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blueberry-bubbles130 · 2 years ago

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So I've been reading a few of the Barbie Princess and the Pauper essays that are floating around the internet (mostly Tumblr) and I've got a theory that Preminger killed the King, before the movie takes place.

First of all I'd like to give a lot of credit and a big thank you to @rin-the-shadow for their brilliant analysis of the timeline of the movie that helped me massively in figuring out when Preminger would have killed the king for the theory. Since the ages of the characters are not stated anywhere, or even implied, within the movie itself. So there's not a lot to work with in terms of timing.

I'd also like to thank my two close friends who helped me come up with this theory.

So first for a bit of a background, in the movie the King isn't mentioned at all, and we only see him once at the beginning of the movie, which is in the prologue. From this evidence, it's incredibly safe to say he is dead by the time the movie takes place. Now If we look at Rin's analysis and the evidence they use from the movie, they state Preminger comes into the role of Queen Genevieve's advisor when Annaliese is around 6 years old.

From here the timeline becomes messy, as we don't know when Julian becomes the tutor to Annaliese. I'm assuming that he becomes her tutor at least 3-5 years before the movie begins. This is a bit clearer if we again look at Rin's analysis, in which they theorise about the difference in time between Julian and Preminger's arrival at the palace: as they state with more movie evidence in which Julian can remember living in the village. As well as this Annaliese and Julian are really close at the beginning of the movie, which shows they've gotten to know each other really well. So I think that Julian is a bit older than Annaliese, not by much though, so I'm going to say he's about 2 years older than Annaliese.

This leaves about 5-6 years maximum for Preminger to get rid of any evidence he may still have lying around from him murdering the King, from him coming to the castle to Julian's arrival at the palace.

So for the theory itself, I think that Preminger murdered the King a year or two into his role as the Royal Advisor. Now you may be asking why Preminger would kill the King?

That's because I think the King was incredibly close to discovering Preminger's plan to steal the gold, so he decides to murder him in order to truly get rid of him, and keep his plan secret. This is because the King was probably the smartest out of him and Genevieve at the time, therefore the King would question Preminger more. And lets be real for a moment he probably realised that Preminger is clearly evil. While Annaliese would be about 7 or 8 according to the timeline, so she'd be too young at the time and less of a concern to Preminger.

Now by doing this, Preminger in fact gets a few things out of murdering the king. The main one being that he can keep his plan secret much longer, allowing him a greater chance at succeeding. The second thing he gets out of this, is now an increase of power through Queen Genevieve.

Throughout the movie, it's shown that Preminger has Queen Genevieve completely under his thumb, a massive example being when he proposes to her (we'll be coming back to this piece of evidence later). And from this we can assume that for a while before the start of the movie, Preminger was essentially making the decisions for the Kingdom while manipulating Genevieve into agreeing with him. Or making it look like she's the one truly making the decisions. (Because as much as I love Genevieve, it's clearly shown, at best she's completely dependent upon Preminger, and at worst dumb on her own)

Once Preminger kills the King this leaves grieving Annaliese and a vulnerable Queen Genevieve. She's now a widow, with a kingdom and a child to not only look after, but make sure she's an experienced heir to the throne. On top of that she's going to be grieving and that's going to make things a lot harder for her.

This is where Preminger's manipulation of Queen Genevieve truly begins. Through her grief Preminger can manipulate her by making it seem like he's helping her work through her grief, while also making it seem like he's the answer to her problems of taking care of the kingdom. As a result this increases the power and wealth Preminger holds, whilst making Queen Genevieve completely dependent on him over time.

This leaves the timeline looking like this:

.Genevieve and the King become a couple

.Annaliese is born

.Preminger is hired as the Royal Advisor when Annaliese is about 6

.The King is murdered by Preminger when Annaliese is about 7 or 8

.Julian is hired

.The events of the movie happen

All that is left now is to figure out how the King was murdered. Now if you've seen the movie or have seen a review, you know that when he has to, Preminger is 100% willing to murder people. This is shown when he tries to murder Annaliese and Julian by causing a cave-in, within the Royal Mine. Which happens because Julian and Annaliese are smart enough to realise that Preminger is evil. And by this point murder is Preminger's only option to secure his plan.

The evidence is also important, as it reinforces how experienced Preminger is when it comes to manipulating Genevieve, because the next two scenes are when Preminger exposes Erika and then the proposal scene. The proposal scene shows how he uses Genevieve's own grief against her, to marry her in order to become king (and completely disregarding any emotions she may have about this situation). It not only shows that he has total power over her, since she doesn't even make a verbal response she just turns around and holds her hand out for the ring to be placed on her finger. It also shows that he is very used to doing this and knows that in this situation all he has to do is present himself as the solution to her problem. But this time he's gotten so desperate and thinks that he's won so he doesn't even bother hiding his evil intent from Genevieve. As by this point he's managed to figuratively and literally back her into a corner where he is her only option.

Going back to how Preminger murdered the King, he has a few options for how he can do it.

