Let's save the princess!

I'm not sure if this has been asked before - sorry if it has!

Just wondering what your thoughts are on the herione always being saved by the hero?

I think it'd be cool if a minion-turned-good saves her, or the hero's ally, or even the princess' little sister. :P

Or having the hero try to save the princess to find out she saved herself. Or the princess is expecting a prince, but is saved by another princess. Or the hero accidentally saving the princess...

I don't have a problem with the princess being saved, or the hero saving her, but I do like having a nice twist sometimes. Plus, even though we technically have a word for "female hero", it's not used as much now (I think) and hero can be gender neutral sometimes.

Well first, I would say define "always". If you mean every single time something bad is happening to her she gets saved by him, I would probably start to get a little annoyed (with her, obviously, not the writer xD). However a couple times would not bother me at all, especially when there was no possilbe way for her to escape on her own.

But it really depends on her personality: Is she a disney princess-type character, or a bad-ass? If she's a bad-ass, have her save the hero once in a while (my MFC does a couple times, it's quite fun to read/write about).

Really though, as long as she's delivered in a way that that's not completely obnoxious/makes you wish the hero would leave her to die, then I think you can get away with letting her be saved often.

Hope I managed to help!

Which is worse, the helpless dainty princess who needs to be saved, or the kick ass princess who saves everyone else? Is there a middle ground? Would a reader want to read the middle ground?

I've toyed with this issue time and again since my story's main plot revolves around saving the Princess so she can save her Kingdom. I'm still working it out. Personally, when I get sick of thinking about it, I go play Skyrim.

The job of the hero is to save the princess. The job of the princess is to save everyone else.

Why is the princess is distress? Can she at least half-save herself and allow the hero to just finish the job?

I am an equal opportunity author.

Last November, a girl was captured by the evil sorcerer. So the knights go to the rescue. But that doesn't go too well, and they're caught. Another girl has to step in and rescue them before their public execution. Then they all run.
It was fun.

And in my epic fantasy, my boys are in trouble just as much as my girls. Usually, my boys and girls work together in the fight against assassins, goblins, assassins, pirates, and more assassins -- not to mention a monster or two. One FMC is a warrior maid; she often goes to rescue whoever's in trouble at the moment; at one point she manages to escape on her own. My other FMC is an innkeeper's daughter who ends up in a great deal of trouble mainly because she keeps trying to help and she's not that good at it.

And I think I've found a nice balance between dainty and kick-butt with some of my ladies. They're spies.
One character will flirt with the boys, is extremely popular, and sends secret messages disguised as love poems.
Another is neither dainty nor much of a fighter -- she's just really sneaky and clever. She's a chameleon.
Another is rather quiet, plain, keeps to the background, and has a near perfect memory.

How about a princess who just plain doesn't get saved? My poor princess gets herself stuck in a situation where there is no helping her, so no one even bothers. She does make the best of her situation, and in the end you could say she is content, but she still never quite gets her knight in shining armor.

She does get a severed hand, if that counts for anything...

I have a...weird situation in my head. Said situation is more toward the modern end of the fantasy spectrum. Basically, the Princess is part of a circle of princesses who basically rent themselves out as Kidnappees-for-Hire. Basically, to make sure that would-be villains don't hurt someone unwilling, these Kidnappees-for-Hire basically rent their services as hostages as a way to fulfill the fantasy of having a real-life royal hostage. xD One such princess gets saved by another one who isn't in on the whole thing, and doesn't even know that a thing like that exists.

I'll tell you what blew my mind: there was a story once, a whole big involved one, about a fantasy world falling apart because its princess had been stolen by the evil bad guy, and the main characters braved every hardship and danger and adventure going to get her back...

...except that when they finally got there, the princess didn't want to be saved at all. She loved the evil bad guy and was with him willingly, and as I remember it, she couldn't care less about what happened to the rest of the world; she had the love of her life and that was that.

Can't remember how it came out in the end - I think somehow it worked out happily - but boy, that sure did throw me for a loop. Coming at the end of an otherwise wholly traditional kind of story, it made for a heck of a huge surprise!

I don't mind the weak getting saved by the strong all the time, as long as there's a reason and the scenarios aren't too contrived (you know, implausible situations made for the sole purpose of guy rescuing damsel in distress). IMO, there's a large difference between useless heroine and weak heroine

If you're thinking women can only save themselves by kicking butt--that's a short-sighted way to see virtues of human beings.

Women have incredible amounts of power that sometimes overlap with men and sometimes don't. (Can a man produce a baby by incubating it for 9 month-- I want to see that.)

How about intellect? She can't save herself with smarts? There are different kinds of smarts too. She can be nerdy, geeky, clever, perceptive, etc.

How about the power to endure mental hardship? This would mean biding her time and holding out--this is a way to save herself too.

Can she use her sex appeal? If she can make men weak in their knees she could charm a guard to get out of Prison.

Can she use a pity card?

Can she play to men's notions of women in your world, play with their heads, and then win over them?

