"Rejected Princesses" gives stories and illustrations to princesses who'll probably never have movies made about them. Here's how it's done.
At this point, we've seen just about every iteration of Disney princesses recontextualized by creative fans. The well may have run dry, but this exhaustion speaks to how eager a global audience is for animated females who break the traditional Disney mould. In the meantime, one writer has started conjuring some new princesses who break that mould so comprehensively they've become more likely characters for violent indie thrillers than family-oriented studio fare. Which is kind of a shame.
Former DreamWorks effects animator and fledgling artist Jason Porath recently created Rejected Princesses, a website that features detailed, often hilarious stories and illustrations about some historical and mythical women who were just too darn interesting to end up with their own big budget four-quadrant vehicles. It's a counter example to the litany of animated heroines who seem to lack much agency; the ones who have some semblance of power within reach, but too often end up relying on a romantic interest or other helpful tropes, to save the day. (Porath cites Hayao Miyazaki's--especially Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind--as popular counter-examples.)
Rejected Princesses developed out of a lunchtime conversation at Porath's old workplace back in February, during which he and some colleagues tried to determine who'd make the least suitable candidate for an animated princess. After eventually soliciting some suggestions on Facebook, the gears began to grind in Porath's imagination and he was very much compelled to see what some of these characters might look like, even if he had to draw them himself.
"Each woman is based off as much visual reference of the actual story as possible," the artist says of the project which formally launched last week. "As opposed to any specific cinematic princess that's come before. The influences are different for each woman's story, with an eye towards detail. Pasiphae's entry, for example, is actually set in the historical palace at Knossos, has the constellation for Taurus in the background, and even uses her laurel to give her figurative 'horns.'"
Initially he went strictly off of friends and Facebook folks' suggestions. Once he started doing heavy research for some of these characters, others would announce themselves and prolong the research phase indefinitely.
"I tried to cast a wide net with this first batch--not just culturally and racially diverse, but pulling from history, fiction, and myth," Porath says. "Some are badass, some sociopathic, and some are just bizarre. The idea can be an umbrella for a lot of stories, and I wanted to see which ones people would react to."
Now that the response has surpassed anything Porath had been hoping for, with fans sending in loads of requests every day, expect to see lots more unorthodox examples going forward--even if Disney, Dreamworks and the like don't follow suit.
Mariya
Here’s one of the most badass Rejected Princesses of all: Sergeant Mariya Oktyabrskaya, the first female tanker to ever win the Hero of the Soviet Union award, and her tank, Fighting Girlfriend.
During World War 2, her army officer husband Ilya was killed in action. In response, Mariya sold literally all of their belongings in order to buy a tank. She then wrote Stalin the following letter:
"My husband was killed in action defending the motherland. I want revenge on the fascist dogs for his death and for the death of Soviet people tortured by the fascist barbarians. For this purpose I’ve deposited all my personal savings--50,000 rubles--to the National Bank in order to build a tank. I kindly ask to name the tank ‘Fighting Girlfriend’ and to send me to the frontline as a driver of said tank."
Stalin wrote back pretty quickly and said yes.
Initially, the army was skeptical of her ability to handle a tank. However, she quickly proved in training that she could drive, shoot, and throw grenades with the best of them--skills she’d picked up from her late husband, with whom she’d presumably had some interesting dates.
On her first outing in the tank, she outmaneuvered the German soldiers, killing around thirty of them and taking out an anti-tank gun. When they shelled her tank, immobilizing Fighting Girlfriend, she got out--in the middle of a firefight--and repaired the damn thing. She then got back in and proceeded to kill more Germans.
During all this, she wrote a letter to her sister describing her time in the war. She told her “I’ve had my baptism by fire. I beat the bastards. Sometimes I’m so angry I can’t even breathe.”
In the end, she was taken out by a mortar round when she got out of her tank in the middle of yet another firefight to fix Fighting Girlfriend. She was awarded the highest honor in the Soviet Military and is buried in one of the nation’s most sacred cemeteries.
Art notes:
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That’s roughly what her outfit would have looked like, depending on the time of year.
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The model of tank depicted is a T34 tank, the actual one that Fighting Girlfriend was.
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The Fighting Girlfriend logo was on the side of the turret, just out of the cropping of this picture, so it didn’t make the cut. I didn’t want to be inaccurate and just put it on the turret.
