#when cass sang you don't know how much I've ben denied well I'm not being patient anymore my heart gave her a standing ovation and i cry

[llamasgotoheaven]

In Celebration of Cassandra: The Princess With No Happily Ever After

(Quick Note: This essay contains major Tangled The Series spoilers. Read at your own risk.) 

I really appreciate Tangled The Series so much.

In more than a dozen ways.

My favorite thing though, is the way it wrote Cassandra, and juxtaposes her against her sister Rapunzel. 

Lemme explain:

Since the very dawn of disney princess movies... Since Snow White and Cinderella and Aurora sang about what they wanted and wished for, and pushed themselves to endure in their hardest moments, we always saw them being rewarded by fate for it.

They get a found family, and a prince who rides off with them into the sunset, they become a beloved queen in their kingdom, lavished with love and riches. 

That is a narrative so many young girls grow up being spoon fed. It’s the feminized version of the American Dream that was born of an era when war was so overwhelming nobody really knew wtf else to do other than survive the horrors and anxiety engulfing them. I can appreciate that for how motivational and powerful it is as a message.

That said, there is a bitter reality many of us know. Whether you’re a girl, any kind of minority, or a white man, odds are you’ve possibly had the experience of several consecutive horrible years, or you will have that experience sometime in your life. 

We all at some point have the experience of doing our damndest every day, of toiling to reach our goals, and to be the best version of ourselves, hoping deep inside of ourselves that it will pay off.

What happens when it doesn’t? What happens when somebody you love gets everything you ever dreamed of? What if it looks like they had it handed to them, while you had to bust your ass and get next to nothing in return? 

What happens when you have a character like Cassandra? A girl who from the start, was just as goodhearted as any disney princess is, and you as narrator throw so much pain and hardship at her, while she has next to no emotional support to encourage her through it all? A disney protagonist like Cass, who still does her damndest and then watches her best friend get everything she’s dreamed of, while not getting any of it herself? In fact she’s actively blocked from some of her wishes by Rapunzel’s victories.

Cassandra’s vengeful, understandably upset character arc happens. 

To top it all off she is being manipulated by an evil ancient spirit to be even more bitter. Of course she’s pissed and afraid by the end of the show. 

The brilliance of this lies in the fact that disney is again being self-conscious and reflecting upon how hokey their repetitive, somewhat commercial optimistic messages can get. This particular character arc is disney taking its old “dreams do come true if you don’t stop believing” mantra and turning it on its head. It’s subverting our expectations. What if they don’t come true for so long that you have a harder and harder time believing, until you give up? What if your friend is the one who has it all, who is a really good friend but still cannot possibly understand or conceive of the layers and layers pain you’ve been through?

I think this is something true of many of us who grew up indoctrinated by disney rhetoric. Particularly millenials, who had access to a lot of movies growing up.

A lot of us feel like Cassandra. Many of us didn’t get a happy ending once we grew out of our adolescent years, even if we did our best most of the time. This happened to some of us while we grew up in an americanized culture that told us we could have anything if we work our hardest and preservere through pain. Tangled The Series effectively said: “Y’know what? Those girls and those people deserve to be seen as well. They deserve to have their story told, they deserve to be empathized with.” They became self-aware of the fact that not everybody will or can feel a deep connection with characters like Eugene and Rapunzel, who always seem to bounce back into a chipper optimistic mindset.

To wrap this commentary up I want to end on a more positive note: While it’s true that Cassandra has suffered incredibly, and as is put in a place where she inflicts pain on the people who care on her herself... She manages to forgive herself, and to move on to carve her own path. She removes herself from the life that’s making her miserable. She’s also incredibly resilient, indomitable and capable because of her negative experiences. They turned into opportunities for growth, maturity and self-reflection. I’m convinced that because Cassandra is so powerful when she’s self-isolating and bitter, she can be unbeatable once she accepts the help and love she deserves. 

Hopefully we can all bounce back the way Cass does in the finale, and gradually let go of the pain to become less cynical and more wise individuals.

Maybe we can let love in again, and accept that we’re incredible with our without our dreams coming true, 

We should by no means overglamorize hardship, or seek it out, but maybe our fairy godmother not showing up to save us is a different type of happily ever after. It’s a happily ever after that is nuanced, self made, and realistic. It’s one that prepares us for the volatility of life outside of traditional fairy tales, and doesn’t disappoint us when the universe is unfair.