba, who later possesses Hakuei.
• In MÄR, the main female lead is Snow, the Crown Princess of Lestava. By contrast, one of the main antagonist of the series is her Wicked Stepmother, Queen Diana, who had formed the Chess Pieces in a bid for even greater power.
• Inverted in The Rising of the Shield Hero; Queen Mirelia is a Reasonable Authority Figure in stark contrast to the sociopathic Princess Malty.
• Sailor Moon: The heroines are reincarnations of space princesses, while the Dark Kingdom and Dead Moon Circus antagonists (Beryl, Metalia, and Nehellenia) hold the rank of Queen. Black Lady/Wicked Lady also claims that she's the Queen of Darkness and Queen of the Dark Planet Nemesis, conferred on her by Wiseman. Downplayed in that there was also a Queen Serenity, Princess Serenity's mother, and eventually Usagi ascends the throne of Earth as Neo-Queen Serenity.
• Shina Dark: The plucky and intelligent Christina was the princess of Estgloria before being shipped off to become Satan's concubine. Her Wicked Stepmother is the current Queen, and is The Caligula.
• Voltes V gender-inverts and subverts this. While Prince Heinel took innocent lives in his conquest to colonize Earth and looks down on hornless Boazanians and humans, he is generally more respectful and forgiving to his comrades, giving praise to them for their skills, and personally went to save Katherine after she confronted Kenichi. He also forgave Belgan for his assassination attempt and offered him a chance at redemption. Heinel was also deeply ashamed and full of remorse when he realized that he had been fighting his own father and half-brothers all along and followed the Redemption Equals Death route to save Kenichi from Zambajil's grenade. On the other hand, Emperor Zambajil is a narcissist who took advantage of the Fantastic Caste System of Boazania to usurp the throne from the rightful heir, Heinel's father. Despite Heinel having nothing but respect for him, Zambajil tried to have Heinel killed multiple times, as he was next in line for the throne. Zambajil also sent his own underlings to die in Suicide Missions and refused to fight for them and his fellow nobles when the slaves rebelled, unlike Heinel. Everything Heinel did was out of the desire to bring honour to his besmirched name, but everything Zambajil did was out of greed.

Comic Books

• Edge of Spider-Verse (2022): Played straight, then downplayed. In Spinstress's debut story, which is a parody of Disney Princesses movies, the protagonist is Princess Petra, heiress to the throne and another spider-themed heroine, who comes to blows against her mother, queen Mysteria (a female version of Mysterio, another villain from Spider-Man's gallery). After Petra returns to her home dimension after a crossover, she finds her mother under a sleeping curse and rescues her, allowing them to reconnect.

Fairy Tales

• "The Blue Bird": Princess Florine's widowed father remarries a queen who tries constantly to ruin Florine's happiness, mostly so her own daughter Truitonne will be the one to marry the prince/king.
• "Graciosa and Percinet": Princess Graciosa's father marries Duchess Grognon, who was already envious of her beauty and uses her position as queen to attempt to abuse and kill Graciosa.
• The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh: The witch queen is envious of her stepdaughter's beauty and casts a spell to turn the princess into the titular dragon.
• The Six Swans: A witch stepmother enchants seven princes to turn into swans; their little sister then undertakes the task of saving them by hiding away in the woods and creating shirts for them. She eventually becomes queen by marriage to the king of a neighboring kingdom, but still has to deal with the evil and jealous queen mother, who has it out for her.
• The Snow Queen: Downplayed. The story is about Gerda's heroic quest to rescue her friend Kai from the titular character and features a good princess as an ally. However, despite the fact that she's disliked within the story, the Snow Queen is a largely neutral entity.
• Snow White: The kind and virtuous princess Snow White is pitted against her Wicked Stepmother, the evil queen.
• In many variants of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children", the antagonist is the prince's mother, a queen: she tries to kill her granddchildren and calumniates her daughter-in-law; years later, she sends her grandchildren, the titular "Three Golden Children", in a dangerous quest so that they fail. However, the queen's granddaughter, a princess, succeeds in the quest, rescues her elder brothers and unmasks their grandmother, restoring their mother to her proper place.

Fan Works

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: The Sailor Senshi are looking for the Moon Princess, which they think is the only way to defeat the evil Dark God, Queen Metallia. They are opposed by what is basically her High Priestess, Queen Beryl.
• Infinity Train: Crown of Thorns has Acerola and the previous Queens of Alola: the former is a Princess Protagonist who's a Nice Girl with a few rough edges, while the latter, while nowhere near as malicious or racist as their husbands, prove to be equally nagging and pushy in trying to get Acerola to continue the family legacy.