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Mariya is actually sitting in front of the machine gunner’s outlook, so it would be jutting into her and presumably she wouldn’t be very comfortable. It was the only way I could make the composition I had in mind work.
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The German soldiers used many different colour tracer rounds, but red was among them.
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The planes in the background are PE-8 Petlyakov Soviet bombers.
Mai Bhago
Introducing the eleventh Rejected Princess: Mai Bhago, 18th century Sikh warrior-saint and only survivor of the Battle of Khidrana.
A quick bit of background, since it may be that you, like me, do not know a ton about Sikhs. You probably know that they’re the guys who wear turbans, don’t shave, and consistently get mistaken for Muslim — usually by ignorant morons who are trying to start something. Frustrating as that is, douchebags attacking them for virtually no reason is something that Sikhs have had to live with for the majority of the religion’s existence. Exhibit A: the Mughal Empire.
The Mughals were badasses. Their founder, Babar, had quite the lineage to begin with: descendant of Tamerlane (an Uzbeki warlord known for constructing pyramids out of his enemies’ skulls) on his father’s side and grandson of Genghis Khan on his mother’s. The Mughals continued and refined this legacy. On the one hand they did so militaristically, riding elephants into battle, redefining warfare, and expanding the empire until it encompassed all of present-day India and beyond.
On the other hand, they also advanced literature, culture, and the arts tremendously. They built the Taj Mahal, giant libraries, and had a tremendously multicultural empire. For more info on that, check out Akbar the Great, who — having brought together a huge number of disparate peoples in a surprisingly peaceful, literary, and secular empire, especially for the time — definitely earned the moniker.
Unfortunately, by the time this story begins, the Mughals were being ruled by Aurangzeb, who was neither peaceful nor understanding. He was particularly aggressive towards the Sikhs, partly because of religious reasons, partly because the Sikhs weren’t down with the caste system. In fact, the Sikhs were egalitarian in general, with women considered equals to men.
Which brings us to Mai Bhago. Sorry for the long intro, I just want you to know what she was up against.
Mai lived in a peaceful rural town with her parents. She spent a lot of time with her dad, who, in their daddy-daughter hangouts, taught her what any good father should: how to be a devoted Sikh, how to ride a horse, and how to kill anyone who starts shit with you. All of these came in handy just a few years later, when the leader of the Sikh, Guru Gobind Singh Ji, founded the Khalsa — the warrior-saints.
You see, the previous Guru before Gobind Singh Ji — and there were only ever ten of these guys to ever live, with Guru Gobind Singh Ji being number ten — was executed by Aurangzeb when the Guru was nine years old. Rather than capitulating to Aurangzeb and living a quiet life, the Guru ordered his followers to eschew the caste system, forsake their family names, be baptized as warrior-saints, and kick ass for the lord.
Mai Bhago was one of the first to get down on that.
The following years were very difficult on the Sikhs, with the Mughals waging nonstop warfare on the Guru. As tough as it was on him, it was arguably tougher on his warriors, holed up in fortress after fortress, eventually subsisting on nothing but nuts and leaves. After months of this, with heavy hearts, forty of them forsook the religion and left the Khalsa, in order to return to their normal lives.
Mai Bhago was having none of that. Upon hearing about the forty deserters, she rode to every city around and got all of the women to refuse any hospitality to them. She even rounded up a group of women to take up arms in the deserters’ place — telling the forty to either stay behind and look after the children or sack up and fight. Suitably ashamed by this, the forty deserters had a change of heart and decided to rejoin the Guru’s cause.
Just in time, too — because as the forty (plus Mai) were riding back to the Guru, the Mughals were making another assault on his stronghold. The size of the army is difficult to determine from historical records, with the only source I can find claiming the Mughals had ten thousand men, which seems a bit ridiculous. In any event, it is agreed that the Sikhs were massively outnumbered.
On December 29, 1705, the forty-one Sikhs rushed in to cut off the Mughals anyway. They did several clever things in and leading up to the battle:
1) Positioned themselves in front of the Khirdana reservoir, the only source of water for miles around, and defended it viciously.
2) Laid sheets across bushes everywhere, giving the appearance of tents — and then hid in nearby bushes, ambushing the Mughals when they started attacking the empty “tents”.
