There are currently only seven Caucasian Disney Princesses: Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Rapunzel, and Merida. Snow White and Rapunzel are German.Cinderella, Aurora, and Belle are French.Ariel is Danish.
It was unexpected, Elsa and Anna are both portrayed in the animated film as two Norwegian princesses from the 1840s — it's highly unlikely that their father, the King, was not white. I immediately looked over to my husband who had noticed the same thing I did. He shrugged at me. We looked at our children.
While some claim Jasmine is Arab because the movie opens with a song called Arabian Nights, others believe that the architecture in Agrabah is clearly based on the Taj Mahal, making Jasmine Indian. It's a debate that has fueled speculation that in Hollywood, Indians and Arabs are interchangeable.
Galland's tale isn't even set in the Middle East - it's actually set in a Chinese city, and Aladdin is not an orphan but a poor Chinese boy living with his mother, with the only other location mentioned in the story being Maghreb, North Africa, where the sorcerer is from.
Although the Disney classic doesn't explicitly state her nationality, her story is derived from Charles Perrault's French fairy tale “Cendrillon.” The grandeur of her royal ball and the charming château reflect the opulence of France's royal history.
Tiana is recognized for being Disney's first African American princess. As the film's writers and directors, Clements and Musker claim that their decision to depict Tiana as an African American young woman came naturally simply as a result of the location in which the story takes place.
It is never stated in the movie what exactly is the country of origin for Prince Eric. The creators of the movie stated that they got ideas for his castle from Italian, France, and Algerian architecture, so there is a combination of Mediterranean cultures. I always assumed that he was the Prince of Denmark.
He says they were looking for the best actor for the role of any ethnicity who could not only sing but convey traits such as strength, passion, beauty, joy and intelligence, which they found in Bailey.
Rapunzel is a German fairy tale about a young woman named Rapunzel with impossibly long hair and who lives alone in a tower, held captive by a witch. It's also the German name of a vegetable commonly used in salads.
Moana as she appears in Moana (2016). Inspired by Polynesian mythology, Moana is depicted as the strong-willed daughter of a chief of a Polynesian village, who is chosen by the ocean itself to reunite a mystical relic with the goddess Te Fiti.
BuzzFeed views Snow White as a German woman, and suggests that a "historically accurate" Snow White would have been raised within the "austere and religious" culture of the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th century.
Universally accepted, the character's status as Disney's first Arabic princess "won over hearts" upon the film's 1992 release, according to Andre Tartar of Vulture.com.
About this DVD: Mulan is a young Chinese woman who breaks tradition and joins the Imperial army, accompanied by her guardian dragon, Mushu, to battle an invading army. In Mulan 2, Mulan and Shang are engaged to be married and must journey to a distant city in a valiant quest to save their beloved empire.
Naveen is an Indian name (meaning "new"), which suggests that Maldonia is a Eurasian country (the name of Maldonia is a mix between Maldives and Macedonia), although his fluency in English, French and Italian might also indicate that Maldonia is a Mediterranean country, possibly near Monaco.
Disney's Ariel is not the same as Anderson's little mermaid. The movie is loosely based on the fairy tale, so Disney has the freedom to give Ariel any skin color they want. In the 1989 movie, Ariel was born in the fictional underwater kingdom of Atlantica, which technically makes her Atlantican, not Danish.
If you mean American Indian, then that would be Pocahontas. The only other Disney character I know of close to India's Indian would be the Jasmine character but I believe she considered to be more a Middle eastern character. There is also Jungle Book which takes place in India, but there isn't really a princess in it.
Although Moana is from the fictional island Motunui some 3,000 years ago, the story and culture of Moana is based on the very real heritage and history of Polynesian islands such as Hawaii, Samoa, Tonga, and Tahiti.