Films — Animated

• Barbie movies:
  • Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses: The twelve heroines' departed mother, Queen Isabella, was described as a good queen and loving mother. They actually outrank the film's villain, Duchess Rowena, but Rowena's schemes lead to her on the throne and the twelve sisters have to work together to save their father and take back the kingdom.
  • Barbie as the Island Princess: The heroine is, of course, a princess, and several other nice ladies are princesses as well — Luciana, as well as Antonio's younger sisters. Luciana's mother Ariana, however, is a scheming queen who tries to maneuver her daughter into becoming a Puppet King so she can rule as Regent for Life.
  • Barbie in a Mermaid Tale: Merliah is the long-lost daughter of Queen Calissa, the rightfully ruling queen of Oceana, but she has been usurped by her wicked sister Eris, the villain of the film.
• Brave deconstructs this as from Princess Merida's perspective, her mother Queen Elinor is the antagonist. However it's shown that Both Sides Have a Point and while Elinor learns that she should stop suppressing her daughter and forcing excessive lifestyle changes on her, Merida must also learn that she needs to take her mother's advice more seriously and mature to become a good future Queen.
• Disney Animated Canon:
  • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs stars the good and innocent princess Snow White and her vain Wicked Stepmother, Queen Grimhilde, as pictured above.
  • Frozen: Played with. Elsa does cause trouble after being crowned Queen, and her sister Princess Anna does go after her and help clean up, but she's not evil. At first it looks like she might be, but it turns out that her freezing the kingdom and cursing the kindhearted heroine really were accidents. However, Hans plays on this trope when he tries to get the throne. He vilifies Elsa and claims that he and the tragically dead Anna had gotten married. It gets even more averted in Frozen II, in which Elsa abdicates at the end of the movie and Anna takes over the role of Queen of Arendelle.
• Fire and Ice (1983): Princess Teegra of Firekeep gets kidnapped by mooks. She's taken ultimately to Icepeak, where wicked Queen Juliana makes a "gift" of Teegra to Nekron, Juliana's son and heir apparent. Teegra naïvely coos for mediation and peace between the two kingdoms, but neither Queen Juliana nor Nekron is swayed in the least.

Films — Live-Action

• Clash Of The Titans: Downplayed. Princess Andromeda is the pure heroic love interest. Her mother Queen Cassiopeia is the idiot who brags that her daughter is more beautiful than the goddess Thetis — who then punishes her by ordering Andromeda to be sacrificed to the Kraken. The 2010 remake increases this dichotomy by having Cassiopeia being part of a misguided rebellion against the gods, ignorant to the people's suffering and making the aforementioned vow in open defiance of the gods. Andromeda by contrast is then established as giving food to the poor in the city.
• Elizabeth opens in Queen Mary I's reign, portraying England as a Crapsack World under her regime. Her younger half-sister Princess Elizabeth is persecuted and sent to the Tower of London (which did admittedly happen in real life), and is presented as the innocent good character who becomes The High Queen when Mary dies.
• Enchanted: As Disney's Affectionate Self-Parody of the Disney Princesses, features the plucky and spirited princess-to-be Giselle as the protagonist. By contrast, the antagonist is Prince Edward's Wicked Stepmother, the Evil Sorceress Narissa, who tries to sabotage the marriage so she can stay on as queen.
• Mirror Mirror (2012): Being a retelling of the Snow White fairytale, naturally has the lively and beautiful Snow White as the rightful heiress to the throne, and the witch queen Clementianna as her stepmother who schemes to gain control of the kingdom.
• Snow White & the Huntsman: The film is an Actionized Adaptation of the Snow White fairytale. Snow White herself is a good princess, and the antagonist is her Vain Sorceress Wicked Stepmother Queen Ravenna. The prequel/sequel The Huntsman: Winter's War also introduces the Snow Queen, Queen Freya, who aims to lay waste to Snow White's kingdom.
• Willow: Queen Bavmorda is the Evil Overlord of Nockmaar who wants to Take Over the World. Her daughter Sorcha, to whom she's pretty nearly as abusive as she is to everyone else, is initially on her side but later commits a Heel–Face Turn and joins the heroes.