He can make it look like an accident or natural causes

He can make it look like someone else murdered him

Not care at all how it looks and get rid of the evidence later

Again from looking at the movie, when he tries to murder Annaliese and Julian by collapsing the mine, he at least tries to make it look somewhat like an accident (at least I think he does, please correct me if I'm wrong). So I'm more inclined to go with option 1 for his method. We also have to remember that the movie is set loosley somewhere in the 16th century. So there's more ways to get away with a crime, and it's before Julian arrives at the palace, meaning Preminger has less to worry about when he commits the murder.

Preminger also seems like the type to not have much physical involvement in a murder, that is yet again shown in the mine collapse scene. So I'm going to say that Preminger most likely poisoned the king.

This is because poison was widely available at the time, with apothecaries selling poisons as some poisons had functions apart from murder. This means that he can easily get it and get more if he ever needs to.

So to summarise the theory, Preminger murders the King because he's coming too close to discovering Preminger's plan to gain power and chooses to kill him by poison. This leaves Genevieve vulnerable to Preminger's manipulation that while not making him just yet, gives him a bigger increase of power while pushing his plan further along. Then the events of the movie occur that force him to change his plans and in turn bring about Preminger's downfall and defeat.

So that's it! Sorry this got a bit long.

Thanks for listening to my rambles.

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blueberry-bubbles130 · 2 years ago

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Something I forgot to add in the main part of the theory is how the individual characters personalities affect the theory. It's not essential to understanding the theory bit I do think it's important.

So throughout the movie Queen Genevieve doesn't seem very open as a person. Like she doesn't talk that much about anything outside work relating to ruling the kingdom. And if she's not talking about the kingdom, she's not talking about anything. (Of course this is mostly due to time constraints and her not being a main character, but we're using it for the theory as it works well as evidence)

Now Genevieve does have the conversation at the end with Annaliese, where Annaliese tells her about Julian. But even then Genevieve does talk about the kingdom again. And when the wedding scene occurs, she doesn't even say anything, apart from trying to say "I do". This suggests that Genevieve as a person mostly keeps to herself and is more introverted, only really showing her true emotions when she or someone she cares about is distressed, or in danger. Evidence of this is shown in the wedding scene between her and Preminger, because again she doesn't verbalize her own thoughts on the situatuon, but she does show some emotion. She seems confused, upset and in distress.

This aspect of Genevieve's character is quite common and you see this a lot when she is included within fanfiction of Barbie as The Princess and the Pauper, her being more introverted and not expressing how she feels about the situations she's apart of.

This is really important when discussing Genevieve's relationships with both Preminger and Annaliese. As if we look at the rest of the theory, it could be implied that Genevieve was more introverted anyway as a person, and it just became far worse when Preminger killed her husband and began to manipulate her to be dependent on him for decision making. As well as this Genevieve doesn't seem to have anyone to truly talk to throughout the movie, apart from Preminger when he is there. This differs from Annaliese as she has Julian to express emotions with, Julian has Annaliese and Preminger has Nick and Nack to tell ideas to.

This leads me to believe that after the King's murder, Preminger's manipulation of Genevieve made her and Annaliese more distant, and while it doesn't drive a wedge between them, like Rowena tries to do with Randolph and his daughters, it does make them more distant from each other. This also means that after the King's death, the only person Genevieve had around to talk to was Preminger, and she probably wouldn't think twice about what she tells him. This leads to Preminger knowing what would upset and make Genevieve feel better, then creating a cycle in which a problem is created for Genevieve, she then expresses her feelings to Preminger, Preminger then "solving" the problem by making Genevieve just agree with him, and then him holding more power of her.

When we also include Preminger's dislike of Annaliese, and Annaliese's eventual or constant (i don't really know what Annaliese truly thinks of Preminger, please tell me) distrust of Preminger, Genevieve is essentially stuck in the middle with no one to really turn to, leading to her more closed off state.

This makes Preminger's manipulation of Genevieve a whole lot easier, and after Preminger's defeat Genevieve would presumably be completely devastated by the revalation that the man she had put so much trust into was stealing the gold, tried to kill her child, tried to marry her child and then forced her into marriage in an attempt to become king.

This is all without mentioning what Preminger would have done to her if they had gotten married and he had become king, Annaliese and Julian presumably still surviving the cave-in but just not making it to the wedding in time. I think there's a few options here.

Option 1 being that he kills her as well straight after the wedding.

Option 2 being he keeps her around and when the kingdom inevitably revolts against them due to Preminger's shitty decisions he escapes and leaving Genevieve behind on purpose to satisfy the angry mob.

Option 3 being that he keeps her around and keeps manipulating and pretty much abusing her until she's a shell of her former self and he's in total control. Until Annaliese and Julian presumably return and have him arrested for his crimes (because let's be honest there is no way Preminger is going to even remotely treat Genevieve well in a marriage, as he's just horrible and so egotistical)

So yeah, that's what else I could think of.