The Disney Princess Tournament of Power

Who would win in a fight?

It’s a question people have been asking for decades when it comes to their favorite fictional characters. It’s a question that spawned one of the most successful YouTube channels. It’s the question I asked myself when I was watching Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure.

I had recently re-watched Frozen only to learn that my favorite princess had a new show out. I watched the first season of the show and was left wondering who the most powerful Disney Princess truly was. Was Elsa the strongest because of her ice magic? Was Rapunzel the strongest because of her new powers demonstrated in the show? However, I’ve never been someone who thinks small. It wasn’t enough for me to simply compare two princesses. I needed the ultimate answer. Considering every Disney Princess, who would win in a fight?

My first step in the journey was deciding how the princesses were going to fight each other. Initially, I thought of doing it in a battle royale style where all the princesses would be dropped into an arena with different environments and tools available to them. The last one standing would be declared the winner. My second idea was a single elimination bracket where each princess would be given an initial power ranking and then pitted against each other in 1-on-1 battles. My final idea was to have the princesses compete in a series of hypothetical challenges to see who could overcome the most.

All of those options sounded so fun to me, but, in the end, I decided a bracket-style tournament of 1-on-1 fights would be the best way to crown a grand champion. Especially when I saw just how many princesses needed to be considered. Maybe I’ll do a smaller battle royale in the future.

Here are the rules for the Tournament of Power:

1. All fighters must be a Disney Princess.

2. All fighters have the powers, abilities, and resources available to them in Disney Canon.

3. Fighters cannot call on the aid of semi-omnipotent beings including, but not limited to, the gods of Olympus, the Fairy Godmother, King Triton, Genie, or Mama Odie.

4. Fighters are only allowed equipment that is shown to be standard on their person in Disney Canon.

5. Fighters cannot call on the aid of friends, spouses, their tribe, family members, or any military.

a. Animal companions are allowed if and only if the fighter has demonstrated the ability to cooperate with said companion and has regular access to said companion in Disney Canon.

b. Fighters are allowed to summon animals from the wild if they possess such an ability.

6. Fighting environments will include all elements that give both fighters the best access to all their abilities.

7. The winner of each round is determined by a 1-on-1 fight between two Disney Princesses.

a. If a fighter dies, gives up, or becomes otherwise indefinitely incapacitated, they are considered to be the loser.

b. It is assumed that each fighter has been informed that only the winner’s kingdom will remain and will, therefore, fight to the best of their ability.

The second step in my quest to discover the strongest Disney Princess lay within the term itself. Who the heck counts as a “Disney Princess” anyways? In case you’re unfamiliar, the term “Disney Princess” isn’t a simple adjective. It’s an actual trademarked term describing a small set of characters designated by the Disney Corporation. However, Disney fans are very enthusiastic about their princesses and have advocated that beloved characters should be bestowed the title of Disney Princess even if they aren’t included in the trademarked property.

For example, Mirabel is a beloved female protagonist in a Disney Animation film and has many of the qualities of a Disney Princess such as resourcefulness, love, empathy, and resilience, but she isn’t technically a Disney Princess because she’s not on that trademarked list. (Yes, Mirabel gets left out no matter what family she’s a part of). This has nothing to do with royal status by the way. Merida, Moana, Raya, Mulan, and Pocahontas are all trademarked Disney Princesses but have no connection to royalty in their respective films. Maoi makes a fourth wall joke about how Moana is a princess because she’s the “daughter of the chief” and has an animal sidekick, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Sticking with only the official list meant excluding characters like Elena of Avalor and Sophia the First who are both literally Disney Princesses but are excluded from the trademark because of real-world business reasons. Basically, Disney makes more money selling you Sophia the First merchandise separately from Disney Princess merchandise.

This means I needed to come up with my own definition for “Disney Princess” to build my official list of potential combatants.

Here’s what I decided on:

1. The character must be featured in an Animated film or Animated Television Show produced by Disney or its subsidiaries not including Lucasfilm, Marvel, or 20th Century Fox.

a. If the character featured in Live Action originally but is the child of a Disney Princess and meets all other criteria, they are considered to also be a Disney Princess.

2. The character must be female.

3. By the current date of writing their profile, the character must be or have been a Princess, Queen, Daughter of a Chief, Daughter of a village leader, Daughter of other royalty, a member of a royal family, or included in the trademark brand “Disney Princess.”

4. By the end of their Primary Source, the character must be a protagonist and a good person.

I’m sure I could get even more specific and technical, but that’s what I’m sticking with. Any characters that meet those 4 criteria are considered to be a Disney Princess and is a combatant in my Disney Princess Tournament of Power.

My third step in this journey was to decide on the Canon. For those of you unfamiliar with literary terminology, “canon” describes material that’s officially part of the story or universe in discussion. For example, Hercules exists in all sorts of stories, movies, songs, and shows, but there’s only one Disney version of the character: the one in Disney-produced things. The same goes for all of the Disney Princesses. There are multiple stories about Mulan, Pocahontas, Cinderella, and more, but I needed to decide on the Disney Canon for each character to be able to determine what powers and abilities they have to be considered.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t straightforward because, even within Disney filmography, there are multiple versions of the same character. One of my favorite considerations early on in my research was Cinderella. At first, I just looked at the animated films and was done. She didn’t have much to her after all since she doesn’t have magic powers and doesn’t really fight anyone. Then I remembered that Disney made a movie based on the stage play, Into the Woods, which includes the character, Cinderella.

