A Child Shall Lead Them / Western Animation

• Adventure Time: Princess Bubblegum for a few episodes when she is reverted into a thirteen-year-old. Although she is still Really 700 Years Old, her personality regresses along with her physical age.
• In The Dragon Prince, young Aanya became queen of Duren after the deaths of her mothers. Ezran also becomes king following the death of his father, king Harrow. While Aanya is a competent queen, and perfectly willing to stand up to the older pentarchs, both she and Ezran are still kids. Aanya is implied to have grown up quickly due to being in charge of a Deadly Decadent Court, while Ezran's head councilor is far more kind and understanding, recommending that he appoints a regent until he comes of age.
• As of the finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender, both the fourteen-year-old Azula and sixteen-year-old Zuko have possessed the mantle of Fire Lord. When Zuko is crowned, the comics deconstructs the trope and demonstrate that he is still a teenager who is idealistic to a fault, and the real challenge happens when he's facing opposition, assassination attempts, among other problems.
  • According to the website, the Earth King took the throne at the age of four. Unfortunately, Long Feng took advantage of this.
  • Sokka is a subversion; he behaves as if he is the chief of his village in his father's absence, but his only followers are little kids who only seem to listen to him half the time and he has no official authority.
• In Babar, the title character is crowned king of the elephants after he saves them all from an evil poacher, while he is still a child. In the books, he didn't become king until he was an adult.
• Because of the way things work in Codename: Kids Next Door, a child has to be leader of the organization. First in was Numbuh 274 until he turned thirteen (and traitor) and then it was Numbuh 362 for the rest of the series.
• King: The rulers of Under have typically been children. Whoever moves into the house, goes under the bed in the room to Under, and emerges from the portal above the throne of Under is always made Under's new king.
• Kion and Rani are both the lion equivalent of teenagers when they become king and queen of the Tree of Life in The Lion Guard. They're both smaller than the adult lions and Kion is just starting to get more of a mane than just the red tuft he had as a cub.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Subverted in the season 8 finale. When Twilight and her friends need to travel far away for an emergency, Cozy Glow, Twilight's young assistant, promises to keep the school together without her. Twilight leaves Starlight Glimmer, an adult, in charge instead. Despite Cozy being a Hypercompetent Sidekick, she's still just a child, and no adult would leave her in charge if there were any other choice. Except the whole thing was a trick by Cozy to get rid of Twilight and take over the school. Once she gets rid of Starlight, she forges a note putting her in charge; while most of the students (who Cozy has been cultivating fake friendships with) find this perfectly logical, the Young Six point out how weird it is. And when Chancellor Neighsay shows up, who has always had a problem with Twilight, he takes over the school since clearly any adult who would leave a child in charge should never be in charge themselves. Cozy carefully manipulates the students into rioting against him, once again leaving her in charge.
• Prince Pyrus of Shadow Raiders rules over an entire planet.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil:
  • Queen Moon, Star's mother, was this. When she was around Star's age, Toffee killed her mother, which forced her into the position of queen. When the Magic High Commission, Mina, and Mewni's nobility couldn't decide on their next action, she took it upon herself to forge a contract with Eclipsa for a spell that could kill an immortal, managing to drive Toffee and his forces away from Mewni before promising to scatter them further and kill all their leaders.
  • A brief comment from Eclipsa implies that, due to her own mother's death, she became queen not much older than Moon. Of course, she lost the throne not long after due to the Magic High Commission imprisoning her for her crimes.
  • Star is forced to take the throne near the end of season 3 when her mother goes missing. She is insistent that she is merely acting queen, and that she'll find her mother after the current emergency. For good or ill, immediately after the emergency she gives the throne back to Eclipsa in a moment of guilt.
• SuperTed once saved a young ruler from an Evil Uncle.
• In Thunder Cats 2011, Thundera's King Lion-O, at seventeen is the youngest of the Blue Bloods in his group of ThunderCats. When Old Soldier Panthro joins, he dryly lampshades their lack of "adult supervision" prior to his arrival, while Lion-O's adoptive brother Tygra makes his age the subject of petty insults.
  Tygra: You may be king, but I'm still older than you.
• In the old ThunderCats, Lion-O was no older than WilyKat and WilyKit, but a faulty stasis pod allowed his body to age while he slept.
• Wakfu: Subverted with Yugo himself at the end of Season 2 when he learns that he is the actual King of the Eliatropes, named to this role in his past life by then-current king Chibi before he died and returned to his Dofus to await his next reincarnation (and Chibi himself at this point is only an infant and incapable of leading anyone himself). Despite leading his people against and defeating The Usurper Qilby, both he and the rest of the Eliatrope children acknowledge he's not old or wise enough to be ready for that role. Yugo himself is content to continue to grow older and mature enough both mentally and physically to be the leader they need while the Eliatrope children continue to wait within their time-free pocket dimension for that day to come.
• 13-year-old Elyon Brown aka Queen Elyon from W.I.T.C.H. becomes this after a brief stint as a Dark Magical Girl.
  • Also Caleb, the 15-year-old Rebel Leader, and Will, the leader of W.I.T.C.H. itself.
• In the Young Justice (2010) episode "Coldhearted," the ten-year-old girl whose donor heart Wally delivers turns out to be Queen Perdita of Vlatava, and the only one keeping Count Vertigo from the throne.

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