Literature

• The Chronicles of Prydain introduce us in the first book to Queen Achren, the evil woman who for a long time ruled all of Prydain with an iron fist. Of her reign, Prince Gwydion says that "life was little better than a slow death." By contrast, her ward is Princess Eilonwy, a lovely girl with a heart of gold who joins the heroes. By the end of the series, Achren has performed a Heel–Face Turn and given her life to save the heroes, and Eilonwy has married Taran and they are made King and Queen of Prydain.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Played with in regards to the Faerie Courts. Winter is widely regarded as the evil side of the coin for good reason, but the rulers are a bit more complex. Queen Mab, for all her coldhearted and calculating callousness, is too complex and holds a too necessary role to be called evil outright, and she abides a very strict code of conduct and honor (she wrote out the supernatural world's equivalent to international law) and she has her more human moments. However, her daughter, Maeve, can be described as outright evil. Maeve is a brat that's willing to play with and destroy the lives of those that cross her path for her entertainment, and she's too unstable and irresponsible, leading to her partying all the time rather than doing her job. Mab eventually tells Harry to kill Maeve, and he finds out that she's fallen victim to The Corruption, and Mab can't save her because Maeve isn't fighting from the inside, because Maeve resented her role and grabbed at what small freedoms Nemesis offered, such as the option to rebel against Mab. Maeve us eventually killed in some fighting, and though she had been grooming her other, half-human daughter to replace Maeve, Harry's apprentice Molly gets lassoed into Maeve's role. Mab even comments that Molly's disposition was better suited for Summer. It initially appeared to have happened by chance, but Harry surmises that Mab deliberately selected Molly for the ruthlessness and strength of character she showed in helping Harry organize his own suicide in the previous few years. (He got better.)
  • Summer is a different beast. While they're largely considered "good," they are a little prone to Blue-and-Orange Morality. The Queen Titania and the Princess Aurora are both good people. Unfortunately, Aurora was hit by the same corruptive influence which would sway Maeve a few years later. She wanted to start a new ice age, which would end the endless war of the Faerie Courts, but would kill off a good deal of humanity along the way. Harry had to resort to killing her. Aurora's eventual replacement, Lily, was a friendly acquaintance of Harry's, but could only help in ways that could work around Titania's commandments to not directly help Harry in any way, in revenge for replacing Aurora. Titania is a decent person, but she still holds a grudge against Harry, making her antagonistic.
• In Inadequate Heir it becomes increasingly obvious that it's the case with Zarrah Anaphora and her aunt, Petra Anaphora, the Empress of Valcotta. The empress, who at first seems just a ruthless pragmatist, turns out to be manipulative, cruel and bloodthirsty, while at the same time Zarrah is beginning to see the wider picture and lose most of her bloodlust.
• The Lunar Chronicles: The evil queen Levana is opposed by good princesses Selene (Levana's niece and the rightful heir to the throne) and her stepdaughter Winter. In the end, Levana gets killed and Selene becomes the new queen.
• The Nikolai Duology: Over in Shu Han, popular and amiable younger princess Ehri was named the next queen by her mother, but the throne was usurped by her cruel and jealously antagonistic older sister Makhi.
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: The protagonists are princesses, and at the end of the first story, an antagonistic force known as the Red Queen is mentioned.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • The cruel, manipulative Queen Cersei is contrasted with a few lovelier younger ladies. Interestingly, Cersei herself fears this trope, as a "younger and more beautiful queen" is prophesied to usurp her, and she is thus paranoid about any ladies and princesses who could possibly fill this role.
  • Her daughter Princess Myrcella is consistently described as having a sweet personality.
  • Margaery, who marries Cersei's son Joffrey, however briefly, and is now engaged to her second son Tommen, exploits this trope. She presents herself as a lovely, generous queen, which makes her very popular with the smallfolk (who are starting to sour on Cersei).
  • The irony is that the author wrote this trope into the contrasting narrative arcs of Cersei and Daenerys, who have not met yet. Good natured Dany begins A Game of Thrones as a princess who proclaims herself a queen at the end of the novel. Cersei fears Margaery as the younger queen who will destroy her, but dismisses mentions of Daenerys, who has more power.
• In the Rose of York Series Elizabeth of York is a good natured, if sheltered princess while her mother Elizabeth Woodville is a scheming social climber whose plots cause the villainous Henry Tudor to be victorious.
• Stardust: The villains are the Lilim, witches who were formerly queens of a powerful magical nation (the text refers to them as witch-queens). In the present, they rely on stars to keep them young and beautiful. In contrast, Lady Una is Faerie's sole princess, and unlike the Lilim and her seven murderous brothers, she is kind, good-hearted, and supportive of her long-lost son.
• Inverted in Neil Gaiman's short story "Snow. Glass. Apples." It's a retelling of Snow White in which the princess is the evil one (she's actually a vampire), and the queen is trying to protect the realm from her.