In the movie, Cinderella is running away from the prince and steps in some tar. Everything around her slows to a crawl as Anna Kendrick sings a beautiful song, “On the Steps of the Palace”, before she decides to leave one of her shoes behind and continue running into the woods. However, I noticed that, technically, Cinderella chooses to no longer be stuck in the tar and leaves a single shoe by placing it in the tar with her hands during the song in a different place than where she originally stepped. The song ends, and she escapes. This wasn’t merely movie magic because Into the Woods is a musical. Cinderella changed something while singing her song that had consequences in the rest of the story.

Cinderella just froze time by singing.

A concept that seems too far out of left field until you realize that, in Into the Woods, she also sings to birds and commands them to do her chores and cries magic tears that grow a tree that grants wishes. Magic is very much real in the world of Into the Woods and Cinderella can use it. My heart began to race as I realized that if Cinderella could stop time, the final champion wasn’t so obvious.

I started looking at every Disney property they ever produced featuring some version of their characters. I looked at comics, video games, and short films. It was tedious, tiring, and time consuming, but I was determined to have the most accurate and exhaustive collection of each character’s powers and abilities to ensure the final result would be correct. Then I ran into a snag: Maleficent.

In 2014, Disney made a live-action film as an adaptation of the story of Sleeping Beauty that followed Maleficent as the protagonist. This wouldn’t be a problem except that they retconned Maleficent to be a good person in the story who was simply misunderstood by the other characters. They also made her the queen of the fairies and Aurora’s godmother. Which means Maleficent was a female character featured in an animated Disney movie who, at some point, was a Queen and finished her movie as a protagonist and good person. Maleficent was a Disney Princess.

I thought this was hilarious and had no intention of changing my Disney Princess Criteria. I just moved forward in building a source list for Maleficent the Disney Princess while trying to contain my laughter. But something wasn’t sitting right. Sure, following the 2014 film’s portrayal of Maleficent meant she qualified to be a Disney Princess, but the way that version of Maleficent acted contradicted the way Maleficent behaved in every other source of Disney media. Even in obscure cameo roles like the House of Mouse, Maleficent is a villain. Most importantly, the Maleficent in the House of Mouse is shown to be the Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty and the same Maleficent in the Disney live-action film series, Descendants.

In House of Mouse, there’s a subplot in one episode of Hades flirting with Maleficent and they start dating. In the Descendants series, they confirm that Hades and Maleficent were in love and had a daughter, Mal, the protagonist of the franchise. The amount of source material supporting the version of Maleficent from the original Sleeping Beauty film in 1959 vastly outweighed the two live-action films with good-guy Maleficent.

This helped me form my rules for Disney Princess Canon:

1. Films, short films, and television shows the Disney Princess has appeared in.

a. This includes live-action portrayals where it is clear that the live-action version of the character is the same as the animated version of the character.

b. This includes cameos where it is clear the cameo is the same character from a Primary Source.

c. This includes live-action remakes of originally animated properties as long as the characterization in the remake does not contradict the Primary Source.

2. Books based on the films and television show universes the Disney Princess has appeared in.

a. This excludes the “Twisted Tale” series as they are ‘what if’ scenarios of the original stories.

3. Specific exclusion of video games.

Thankfully, there was still one major wildcard even with all these rules and regulations I placed on myself: Once Upon a Time. The show aired on ABC, a Disney subsidiary, and featured dozens of fairy tale and mythical characters interacting with each other. They went on all kinds of adventures across many worlds and timelines. The main characters included people like Snow White, Belle, and the Evil Queen, but I thought there was no way these could be the same people like in the animated films. Everything changed in season 3.

In season 3, Anna, Elsa, and Kristoff all show up and are clearly the same characters that appear in the animated film, Frozen, from 2013. If Anna and Elsa are simply live-action versions of their animated counterparts, that means everyone else is simply a live-action version of the same animated character. Which means that the Snow White who can rip people’s hearts out of their chest in Once Upon a Time is the same Snow White who starred in one of the most revolutionary films in human history in 1937. Things just got way more interesting.

Considering my Disney Princess Criteria and my Disney Canon Criteria, here is the official line-up of Disney Princesses:

1. Snow White

2. Cinderella

3. Aurora

4. Tinker Bell

5. Eilonwy

6. Ariel

7. Belle

8. Jasmine

9. Nala

10. Pocahontas

11. Esmerelda

12. Megara

13. Fa Mulan

14. Jane Porter

15. Kida Nedakh

16. Tiana

17. Rapunzel

18. Vanellope von Schweetz

19. Anna

20. Elsa

21. Moana

22. Raya

23. Mirabel Madrigal

24. Isabella Madrigal

25. Louisa Madrigal

26. Dolores Madrigal

27. Asha

28. Star Butterfly

29. Emma Swan

30. Kiara

31. Melody

32. Anastasia Tremaine

33. Elena Castillo Flores

34. Sofia

35. Merida

36. Maleficent “Mal” Bertha Jr.

37. Evie

It is my intention to walk through each Disney Princess by discussing their character, powers and abilities, and resources to determine a final power ranking. Then, they will be placed in a single elimination bracket and forced to fight one another until only one remains. The final princess will be crowned the Grand Champion in the Disney Princess Tournament of Power.