Literature / The Royal Diaries

A spinoff of Dear America, The Royal Diaries is a series of fictional diaries spotlighting various royal women as they begin their transition from girl to historical figure of royalty. They're shown dealing with the political realities of their times, restrictions against women, and oftentimes a good deal of backbiting with their siblings.

Examples include Cleopatra VII, Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, Catherine the Great, Marie-Antoinette, Nzingha the Ngola of Matamba, Isabella I of Castile, Grand Duchess Anastasia, Jahanara Begum of India, Queen Victoria, Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) of Austria, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen Christina of Sweden, Queen Sondok of Silla, Princess Kazunomiya of Japan, Princess Kaiulani of Hawaii, Shana Kin Yaxchel Pacal of Bacal, Chief Weetamoo of the Pocasset band of the Wampanoag Nation, Lady of Ch'iao Kuo ("Qiaoguo Furen" in Hanyu Pinyin) of Southern China and Queen Anacaona of Xaragua.

Not to be confused with The Princess Diaries, a similarly named novel series.

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Tropes:

• Abusive Parents:
  • Catherine the Great's mother is a class climber who constantly calls her daughter ugly and slaps her, at one point destroying a vase that was a precious gift to her simply because Catherine told her about an error she had made while talking to some dignitaries in French.
  • Kristina's mother is emotionally unstable, mood swinging from tearful love to berating her daughter about her appearance in the space of a second.
  • Elizabeth I's father is alternately doting and contemptuous towards her, occasionally sentencing her to a kind of soft exile when she makes him particularly mad. ^note It's not mentioned in the story, but history suggests his behavior towards his other daughter, Mary, was much the same.
• All Animals Are Domesticated: Cleopatra has a pet leopard named Arrow, and her older sister Berenice acquires a pet baboon she literally names "Baboon". Arrow still acts to some extent like a normal leopard, however, often hunting small animals around the palace and at one point killing and eating said baboon.
• Ambiguously Gay: Though she's only a child at the time the book is set, Kristina: The Girl King has a few hints scattered throughout that the eponymous protagonist is either a lesbian or asexual (helped by — and likely a nod to — the fact that there's heavy historical speculation that the real Kristina was one or the other). The only thing that she makes clear is that she has no interest in men or marriage (which by definition would mean "to a man" at the time); she does, however, seem quite fascinated by another girl named Ebba Sparre, the daughter of one of the members of the Riksdag^note This again seems to be a nod to historical speculation, as some of those who theorize that Kristina was a lesbian have pointed to Ebba as a potential lover..
• Ancient Egypt: Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile takes place in the Ptolemaic era of Egypt.
• Arranged Marriage:
  • Not as many as you would think. More then half of the princesses got to choose a husband or never married. However, it's still royalty, so this trope does show up with some frequency; if not the princess herself, someone else will be mentioned to be in an arranged marriage.
  • In a few cases, someone arranges a marriage for the princess, but for one reason or another, it doesn't come to fruition.
  • In Kazunomiya's case, she was intended to marry Arisugawa but the powers that be broke it off and engaged her to Iemochi instead. Which upsets her greatly, as she genuinely loved Arisugawa. Thankfully for her, Iemochi understands her pain as he can't be with the woman he loves either.
• Artistic License: Especially with more ancient time periods, like Cleopatra or the Lady of Chiao Kuo, or times and places with less extant records.
• Artistic License – History: In Elizabeth: Red Rose of the House of Tudor, Elizabeth repeats as fact the common story that Catherine Howard's last words were "I die a queen, but I would rather have died the wife of Culpeper" before being executed. This has no basis in historical fact; the eyewitness accounts of her execution were all consistent in reporting that her final words were requests for forgiveness of her sins and mercy on her family (as was traditional for most people who were executed during that time, to protect their loved ones after their deaths).
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Very much downplayed due to Cleopatra's young age, but her dynamic with Marc Antony in Cleoptra VII: Daughter of the Nile has hints of this. She initially derides him as a rowdy and unintelligent brute and gets into arguments with him (at one point even stealing his sword in retaliation against his antics), but she also feels intrigued and expresses a desire to see him again (implying she has a crush on him).
• Big Sister Bully: Mary is this to Elizabeth in Red Rose of the House of Tudor, although this is probably historically inaccurate.