3) Kicked up a colossal amount of dust, attracting the attention of the retreating Guru — who proceeded to unleash an incessant barrage of arrows from a nearby hill upon the Mughals.
Eventually the Mughals, battered and thirsty, withdrew. All forty of the deserters died in that battle, as did a large number of Mughal soldiers. Mai Bhago was the only Sikh survivor. From there, she became bodyguard to the Guru. She outlived him and later died of old age herself. The Mughal Empire under Aurangzeb’s leadership began a slow decline and died out a bit over a century later. The Sikh religion continues strong to this day. Mai Bhago’s spear and gun can still be found in Sikh museums, and her house has been converted into a Gurudwara (a Sikh place of worship).
And lastly: although best known by the name Mai Bhago, technically her name, after converting to Khalsa, was Mai Bhag Kaur — Kaur being a surname all female Khalsa take, meaning, literally, “princess.”
As an art note: she is depicted here not just wearing the traditional Khalsa clothing, but that of the Nihang, an elite warrior Khalsa sect. This outfit includes a variety of bladed weapons (the Guru was known to have five weapons on him at all times), electric blue robes, steel-wrapped turbans, and steel bangles about the wrist. I am unsure if she was technically Nihang, but for damn sure she had their spirit.
And yes, she is decapitating that guy. Follow the trail of dust to see the arc of her sword. She has her sword and shield on the same arm, up around her shoulder. Realistically, I should have put the shield on her other arm, but hindsight is 20/20.
Lastly: the Mughal being beheaded has period-accurate clothing, although his helmet is one of an infantryman and his outfit is that of a cavalryman. I wanted to be able to see his face.
Osh-Tisch
Osh-Tisch, whose name translates to “Finds Them and Kills Them” in Crow. Osh-Tisch was a biologically male-sexed person who lived as a woman, and was one of the last Crow Nation baté (Two Spirit spiritual leaders) – oh, and you can be sure, she earned her name.
She is also far from the only awesome lady in this story.
Let’s start by talking a bit about Two Spirits, since I’m guessing that term’s going to trip up a fair number of people. The first thing to know is that even talking about Two Spirits is like waltzing through a minefield whilst blindingly drunk. Doing so on Tumblr is like doing so with lead boots on and howler monkeys constantly biting you. But hey, I’ve got a death wish, so let’s dance.
Two Spirit is a term analogous to “transgender” – virtually all Native American tribes subscribe to the idea of more than two genders, encompassing identities such as women born as men and vice versa, homosexuals of various biologies, and the like. Except “transgender” should not be used in this case, as many Two Spirits take exception at being lumped under/appropriated by the term “transgender.” So that word’s out.
Back in the day, Two Spirits were referred to as “berdache”. This is a term that absolutely nobody should ever, ever use, as the origins for it are somewhere between the French word for “male prostitute” and the Persian word for “slave.” So that word’s definitely out.
In the first version of this entry, I used the terms “male-bodied” and “female-bodied,” which some find troublesome, so those are out too.
And since each tribe has totally different numbers, kinds, social roles, and even words for said genders, many take exception at even being lumped under the umbrella of Two Spirit. So that word’s arguably out, except there’s really no other word to be used for the phenomenon.
By now you probably get what I said about minefield waltzing.
Still, I think it’s important to know about. Partly because it’s super fascinating (seriously, Google it), and partly because of the fate of Two Spirits. More on that later.
Anyway, Osh-Tisch! As baté, she lived apart from the main area of the camp, and had duties ranging from artist, to medicine woman, to shaman. She was not just any baté – she was the baté leader. Head baté in charge. Baté Prime. Contemporary accounts described her as quietly dignified, almost regal.
But during the incident that earned Osh-Tisch her name, she was not acting in her traditional roles at all. Instead, she had taken up arms with her male brethren and gone to war with them against the Lakota. This, while not a unique among the history of Two Spirits, is so incredibly rare that I’ve yet to find a recorded parallel to it.
This is an incident that would have been largely forgotten from history, were it not for a Crow woman named Pretty Shield mentioning it in an interview years later. While recounting details of the Battle of the Rosebud (a battle in which the Crow fought alongside a coalition led by the US Army against the Lakota and Cheyenne tribes), Pretty Shield leaned forward, and asked:
“Did the men ever tell you anything about a woman who fought… on the Rosebud?”
