Netflix’s cartoon She-Ra and The Princesses Of Power seems at first glance to be a progressive and inclusive show.
In the show, Adora, a child soldier raised by the Evil Horde, finds a magic sword and discovers that she can do a magical girl transformation into the legendary hero She-Ra. She-Ra, and by extension Adora, is a princess, a member of a group Adora has been taught to despise. Adora must come to terms with being a princess, overcome her biases against princesses, see the Evil Horde for what it is, break up with the love of her life, Catra, and team up with the other princesses of the planet Etheria to save the universe. This is obviously a trans allegory with a lesbian main character and-
Wait, what the fuck. Hold on, can we rewind that for a second?
Adora must overcome her biases against princesses
What.
The Evil Horde brainwashed Adora into hating the monarchy
Huh?
Okay, I think we’re going to need to try that intro paragraph again.
Adora is a child soldier raised by the Evil Horde, a fascist empire ruled by a megalomaniacal dictator who is actually a reject from an even larger and more fascist empire. The Evil Horde is invading Etheria, whose native governments are feudal monarchies and therefore slightly less bad than the Horde. Adora finds a magic sword that reveals she is a member of Etheria’s native ruling class. Also, she discovers the Horde is doing genocide and are not actually communist freedom fighters. This provokes her to become a monarchist, because there aren’t any better ideologies present on this ridiculous rock.
This plot is a mess. What were the writers thinking? The bad guys brainwash their child soldiers into being against the monarchy? WHY. Who the hell signs off on this nonsense?
Okay so She-Ra is actually a really good show if you completely ignore that the main characters are monarchists. We have a trans allegory main character who is going through a standard Neo from the Matrix plot. She’s not who she thought she was, she has a heroic alter ego with magic powers, standard hero’s journey nonsense, good writing.
We have some excellent gay inclusion. It’s kinda rocky at the beginning when they were only allowed to have two side characters be wives. But through the middle of the show the entire plot is only happening because a useless lesbian is mad at her girlfriend for leaving her, and in the final season they’re in a committed relationship.
And we have some examples of positive masculinity with a guy who wears a heart motif in his outfit and a bisexual singing arsonist. It’s great stuff, almost as good at portraying positive masculinity as the Lord of the Rings.
It’s just…
They’re monarchists.
It’s not subtle. The show writers are clearly aware of these heroes being situated within a feudal cultural context. In one early episode, the heroes have to go to a gala in the ice kingdom to convince the ice princess to join their… “rebellion”. In another, we meet the traumatized servants of autism-coded, part-time-villain Entrapta. Later on, main character Glimmer experiences the death of her mother and the burdens of leadership as ruler of Brightmoon.
The show writers clearly had ideas about this stuff. There are guards and servants working at the castles. We meet the feudal subjects of Etheria. The flower kingdom seems to be the least hierarchical, as it basically amounts to a hippie commune run by a princess who doesn’t like to do anything except grow plants. By contrast, when we first visit the sea kingdom, it is fully in ruins and all the people are gone because Mermista the sea princess is doing a terrible job. The Horde are destroying the sea gate and nothing is being done about it, so the people fled.
The human cost of monarchy in the real world amounts to mass suffering and poverty, forced servitude, and pointless wars over which king has a bigger dick. In She-Ra, the princesses are allowed to be bad rulers, but the human cost is almost always paid because of something the Evil Horde did and the princesses failed to prevent. We never see mass starvation as a result of resource mismanagement or war between kingdoms. It’s a little bizarre. Perhaps this whitewashing is just a result of it being a children’s cartoon that needs a low age rating.
There is one exception, though. We do see the human cost of monarchy in Dryl, the kingdom of Princess Entrapta. While the castle is full of malfunctioning killer robots built by the kingdom’s monarch, our band of heroes run into the castle’s kitchen staff. They’re timid, nervous, and talk as though they’re never allowed to leave their little room, even absent robot infestations. They’ve never even met their employer, they just prepare her food exactly to specification and send it down the tubes.
