lolita media library: Novala Takemoto and Macoto Takahashi’s Princess Scale (うろこひめ)

“If you want to be happier than you are now, you must cast aside the happiness you already have.”

Overview

This is a simplified retelling of Novala Takemoto’s novel Princess Scale (鱗姫, Urokohime) with full color illustrations by girls’ manga artist Macoto Takahashi (高橋真琴). In its own words, it is “the story of a beautiful and cruel princess”.

Plot

Twin girls are born to a country’s king and queen. One baby is exceptionally cute and the other is not. They decide to announce only the birth of the pretty baby girl, while they lock the not-pretty one away in a tower and pretend she was never born. Time passes and the beautiful baby grows into a kind, lovely princess. Her favorite food is melon and matsutake mushroom juice with honey, which she loves so much she has the castle servants make it and sell it to the subjects and neighboring kingdoms. This makes the country incredibly rich. Everyone loves her because she is kind, beautiful, and made the country prosperous.

As her 15th birthday approaches, her parents plan a lavish birthday party and invite all the princes of the world with the intent that one of them will become her husband. However, the week before the party, the princess suddenly dies. The king and queen cannot cancel the party because princes from all over the world have already started their journey to attend and are incredibly excited for the chance to marry the princess. They summon a wizard and ask him to bring her back to life, even just for a day, but he says this is impossible. They order him to find a solution. He disappears.

The next day, the wizard finds the king and queen’s other daughter, the late princess’ twin who had been locked away in the tower. She goes with the wizard to the room where the king and queen are having breakfast. They had forgotten about her entirely and are absolutely astonished – she looks exactly like the princess who died. With her consent, the wizard has used his magic to make her look somehow even more beautiful than the late princess. There is a way to make the magic last forever…but it requires an unsavory form of maintenance.

Comments

Though it has the same name as one of Novala Takemoto’s full length novels, this book is much shorter (88 pages with larger text and illustrations) and is only loosely based on the novel. It reads like a fairy tale book for older children, with a healthy dose of the more horrific content that the original versions of German fairy tales are known for. I like that it still manages to keep twinges of Novala’s style for how much it is toned down.

There were some things about it that irked me. The king and queen are absolutely clueless – they don’t seem to bat an eye at things that would concern any normal human being. If I were in the 15 year old forgotten princess’ shoes I’d probably be an uncontrollable flaming ball of rage instead of the relatively well composed person in the book. Your inept parents locked you in a room and literally forgot you existed, and you probably would have died had one of the kitchen servants not sneaked food to you. You’d never left that room until the wizard found you and it was convenient for your parents to have you there. It even says that his magic only changed her appearance and not her personality, so it seems unlikely that the magic would have taught her social skills and a legendary level of composure.

Even so, it did also evoke some genuine thought and emotion. What she does is objectively cruel but at some level you can’t really blame her for desperately wanting to hold onto her chance at improving her lot in life.

I liked the ending of this one more than the full Princess Scale novel. I don’t want to say too much so as not to spoil it, but I think it’s because it appeals to my cultural conditioning (the Western way of ending a story with a clear resolution). I was pleasantly surprised by its nuance and underlying message.

I still think we as a society need to eat the rich though. Especially if they’re as incompetent as the king and queen in the story.