Live-Action TV

• Galavant: Being a fairytale parody, this is to be expected. The Hero Galavant's ex-girlfriend Madalena becomes the evil queen of King Richard's kingdom, while Galavant's mysterious new ally and love interest Princess Isabella of the neighboring kingdom is heroic. Although she starts out being manipulated by the villains, she falls In Love with the Mark and goes against Richard for Galavant. Notably, Madalena and Isabella are fairly close in age.
• Once Upon a Time: Downplayed, because the show prefers White-and-Grey Morality to pure evil characters, but the trope still shows up quite a bit.
  • The main princess character is Snow White, a beloved and kind woman who becomes an Action Girl on the run. Even following her coronation, she is still identified as a princess. Several other Disney Princesses are featured in the show (e.g., Cinderella (twice!), Belle, Aurora, Tiana) and are almost never portrayed as villainous, unless there's some sort of spell at work. Conversely, many of the villains on the show are queens — there's the Evil Queen Regina (Snow White's Wicked Stepmother), the Queen of Hearts Cora, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland's Red Queen, the Snow Queen (Evil Aunt to Elsa). Even Arthuriana's Queen Guinevere is brainwashed into siding with her husband. It's downplayed in that all the villainous queens have sympathetic qualities and backstories, and some of them get Heel Face Turns - Regina, the Red Queen - or Redemption Equals Death like the Snow Queen.
  • Later downplayed further with the inclusion of Queen Elsa and Queen Merida. Both of them now hold the rank of Queen, but were introduced as princesses in their respective Disney films. There are also other minor heroic queens such as Snow's mother Eva, Rapunzel's mother, and Aurora's mother Briar Rose.

Theatre

• Inverted in King Lear, which contains three sisters who are the daughters of the king. Lear abdicates the throne but keeps the title of king, and Goneril and Regan inherit shares of the kingdom - remaining princesses. They're also the play's antagonists. The third sister Cordelia marries the King of France, becoming the Queen and she pulls Big Damn Heroes as things get worse.
• Once Upon a Mattress: The play is a Fractured Fairy Tale take on The Princess and the Pea, and is thus a humorous take on this trope. The devious Queen Agravaine, ruling largely by herself as her husband has been rendered mute by a curse, has instituted a Wedlock Block on the country; nobody can wed until her son Dauntless does. However, she imposes unfair tests on any woman who tries to marry him to prolong her own rule. Enter the brash and plucky Princess Winifred, who does manage to pass her test. Everyone lives Happily Ever After except for the Queen, who is rendered mute in turn as karma.

Toys

• Ever After High: Being a Fairytale Free For All focusing on the children of various fairy tale characters, has plenty examples.
  • The offspring of fairytale heroes and heroines run the gamut of personalities and high-school archetypes but the main princesses are generally sweet and good. For all the entitlement of Princess Apple White, Snow White's daughter, she is seen as a Purity Sue In-Universe, is genuinely kind and generous, and wants to be a good Princess Classic.
  • Meanwhile, queens are at least jerks. Raven's mother is the Evil Queen from Snow White's story; she is still trying to manipulate the world of Ever After. Wonderland's Queens aren't quite evil, but the Queen of Hearts was poisoned into madness by the Evil Queen and her co-ruler the White Queen is a Stern Teacher who has no problem with publicly humiliating students. Snow White herself, now Queen, gets a dose of Adaptational Villainy in the cartoon — she is portrayed as a narcissist who tries to get Raven to follow the story.

Video Games

• Battle for Wesnoth: The Heir to the Throne campaign the villain is Queen Asheviere, who has been turning Wesnoth into a wasteland. By contrast, the party has Princess Li'Sar, who joins following a Heel–Face Turn and eventually marries the hero Konrad and becomes Queen.
• Child of Light: Despite the fact that everyone calls her "princess", the protagonist Aurora is the daughter of an Austrian Duke. The villain is the evil Queen Umbra. They wind up being a true example of this trope following the reveal that Aurora's mother was the Queen of Light, so she truly is a princess of Lemuria. Aurora herself ranks up to Queen by the end but keeps her good nature.
• Code of Princess: The titular Princess Solange Blanchefleur de Lux is The Heroine and a Pretty Princess Powerhouse out to save her kingdom from the Big Bad Queen Distiny, ruler of Distron.
• Earthworm Jim: Both the game and cartoon contrast the heroic Princess What's-Her-Name (the beautiful-by-human-standards love interest) with her malevolent and tyrannical older sister Queen Slug-for-a-Butt.
• Final Fantasy IX: The heroine and love interest is the plucky Princess Garnet. She is on the run from her adoptive mother Queen Brahne, who has been manipulated into madness and villainy by the Big Bad, Kuja.
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: The Greater-Scope Villain is the Shadow Queen. When she takes over the Princess Classic heroine Princess Peach, she is referred to as "Shadow Queen Peach" and has a cold, icy personality contrasting Peach's kind one.
• Radiant Historia: The goal of Princess Eruca (graceful Barrier Maiden and party member) is to usurp her vain and cruel Wicked Stepmother, Queen Protea, who sits the throne of Granorg for the worse.
• Wild ARMs has Princess Cecilia Adlehyde as one of the main heroes, determined to do what she can to protect Filgaia. Despite her father being killed towards the beginning of the game, she maintains the title of princess even though she is technically a queen. The leader of the villainous demons is Mother, who is definitely referred to as their queen and wants to destroy Filgaia like she has all the other worlds she's been to. Oddly enough, despite them being her sons, the other demons are never referred to as princes, but as lords instead.