There are more ways to save oneself than by a sword and being Xena. And certainly you can save yourself in a variety of ways that doesn't have to have physical strength. If you don't have physical strength, it doesn't mean you need to cast the hanky out the window and put a turned palm on your forehead to say, "Rescue me."

Rapunzel could have cut off her own hair and climbed down the tower herself. That's a case of intellect, not physical strength.

I usually dislike the whole damsel in distress thing, but there could be exceptions. I mean, if it's all about how she's a woman and women are too delicate and/or incompetent to rescue themselves, I'd throw the book across the room. Unless it was funny. Imagine having an asshole knight who *thinks* this is why he needs to rescue her, only to have the princess tell him to go away because she doesn't wanna be rescued by such an idiot. :P

However, I also make a habit of twisting cliches. This one happens to be a favorite target of mine. In one story, I had the "princess" (actually a teenage fortuneteller and a teenage guy) get out of their cell and be on the way out of the building when MMC finally busts in and tries to rescue them. Unfortunately, MMC ends up rousing some of the local defenses in the process, thus making things harder than they really needed to be. Later on in the same story, I have a minor character who's basically a professional damsel in distress...she screams for help when she has to take a dump, and makes some poor sweaty knight carry her to the bathroom.

So basically...it can be done, but it'd better be different somehow, or at least interesting.

(On a side note, I think they should make a Zelda game where Zelda has to rescue Link for once. I have a perfect title for it too...they could call it The Missing Link. :P)

I admit I don't like it when the heroine has to be saved by the hero again and again and again while never reciprocating in any manner,* especially if she is portrayed as weak and stupid merely so that he can be the heroic one and gets herself into avoidable bad situations. This is doubly true if the hero and heroine in question end up in love with each other as I can't help thinking how imbalanced this relationship must be if one partner is the capable one in 100% of all the situations they get into, while the other either has no admirable qualities at all or is at least not allowed to put them to good use in the story.


* Of course, the hero and heroine do not necessarily have the same set of abilities, so I do not mean that she must fight off the bad guys at least once if he has done the same for her. But if he is, for example, a knight who has saved a lady who isn't a fighter by protecting her physically, I definitely enjoy the story more if her abilities are shown to be useful in turn (let's say she can read, while he can't - so without her skills and her justified suspicions, he would never discover that the letter his lord told him to deliver is actually meant to lure him into a trap).

I think I need to write a scene where Randy calls Irene a "damsel in distress." Irene will chew Randy out for that comment, despite the fact that Irene is being held hostage at the time. XP

Every trope and every cliche has its uses. I can see where you would want to avoid the whole, "helpless female is rescued by big, strong male" thing. But if your FMC is otherwise a capable woman and just happens to get herself stuck sometimes, I think you're OK.

I don't really stick with traditional heroes and heroines, the MMC/FMC standard, or whatever. Mostly because while some of my characters fall into those roles at times, because of the world type, it eventually becomes deconstructed and developed in other ways. I find that it's pretty interesting to play with the magical elements, and the lasting effects... especially over a long period time, like in the life of an immortal. I think that the relationships necessary for fully fleshed out characters could go in a number of directions, even if they did originally start with basic types.

Case one - I have a 'hero' type guy, Icarion Blaine, who usually shares main character status with a couple of others, but he's often clueless, overly serious, and full of doubts, as well as reacting in truly nonhuman ways due to his background and abilities. He was raised as a princeling brat, and was literally by name called a hero for most of his youth. Mostly, it's played for laughs - he's a prude, he won't hit a woman even if she's trying to eat his face, and almost destroyed the sun once when he got into the equivalent of a schoolyard tussle with his best friend. And it's also treated seriously - he really is a good guy who tries to overcome his flaws and do the right thing, even standing up beneath thousands of years of meddling gods, and he has to be saved just as often as he saves other characters. He may not be the smartest character, but he doesn't go insane, and he actually tries to learn from his past mistakes. Considering he's been killed off and reincarnated nine different times, he's had a lot to learn. He also goes for the whole love at first sight, head over heels deal, too, for cliched but plot important, magical reasons.

Case two - Icarion was originally created to be "hero" to my co-writer's "maiden." Per se. It happened by accident when we were playing around, about five years ago. Her name was Sapphire Gemstone. She was a mortal human much younger than Icarion. She was blonde, pale, blue eyed, petite, and.... also, mysterious, dangerous, and corrupted by a magical object that gave her powers over Darkness (and photophobia.) She came from an abusive household and, when they moved to NYC, began to enjoy the nightlife as well. She met Icarion as he tried to recover the magical object on a quest-punishment from his relatives (yes, as punishment for nearly destroying the sun. There are actually consequences in this world.) He saved her from The Darkness, which manifested as a giant freaky wolf made up of all her fears and nightmares, and, in the process, fell in love. She was tough and street smart, but put on a sweet, happy mask... which eventually cracked, just as he was forced to leave to go back home. Two years later, he came back, a total wreck because of being nearly killed by his loving family members for forsaking their ways for humanity (Apparently laying a mortal girl is acceptable, but not bringing her to dinner and marrying her and trying to turn her into a goddess. Or making himself mortal in the event of failure. Who knew?) and it was her turn to save him. She also gave Loki a run for his money. (Too bad they all died later on.)

