In the early Disney animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), when Snow White tells the dwarfs about her prince, she says, 'Anyone could see that the prince was Charming, the only one for me.' The logical antecedent of 'one' in this lyric is 'Charming' because of the placement of the pause. The main character, Dorian, is supposed to be a young actress's 'Prince Charming', but he abandons her and in despair she commits suicide. Then, Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray refers ironically to 'Prince Charming', perhaps the earliest use of the exact term. When Andrew Lang retold the first (in 1889) for The Blue Fairy Book, he rendered the hero's name as 'Charming' the second, for The Green Fairy Book, as 'King Charming'.Īlthough neither one was a prince and the first was not royal, this may have been the original use of 'Charming'. In the eighteenth century, Madame d'Aulnoy wrote two fairy tales, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks, where the hero was named Avenant ('Fine', 'Beautiful', in French), and The Blue Bird, where the hero was Le roi Charmant ('The Charming King'). It has sometimes been suggested that this passage later inspired the term, 'Prince Charming', even though it is the prince who is charmed ( charmé) here, not who is being charming ( charmant). ne savait comment lui témoigner sa joie'. History of termĬharles Perrault's version of Sleeping Beauty, published in 1697, includes the following text at the point where the princess wakes up: ''Est-ce vous, mon prince?' lui dit-elle, 'vous vous êtes bien fait attendre'. Mail Online referred to Chris O'Neill, a New York financier whom Princess Madeleine of Sweden fell in love with, as 'Millionaire Prince Charming'. 'Prince Charming' is also used as a term to refer to the idealized man some people dream of as a future spouse.

In many variants, they can be viewed more as rewards for the heroine rather than characters. These characters are often handsome and romantic, a foil to the heroine, and are seldom deeply characterized, or even distinguishable from other such men who marry the heroine. This classification suits most heroes of a number of traditional folk tales, including Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, even if in the original story they were given another name, or no name at all. He is the prince who comes to the rescue of the damsel in distress, and stereotypically, must engage in a quest to liberate her from an evil spell. Is a stock character who appears in a number of fairy tales. Prince Charming meets Cinderella in a 1912 book of fairy tales. For other uses, see Prince Charming (disambiguation).

Prince charming webster