Visual Novels

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice: Princess Rayfa, who is bratty and holier-than-thou but ultimately has her heart in the right place and eventually warms up to the protagonists. By contrast, her Evil Aunt Queen Ga'ran is an envious, power-hungry usurper and dictator. Rayfa initially believes that Ga'ran is her mother, but she was actually born to Amara, The High Queen whose throne Ga'ran usurped.

Web Videos

• The Nostalgia Critic: In "Why All the Princess Hate?", the Critic criticizes the trope for continuing the implication that royal women should be satisfied with the title of "princess", which tends to have connotations of some power and responsibility, but not all, instead of imagining themselves in positions of the highest power.^note This became very discredited once Tangled, Frozen and Moana featured heroic Disney Queens. He lampshades it with a comic conversation between Snow White and the evil queen:
  Snow White: Someday, I'll be queen.
  Queen: Don't you know? All queens are evil.
  Snow White: That's the first thing I'll change!
• The Edutainment series Lady Bits by Liana K has an episode on the Damsel in Distress trope. In the episode's 'Versus Mode', the Evil Queen and Princess Sparklemuffin have a debate. Although this is only aesthetically, as the Queen is the one making the valid point, portraying Sparklemuffin as The Ditz. Then they both get drunk together. This gets double subverted in the sequel series Bossfight - where Sparklemuffin becomes the protagonist, turns down the Queen's offer to "break bad" and become the final boss, and is established as an All-Loving Hero.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Overall inverted with the Fire Nation royal family.
  • Azula is the psychotic and unstable Evil Princess to her mother's kind, gentle, and protective Good Queen, retroactively due to her becoming the equivalent of a Queen mother upon her return and reinstatement to the Royal family.
  • Following his Heel–Face Turn, Zuko becomes the Good Prince to Fire Lord Ozai’s Evil King.
  • In The Legend of Korra, Zuko's daughter Izumi is now ruling as the Fire Nation's Good Queen.
• Drawn Together: Princess Clara is a parody of the Disney Princesses, complete with Wicked Stepmother. This dynamic is ultimately subverted when Clara's stepmother admits that she was lashing out because Clara didn't accept her as a mother, and so they make up and she removes the curse on Clara's vagina. Besides, Clara's fundamentalist upper class WASP traits keep her from being 100% heroic.
• Elena of Avalor: Elena is the oldest princess of Avalor. After she is freed from imprisonment in Sofia the First, Elena has to square up against the Evil Sorceress Queen Shuriki, who has taken over the kingdom.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • For most of the show's run, the only character bearing the title of "Queen" was Queen Chrysalis, the villainous leader of the Changelings, a race of shapeshifting emotion-eaters. Every other female monarch (Celestia, Luna, Cadance, Twilight Sparkle) bears the title of "Princess". This was an Enforced Trope, as Celestia was a queen when the show was being planned, but Hasbro asked the creator to make her a princess because children viewed princesses as good and queens as evil.
  • Downplayed with Queen Novo in My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) and her daughter Princess Skystar. Although Queen Novo plays a somewhat antagonistic role, and it's her daughter Princess Skystar who becomes part of The Team, Novo is ultimately firm but benevolent.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil plays with this trope:
  • In flashbacks, Moon is depicted as a naïve and desperate queen who has only recently made the change from princess to queen. She makes a contract with the Queen of Darkness, Eclipsa, in order to protect her homeland from Toffee. However, despite her scary epithet, Eclipsa herself is surprisingly tolerant and caring towards monsters despite being the daughter of Solaria, who is best known as the genocidal and vicious Monster Carver.
  • Later, Star's efforts to promote understanding between Mewman and Monsters are undercut by her own mother, Moon, who creates an army of Solarian Warriors to depose Eclipsa, though Moon is more morally gray than evil, as she is trying to find a way to prevent Mina from doing any more damage.