Surprised, the reporter replied “no.” Pretty Shield chuckled, remarking that the men “do not like to tell of it.” She went on to tell a story of not just one, but two awesome women on the battlefield.
During the battle, a Crow warrior was wounded and fell from his horse. Sensing an opportunity, the Lakota charged forward to collect his scalp. In response, Osh-Tisch jumped off her horse, stood over him, and started shooting at the approaching Lakota “as rapidly as she could load her gun.”
Meanwhile, another woman (this one biologically female-sexed) named The Other Magpie started yelling and making a distraction. Unlike Osh-Tisch, The Other Magpie (described as pretty, brave, wild, and unmarried) had no firearm. Instead, she had a stick. Not even a particularly good stick, either: this was a coup stick.
What’s a coup stick, you ask? Well, the supremely brave (and possibly crazy) among certain Native American tribes would, instead of bringing actual weapons to war, try to hit people with decorative sticks called coup sticks. For each hit scored, they’d rack up points and prestige, in the world’s most hardcore game of tag. Hit enough people and your coup stick gets to be pretty damn fancy. The Other Magpie’s was not fancy. It was a stick with a single feather tied to it.
So, The Other Magpie: mad as hell because her brother had recently been killed by the Lakota, she rode into war with just one of these at her side. Riding straight at Lakota, she alternated between waving her stick wildly, spitting at them, and yelling “my spit is my arrows.” Yeah.
With the Lakota distracted by the utterly bizarre sight in front of them, The Other Magpie hit one of them with her coup stick. A second later, the same guy was dead from Osh-Tisch’s bullet, as if The Other Magpie was some sort of supernatural harbinger of death. This act earned Osh-Tisch her “Finds Them and Kills Them” moniker. As the surviving Lakota gave up their scalping mission and scattered, The Other Magpie dismounted and scalped the newly-dead Lakota in return. In the end, it was one of only ten scalps collected by the Crow during the battle. The Other Magpie cut it into many pieces, so that more people could join in the post-battle ceremonial dancing back at camp.
Remember, kids, sharing is caring.
In the years following the Battle of Rosebud, the Crow were confined to reservations, and it is here that the story starts to get sad. The various missionaries and government agents who visited the reservations were not down with Two Spirits or anything they considered deviant – which is to say, everything save missionary position with your wife with the lights off. In the late 1890s, this attitude reared its head when an agent named Briskow imprisoned Osh-Tisch and the other batés. He cut their hair and made them wear mens’ clothing. Various Crow described this as “crazy” and “a tragedy”.
The Crow Nation, however, rallied around Osh-Tisch. The tribe leaders did not hold much sway at this point in time vis-à-vis the US government, but they threw their full weight behind her, and demanded Briskow get the fuck out. In short order, he was gone. To the Crow of the time, not only was Osh-Tisch’s nature completely accepted, but even celebrated.
Unfortunately, such treatments were not at all uncommon during the time, and a great many baté-esque roles from other tribes ended up committing suicide after being forced into binary gender roles. A Lakota man described the treatment thusly: “I heard sad stories of winktes [Lakota Two Spirits] committing suicide, hanging themselves rather than change… after that, those who remained would put on man’s clothing.”
The handful of recorded interactions with Osh-Tisch support that. In every case, her white contemporaries (who usually referred to her as “him”) would ask her questions like why she wore womens’ clothes. She replied that she was “inclined to be a woman, never a man.” When they asked what work she did, she said, “all woman’s work,” and, with no small amount of pride, produced an ornate dress she’d made. Her entire life, she tried to explain and normalize what and who she was. Under her leadership, a quiet inter-tribe outreach effort began to emerge, linking all the different tribes’ Two Spirits in secret communication, in an attempt to facilitate communication and understanding. She is one of the only Two Spirits whose name and story survives to present day.
Sadly, her efforts were for naught. After Osh-Tisch died in 1929, the restrictive moral code of western missionaries took hold in the Crow nation and became internalized. With no others to take up the role of baté, the institution died out, and its ancient knowledge with it. This happened across almost all Native American tribes. Even though there has been a modern movement to reinstitute the idea of Two Spirits amongst the tribes, it has been met with great resistance. Modern-day Two Spirits suffer persecution and hate crimes even by members of their own tribe. While everyone agrees that Two Spirits existed in olden times, the tradition, wisdom, and acceptance of these roles has been in large part lost to history. It is important to remember and to honor them.
