51 pages • 1 hour read
Meg CabotThe Princess Diaries
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Friendship and Support
Teenagers are social creatures, and peer relationships are crucial during the teenage years. Throughout The Princess Diaries, Mia begins to question the nature of her friendships and how they function in her ever-shifting worldview. As Mia undergoes a series of big changes in her life, she finds herself relying on the support of her friends to get through each day. Cabot uses Mia’s experiences with Lilly, Tina, and even Michael to demonstrate that being supportive is a crucial piece of any friendship and to highlight the difference between supportive and unsupportive friends during big life events.
Mia introduces Lilly as her best friend, and Mia supports Lilly by helping her shoot and edit her TV show, Lilly Tells It Like It Is. However, Lilly can also be critical of Mia, and after Mia’s makeover, their friendship reaches a boiling point. When Mia shows up at Lilly’s apartment after the makeover, she claims that Lilly looks at her with horror and disgust “like [Mia] had frostbite all over [her] face, and [her] nose had turned black and fallen off, like those people who climbed Mt. Everest” (133). Lilly yells at Mia for changing her appearance, and she accuses her of “turning into Lana Weinberger” (134). Mia, who is already feeling very self-conscious about her new look, decides that she has “too many other problems without having friends who aren’t supportive” (174), and when she tries to stand up to Lilly, their friendship seems to implode. Mia, who always supported Lilly’s unusual endeavors, grows tired of her friend’s lack of support, especially at a time when Mia is already feeling isolated and confused.
In contrast, Mia befriends Tina after her argument with Lilly, and she quickly realizes that Tina is a “much more supportive friend than Lilly” (235). While Lilly expresses disgust at the thought of Mia going to the dance with Josh, Tina is excited for her and even offers to help her get ready. When Mia learns that she is the Princess of Genovia, she hesitates to tell Lilly, because she knows that she won’t be supportive of Mia due to her personal opinions about monarchies. Michael, on the other hand, stands up for Mia and argues that “Mia’s father works extremely hard for his country” (195). He points out that “the people of Genovia have traditionally never paid income or property taxes” (194), so it is unfair to direct misplaced anger toward Mia and her family.
In the end, Lilly sees the error of her ways, and she even joins Mia in standing up against Josh at the dance. She calls Josh a “sociopath” for ordering steak for Mia instead of supporting—or even knowing about—her vegetarian lifestyle, and when Mia runs into the restroom, Tina and Lilly run in after her to offer their words of comfort and support. Out of love for Mia, her friends rally around her at the dance to make sure she still has a great time and feels safe, and by the end of the novel, Mia knows that she can count on the support of Lilly, Tina, and Michael to get her through whatever lies ahead in her princess journey.
First Love and Heartache
Interwoven throughout this coming-of-age story is a cautionary tale about love and heartache. First loves can be powerful, exciting, and very confusing, and Mia learns the hard way that infatuation and attraction are not always the same thing. Although Mia daydreams about Josh for most of the novel, she realizes that she doesn’t need to chase after someone who doesn’t like her or respect her for who she is. Josh highlights the difference between genuine love and shallow acts of performative romance, and his behavior serves as a warning that it is easy to create an idealized mental image of a person.
Although Mia barely knows Josh at the beginning of the novel, she insists that he is “the kind of person who doesn’t care if a girl is flat-chested or wears size-ten shoes” and “the kind of person who can see beyond all that into the depths of a girl’s soul” (4). She claims that she arrived at this conclusion because he once looked her in the eye and said, “Hey.” Even though this appears to be their only interaction, Mia is smitten with the idea of Josh. Josh is tall and handsome, and she knows nothing about his self-absorption or rudeness early in the novel. This sentiment reflects her love-blindness: Mia is so infatuated with Josh that she concocts an entire persona around him, and when he finally notices her after the news breaks that she is a princess, she believes Josh “looked into my soul and saw the real me, the one beneath the flat chest” (232). However, Mia soon learns that the Josh in her head isn’t real. The real Josh “[doesn’t] respect [her] rights as a vegetarian” (260), brags about dating other rich girls, and forces a kiss on Mia to get his name and face on the front page of the newspapers. Mia’s heart is broken when she realizes that her dream boy was only a dream after all, and she scolds herself for being so blind to Josh’s faults.
Despite the pain and humiliation of the experience, Mia learns a valuable lesson: Acts of performative romance, like ordering the most expensive item at a restaurant or kissing her in front of reporters, are simply performative. Josh’s behavior was fueled by a desire to make himself look good, and Mia was little more than a prop. Mia realizes that she deserves to be treated with love and respect, and when her dream boy turns into a nightmare, Mia decides that she would “rather not have a boyfriend at all than have one who is only using [her]” to inflate his own public image.