Case three - Loki takes main character status more than Icarion and any other characters combined. He's not a "good guy," but he's good for the protagonist spotlight. He's Icarion's best friend, blood-brother, trickster mentor, and becomes insanely jealous of Sapphire. Loki teaches him the fact that sometimes it's worth running away to save his own skin; in the process, he does a lot of heroic things to save other characters, but usually for a selfish reason. He thinks life is a giant game and cheating at it is his life's goal, for no other reason than that it makes things interesting and more fun, and that ruining fun things is the worst thing anyone can do, ever. He can be really childish, and.... Anyway, but he does more important plot-things than Icarion does, knows what's really going on in the world, frequently fights fate, kills monsters, bullies a dragon, lives in a big beautiful house, and every so often rescues beautiful women (and men) too. Just not for virtuous reasons. Oh, and then he murders Icarion so he won't be able to save Sapphire, which is all a part of a grand scheme that doesn't come to light until about twenty years later, when Icarion is reincarnated and furious.

I have had some legitimately helpless characters, too. -shrug- Male and female. I think it would be silly to deny the fact that some people in the real world really are weaker or more vulnerable, stereotype or not. There's just a lot more behind it to explore than just that flat character type. People are not only shaped by circumstance, but culture, immediate family, genetics... etc. I wouldn't be annoyed at reading a hero rescuing a maiden story in general - I only would if there wasn't more to it than that and none of the characters were developed further.

One example of a "helpless" character, and a female, would be my Dallas Sauveterre. She shows a sense of desperation and struggles with something beyond her control and level of ability - as a magician's assistant taken off the streets, and then having to deal with the fact that she's carrying the child of a god due to her own indiscretion, and how to provide for herself after the old magician dies, and his tricks with him... and then she ends up the complete pawn of a nefarious organization of faux-vampire Underdwellers who want to limit the influence of the gods on mortals and control their cities from the underground and up. Sure, she was only human, weak in body and not all that strong in will, but she made her choices. She ends up driven to blood-addiction and used up within a decade, and cast aside, send back raw and wounded as a declaration of cease-fire against the gods. Oh, and the person responsible for her? Loki, the father of her stillborn child. He doesn't even remember her name. She makes him suffer - not so much because she's been keeping a grudge all those years, but because he was the one thing in the world that she did have control over. He didn't particularly mind, though. She has more of a lasting impact on him after her death than during her life.

There are plenty of ways around this trope. Frequently, the princess or female love interest (who may or may not be a strict pacifist) specializes in healing or "buffing" (powering up one's allies), which makes her a useful member of the team even though she doesn't directly attack anyone. Occasionally, she can break the enemy's magic. Frequently she is the only mage on the team, maybe a "last of her kind" or "chosen one," which sets up nicely a plot where everyone is always trying to capture her, and the hero must always be protecting and rescuing her, but she is nevertheless worth the trouble. Which may explain why this trope shows up so often in modern fantasy video games and TV shows.

Fighting heroines often have some sort of non-melee skill, such as archery or gymnastics, to complement the hero's basic offense. Those who do get into melee combat can either get some sort of special advantage (eg, martial arts, extra brains, absurd luck) to compensate for their relative lack of size and strength, or they're going to lose the fight (and get captured, etc.) every time. There's a reason most women don't grow up to be thugs, soldiers, and guards: the world is full of men, and men are a lot bigger!

I'd be interested to see more princesses and heroines who are ugly (or just plain), already married, have kid(s), have a non-hero love interest, or have a skill that doesn't perfectly pair with that of the hero. I also really want to see a gung-ho war machine heroine who marries a serene healer-type hero. (Hooray for role reversal!) But what do I know...

Rubbish, generally! I mean, if a princess exists as just a goal for the hero, then she's not even really a character at all, just an object, a plot coupon.

Every character should have their own motivations etc, and realistically I can't see someone being captured and just going "oh, well. I guess I'd better sit and wait for __ to show up and save me." I mean, you get captured, you're completely cut off from the world, you don't even know if anyone's *trying* to rescue you, let alone if they'll succeed. So I think you've got to at least try to get yourself out of it. I'd ask myself what the princess's skills were. Could she fight her way out? Could she think her way out, make some sort of trap or plan? Find a way to signal to the people looking for her?

Basically, I just think that any princess being held prisoner (any anyone for that matter) has to be a character in their own right, so you have to be able to justify why they do whatever they do, it had to be consistent with their character. If they do just sit and wait, why? How long are they willing to wait?

I do have a character that has a Knight-in-Shining-Armor Complex. I've met a few real-life men who are like that. Think that love is made up of only protecting the woman, like saving them from the Dragon that's actually a windmill and love saving women from basically themselves. Annoying as hell. When you tell them that you don't want to be rescued, they say, "Then what do you want from me?"

Those types do exist. So I put one in one of my stories with a misanthropic character that's just fine rescuing herself... though her complex is that she hates asking for help.

So you can do that kind of character for laughs, but if you seriously do it and define strength through only brawn, I'd check out.