So here’s to Osh-Tisch: a bridge between genders, between worlds, between tribes. Who fought in every way possible to keep her way of life alive and accepted, and was loved by her tribe for it. Who saw the Crow’s last days roaming the plains, and first days on the reservation. Who walked proudly into the sunset.
Thanks go to one of my numerous brethren (this one also wants to remain anonymous) for alerting me to the tales of Osh-Tisch, The Other Magpie, and, for that matter, Pretty Shield – without her roguish storytelling, we wouldn’t know anything of their contributions to the Battle of Rosebud. She described their return as “one of the finest sights that I have ever seen,” and talked about how proud she was of them.
And as a final aside: the names of Pretty Shield’s parents were Kills in the Night and Crazy Sister-in-Law. I think that’s pretty rad.
ART NOTES
First, a general note: I struggled a LOT with this entry, as you might be able to tell. Initially I was going to do it entirely on Osh-Tisch, but as I learned more about The Other Magpie and how she brought a stick to a gun fight, I knew I couldn’t leave her out. I didn’t want to wimp out on the first Two Spirit/transgender representation and split the entry, though, so the focus is definitely on Osh-Tisch. I wanted to portray her as an action hero, since I’ve never heard of a Two Spirit action hero (even transgender ones are vanishingly rare).
Other than that:
•Osh-Tisch is wearing the same outfit as in the one surviving picture of her. This is actually not historically accurate, since she wore men’s clothing to the battle. However, I took artistic license here, because I wanted to portray her as she liked to portray herself.
•As an aside, the reason Pretty Shield gave for Osh-Tisch dressing like a man (just for a day) in the Battle of the Rosebud was that, were she to die, she didn’t want the Lakota laughing at her by finding a biologically male-sexed person in women’s clothing. I don’t quite understand this line of thinking, as the Lakota winkte were also male-sexed women, and they were respected greatly by the Lakota.
•The plants beside her in the picture are a nod to her shamanistic medicine woman role.
•Both The Other Magpie and Osh-Tisch have long, luxurious hair, since anthropologist George Catlin described at length how the Crow took pride in their hair.
•The Other Magpie is, of course, spitting, although it may be a bit hard to see at the web resolution.
•Osh-Tisch is firing a period-accurate Winchester rifle, which I believe is what they would have been using in The Battle of the Rosebud.
And lastly, as regards my use of the pronoun “she” to describe Osh-Tisch: that is, as best I can tell, how Pretty Shield referred to her, so I am deferring to that.
Noor Inayat Khan
Noor Inayat Khan, one of the bravest women to ever live. She was a British secret agent during World War 2, working as a radio operator in occupied Paris. In fact, working as the ONLY radio operator in occupied Paris. The average lifespan for that job was 6 weeks, and she lasted almost 5 months. She escaped the Gestapo numerous times, and went out fighting. All this, even though everything about her work went against her basic pacifist nature. Read on for more about this phenomenal human being.
Noor was the least suitable person in the world to become a spy. For one thing, she was a deeply-rooted pacifist – her father was a Muslim Sufi who counted Mahatma Gandhi as a personal friend. Their family home doubled as a mystic school. She was so deeply invested in Sufism that she outright refused to lie, which, you’d think, would disqualify her for the job entirely.
On top of that, she didn’t even like Britain! She said as much in her initial interview with the British military, due to her relentless honesty. She told the interviewers that after the war, she would devote herself to obtaining India’s independence. This is almost like applying to work at a construction site and saying you plan on tearing the building down afterwards.
And she wasn’t remotely physically suited to be a spy! Prior to the war, she spent her days writing poetry, music, and childrens’ books — she was not exactly bodybuilder material. In test interrogations, she would freeze up in terror and start quietly muttering to herself. Her instructors remarked that she was clumsy and scatterbrained, and regularly left codebooks out in the open.
And above all, in the greatest sin one could have against a spy, she did not blend in, at all. Her parents were Indian and white, British and American, royalty and commoner; she was raised Muslim and Sufi; she was born in Moscow and lived in London and France. She was an actual, honest-to-god princess, descendant of Tipu Sultan. She could not have stood out more if her mother was albino and her father was a neon signpost.