Running from Change and Responsibility
Adolescence is a time of change: changing hormones, changing bodies, and changing opinions and beliefs. In Mia’s case, however, her typical teenage changes come with an even more shocking change, the news that one day she will inherit an entire country and rule the lives of 50,000 people in Genovia. Although Mia fights this change, her unusual predicament emphasizes that some changes, welcome or not, cannot be escaped and must be accepted—or even embraced.
When Mia learns that she is the Princess of Genovia, she tries to run from her destiny, literally. She “rushe[s] out of [the Plaza], nearly bowling over the snobby doorman” (46) and hides out at the Central Park Zoo. Mia remembers going to the zoo when she was a little kid, and she returns to it as an unconscious act of rebellion. Mia does not want the responsibilities that come with her title as the Princess of Genovia, and she even envies the polar bear, because “his dad hadn’t told him that he was the heir to the throne of anywhere” (49). She tries to distract herself by focusing on the animals, but she is unable to run from the news that she will one day be responsible for an entire country. When the zoo closes, Mia realizes that she will have to face her destiny at home.
Mia starts to look for other avenues to avoid her fate. When she realizes that she will have to leave her life in New York City to go live in Genovia, she tries to guilt her mother into letting her stay in Manhattan. When this doesn’t work, she announces that she is going to “stay right [t]here and finish high school,” and then she plans to “join Greenpeace and help save the whales” (57) after graduation. She tries to further postpone her fate by spending the night with Lilly, but her parents are still waiting to talk to her when she comes home. Mia starts to realize that she cannot outrun or avoid her destiny indefinitely, and she is forced to grapple with the reality that the trajectory of her life is about to change.
While her parents do their best to ease Mia into the role with promises of monetary compensation and compromises, in the end, she must decide for herself that she will embrace the title of princess and welcome the change in her life. She may be afraid of failure or losing control over her life, but she finds herself also wanting to do the right thing for the people of Genovia, and she cannot simply stop being the heir to the Genovian throne.
Discovering Self-Confidence and Inner Strength
At the beginning of the novel, Mia can focus only on the parts of her body and personality that she dislikes. However, she realizes that she won’t achieve happiness or even contentment with her life until she can overcome her insecurities, and while this process can take years, or even a lifetime, Cabot demonstrates that the journey to finding one’s inner strength begins with small acts of self-confidence.
Lilly tells Mia about “self-actualization,” or the idea of becoming the best version of oneself. Mia latches on to this idea, and The Princess Diaries follows Mia’s journey to achieve self-actualization. At the beginning of the novel, Mia claims that she is “the biggest freak in the entire school” (1), and she has a deep fear of humiliation. Mia is particularly sensitive about her appearance, and when Grandmère orders her to dress up and wear makeup for a princess lesson, Mia tries to avoid running into anyone she knows because she is afraid of being mocked for putting any effort into her appearance.
When Mia leaves Paolo’s makeover session with new hair and fingernails, she declares that she “can never go to school again” (125), and she initially hates her new look. However, something strange happens. Mia realizes that her hair doesn’t look that bad, and the fingernails “sort of [make] [her] feel strong” (136). In fact, Mia feels so strong that she decides to stand up to Lilly, who tries to make her feel bad about her appearance. Mia states that she has “spent the whole day hearing how bad [she] looked” from Grandmère and Paolo, and “now [she] [has] to hear there [is] something wrong with [her] personality, too” (135). This pushes her to her limit, and she finally manages to be assertive and stand up for herself. After years of blindly following Lilly’s beliefs, Mia is starting to find her own voice and isn’t happy with living under Lilly’s scrutiny and control anymore.
Once Mia manages to stand up to her best friend, her self-confidence grows, and she dares to stand up to Lana when she makes fun of Tina; her Grandmère when she insists on calling the media to harass Mia; and even Josh when he disrespects her. Mia’s decision to call Josh out for his bad behavior is particularly pivotal because Mia knows that she has a track record of being “unassertive, fearful of confrontation,” and “an internalizer” (267) when it comes to conflict. Mia realizes, “If it hadn’t turned out that I was a princess, maybe I might still be all that stuff” (267), but her princess journey emboldened her to speak her mind and stand firm in her convictions. By the end of the story, Mia starts to achieve self-actualization, and she is empowered to be the best version of herself that she can be. The change didn’t happen overnight, and Mia had to take many small steps to get to the point of standing up to the most popular boy in school. Even so, her princess journey has forever altered the course of her life, and she is growing into the best version of herself that she can be.