They talk like abuse victims. This latest crisis is unfamiliar to them, but their lack of independence and confidence is not. They have to be taught how to think and act for themselves by Adora and her team, and once they do, they can defeat the robots without much trouble. We see no other evidence of human habitation in this kingdom. The land is barren and the castle is on the side of a cliff. Anyone else who lived in the castle is either gone or dead as a result of the ruler’s robots. But we see no bodies, and no other living or working quarters. The castle is an incomprehensible maze that the heroes struggle to make sense of.
She-Ra teaches us to empathise with Princess Entrapta. She’s heavily autism-coded, and ends up working for the villains for a couple of seasons after being left behind by the heroes and manipulated by the villains. She designs weapons for the Evil Horde that are used to commit genocide. But eventually, the heroes return for her and she’s redeemed. We’re told by the framing of the story that it was just a misunderstanding. But I can’t help wondering… what did she do to Dryl?
This question, of why almost nobody lives in her kingdom or why her subjects are traumatized, is not directly answered. But answers are not hard to imagine, if you know the cost of giving one individual absolute power over countless lives.
Etheria’s princesses are not morally flawless paragons, except perhaps for Adora, who suffers only from gullibility and self-doubt. They are deeply human and flawed. Some have a short temper. Some suffer from executive function issues. They’re almost all children, and make decisions the way children do. Even as those decisions affect thousands of lives around them.
Yet, ND Stevenson shields the Princesses of Power from concerns about monarchy, by writing in the Evil Horde. A more powerful, more totalitarian, more fascist enemy. Thanks to this setup, a coalition of monarchs is able to be described as a “rebellion” by the show’s characters. They get to be the underdogs.
When a princess fails, she fails to protect people. People suffer and die because the Evil Horde came to burn down their homes, and a princess didn’t do well enough to prevent it. Except for Dryl and Entrapta, the princesses never directly cause damage. They are not accountable for the thousands of lives that are lost.
This is a fantastic license to have an absolutely inexcusable level of authority be placed on the heroes and go unquestioned. Whatever criticism you can level against the “good guys”, there’s a bad guy who did worse. In any other work, the dictators would be the bad guys. Yet, in She-Ra, they are unquestionably saving many lives and have ultimately pure and good intentions. They are heroes, that much cannot be denied.
It reminds Me of Harry Potter, in which the titular main character is a genetically superior, fabulously wealthy, athletically inclined, slaveowning cop-to-be. And he’s the hero. Many people have pointed out the ways in which Harry Potter serves to platform JK Rowling’s liberal biases. For example, the solution to the problems caused in the books by slavery is not for slaveowners to free their slaves, but instead that they should be good slaveowners and treat their slaves nicely. This is the moral. If you would like to hear further criticism of Harry Potter, I cannot recommend Shaun’s analysis enough.
Is a monarch morally worse than a slaveowner? I don’t think this question has a correct answer, but certainly a monarch is more capable of doing harm en masse. A monarch’s oppression is larger in scale. And much as in Harry Potter, the heroes of She-Ra are “good” monarchs. They treat their subjects fairly (most of the time), attempt to stop worse forms of government from coming to be, and they go out and save lives all the time.
But does the show end with the title of “princess” being abolished and control of the kingdoms of Etheria being democratised or anarchised? No. The monarchs stay monarchs. There are not even token steps towards a method of governance other than monarchist dictatorship.
Adora begins the series as a leftist, against the monarchy. Adora learns to accept herself, by becoming a right-wing monarchist who looks forward to no more social progress than the previous status quo.
She-Ra teaches its watchers that monarchs can be good. That princesses can be heroes. As we move forward into a 21st century critical of monarchist power structures, creating Disney “princess” stories like Moana, which showcase progress and an abandonment of traditional European noble stories, She-Ra remains trapped in the 18th century.
There are no guillotines in this story. The most progress we can hope for is a traditional European monarchy, with a lesbian coat of paint.