But something changed in her when the Nazis invaded Paris. Seeing their bombs drop on her beloved France stirred something deep inside her, and she resolved to change.
And change she did. In short order, she was placed with the British Special Operations Executive, to be trained as an undercover radio operator. She flung herself into training, becoming adept both physically and mechanically in record time. Her eccentricities shone through, though: her radio encryption code was derived from one of her poems, and her codename, Madeleine, was a character from one of her stories. Her clumsy style of morse signaling was so peculiar she was jokingly nicknamed “Bang Away Lulu.” But despite the misgivings of many of her superiors (most were downright patronizing in their assessments), she sped through training, and was soon sent to Paris as the first secret female radio operator.
Unfortunately, tragedy struck almost immediately. Barely a week into her Paris assignment, virtually the entire Parisian spy operation was caught in a giant sweep. Noor escaped, but by the end of it, she was the only radio operator in the entirety of Paris. London offered to extradite her, but she flat-out refused until a replacement was made available.
What happened next, no one expected: she fucking CRUSHED it. For nearly 5 months, she evaded the Gestapo, changing her location, looks, and clothes on a nearly daily basis. On more than one occasion she tricked, evaded, or just plain outran the Nazis. All the while, she did the work of six people, relaying all of the spy traffic for the entire region back to London by herself. She lasted three times as long as the average radio operator.
She was eventually caught, when a double agent betrayed her to the Nazis. She went down as you’d expect a lifelong pacifist to: by punching, kicking, and biting like a wild animal. Then, scant hours into her imprisonment, she made her first escape attempt. She did so by demanding a bath, and further that the door be closed (to protect her modesty). As soon as the door shut, she darted onto the roof, nimbly clambering across the tiles, only to be caught again.
Facing the possibility of harsh punishment, she grew outwardly compliant, as she fed the Germans lie after lie. All the while she was plotting another escape, which almost worked — except, just as she left her cell, the British made a surprise air raid. Because of that, the guards did an unscheduled check of the cells, only to find the bars on her window undone and her sprinting across the roof again.
They weren’t taking any chances with her after that. She was reclassified as extremely dangerous, shackled in chains, and kept in solitary confinement. Her interrogations changed from friendly questioning to relentless physical violence. Her new prison mates, unsure who she was, mostly knew her through her nightly weeping. And yet, this girl who failed her test interrogations so miserably never revealed a single thing. Virtually all of the information we have on her last months comes from the few survivors in the cells surrounding her. She would scratch out messages to them on the bottom of her food bowl, identifying who she was.
And then, one day, she was taken to the Dachau concentration camp along with three other spies. While her companions were shot almost immediately after arrival, Noor’s execution was prolonged, giving her an extra day that was nothing but hour upon hour of brutal beatings. According to the other prisoners, her last word, shouted at the Nazis before being shot, was “liberté.”
Noor Inayat Khan gave everything of herself. She became a pacifist that fought dirty. A klutz that climbed buildings. A Sufi that lied daily. An artist that braved torture. A captive that told nothing.
She was thirty years old.
I’ll be honest, this entry was hard for me to write. Noor was one of us. She was weird. She was an outsider. She was an artist. But the courage she displayed, I just… I don’t have the words. All I can say is that I took the story of her last months way more personally than I thought I would have. I don’t know how many times I asked myself, could I have stepped up like she did?
The credit for alerting me to this story goes to my rad friend lauriethescott – very sincerely, thank you, Laurie.
This week’s hint was a lot harder on you all, with many assuming that “Bang Away Lulu” referred to someone named Lulu. However, a surprising number of you guessed right— well done:
•iamerikaalicia
•moemoney4390
•kittydestiel
•consulting-timelordess-rose
•russiasbeautifulbutterfly
•theundecidedyear
•endless-clarity
•pfenixise
•sarahfv83
•praetor-seaweedbrain
•lostgirlleftstanding
ART NOTES
•That is the rooftop of 84 Ave Foch, the building she was imprisoned in. The flak going off in the background is a callback to the air raid that thwarted her escape attempt, and also is supposed to draw the eye to Noor.
•Her outfit is what she was caught in – blue dress with white trim and a gray jumper. The suitcase radio she’s using is the same model she was using in Paris. Her hand is even reaching for the morse signaling button.
Much more here. Check it out, it's interesting.
http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/
Topic: Disney's Rejected Princesses