Princess and dragon is a generic premise common to many legends and fairy tales. It is not a fairy tale itself, but along with Prince Charming, is a repeated cliché. Northrop Frye identified it as a central form of the quest romance.
The story involves an upper class woman, generally a princess or similar high-ranking nobility, saved from a dragon, either a literal dragon or a similar danger, by the virtuous hero (see Damsel in distress). She may be the first woman endangered by the peril, or may be the end of a long succession of women who were not of as high birth as she is, nor as fortunate. Normally the princess ends up married to the dragon-slayer, though sometimes after an imposter has by threats intimidated her into silence, and the dragon-slayer has had to demonstrate the truth.
The motifs of the hero who finds the princess about to be sacrificed to the dragon and saves her, the false hero who takes his place, and the final revelation of the true hero, are the identifying marks of the Aarne-Thompson folktale type 300, the Dragon-Slayer, and appear, with other elements before and after in type 303, the Two Brothers. These two tales have been found, in different variants, in countries all over the world.
The "princess and dragon" scenario is given even more weight in popular imagination than it is in the original tales; the stereotypical hero is envisioned as slaying dragons even though, for instance, the Brothers Grimm had only a few tales of dragon and giant slayers among hundreds of tales.
Read more about Princess And Dragon: History, Modern Usage, Diversions, Tales With Princess and Dragons, Tales With Princesses and Similar Perils
Famous quotes containing the words princess and/or dragon:
“How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!”
—Bible: Hebrew Lamentations 1:1.
Said of Jerusalem.
“Come not between the dragon and his wrath.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)