• Bilingual Backfire: Pompey casually insults Ptolemy XII Auletes, Cleopatra's father, in Latin upon first meeting him under the belief neither he nor his daughter speak the Roman language. While Ptolemy XII doesn't, Cleopatra does and makes it clear by telling Pompey in Latin that she and her father will leave if he continues to insult them.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Cicero at first presents himself as a friend to Cleopatra when they meet during her stay in Rome, and they bond over their shared love of philosophy and Greek literature (such as The Frogs). He reveals his true colors when he publicly argues that the Senate should not support Cleopatra and her father in taking back Egypt, stating it would only be a matter of time until Egypt became a Roman province, which disappoints her. When he pleads his case one last time after the Senate agrees to send Marc Antony and his men to Egypt against his wishes, he all but throws a tantrum and storms out.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile ends with Cleopatra and her father restored to power with Roman aid upon returning home to Egypt, and Tryphaena is dead and no longer a threat. But Cleopatra's other sister Berenice, whom she genuinely cared about, was executed on Auletes' orders for taking his throne in his absence, and Cleopatra knows her father could have her killed as well at any time. She sets off on a trip down the Nile to see more of Egypt, now preparing for the day that she'll become queen.
  • Isabel: Jewel of Castilla: Isabel tragically loses her younger brother Alfonso, along with her best friend Catalina, to the pestilence. However, she also escapes Enrique's control at last and falls in love in the end with Prince Fernando, who charms her immediately and becomes her husband after she spent the entire story dodging unwanted Arranged Marriages beforehand.
  • Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars: Sondok's mother goes into exile to become a Buddhist nun after the hateful Chinese advisor, Lin Fang, convinces Sondok's father to take a new wife to obtain a son, and Sondok's childhood friend Chajang leaves for good to be a monk. But Lin Fang is finally discredited when a solar eclipse he predicted fails to arrive, and Sondok saves her father's reputation in the people's eyes by claiming that his power prevented the eclipse from even happening, which he is grateful to her for. Sondok's promising future as queen of Silla is secured by the sight of Kumsong (the planet Venus) appearing during the daytime in the very end, which the people take as a sign.
  • Catherine: The Great Journey: Catherine suffers the losses of her baby sister Ulrike, who died months after the former left Anhalt-Zerbst with their mother, and of her mother, who is discovered to be a spy for Frederick II's court and is banished from the country. Despite this, she has become friends with her betrothed Peter (in spite of his Prince Charmless personality) and is ready for her future as the empress of Russia.
• Bodyguard Crush: In Daughter of the Nile, Cleopatra's bodyguard Puzo has mutual feelings for her maid, Neva, which Cleopatra realizes later in Rome when Puzo rescues Neva from being swept out to sea. In the end, she finds a priest to marry them so that they can enjoy life as newlyweds while accompanying her on her trip through Egypt.
• Body Double: Mary, Queen of Scots switched places with her chamber maid to go see the astrologer Nostradamus.
• Book Dumb: Elizabeth I's maid of the chamber, Mary Ward, has no desire to learn to read because it won't have any impact on her life; she has already risen as far as a servant can by serving a princess.
• Book Ends: It's mentioned near the beginning of Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars that the belief that seeing the metal star, Kumsong (known in modern times as the planet Venus) during the daytime is a portent of a female ruler. The book ends with Kumsong shining in the daytime, a sign that Sondok would indeed become queen of Silla.
• Bumbling Dad: Played for Drama (or deconstructed) in the case of Ptolemy XII (aka Auletes), Cleopatra's father. Unlike his intelligent and bookish daughter, he is an alcoholic, self-absorbed Sheltered Aristocrat who loves partying and playing the flute and has no regard for ruling, which makes him deeply unpopular with his people and makes it easy for Tryphaena to seize the throne. During their exile, his incompetency frustrates and upsets Cleopatra and forces her to come to terms with the fact that she must be the more mature one of the two.
• Cain and Abel: Tryphaena and Cleopatra have this dynamic. There is a third sister, Berenice, but she is presented somewhere in the middle (not as tyrannical and cruel as Tryphaena or wise and kind like Cleopatra, but spoiled and somewhat dim). They also have other siblings, a younger sister named Arsinoe and two brothers, but they are all children and thus plot-irrelevant.
• Celibate Hero:
  • Elizabeth in Elizabeth: Red Rose of the House of Tudor tells her best friend Robin Dudley about her refusal to ever marry, in keeping with history.
  • In Kristina: The Girl King, Kristina is adamant that she will not marry or bear children, and that she finds the whole process of the latter repulsive and horrifying (whether her disgust for child-bearing is a symptom of her aversion to marriage or the cause of it is anyone's guess).
    "I cannot imagine why any woman would ever consent to go through the terrible business of bearing children," I said, lengthening my stride. "I will not have a husband, and I will not bear a child, and that is the end of it."
• The Champion: Eleanor has a knight in Eleanor: Crown Jewel of Aquitaine who is devoted to her in word and deed. In a letter Clotaire the Strong praises Eleanor and describes how he will protect her.
• Childhood Friends:
  • Cleopatra feels affection for her dear friend and fellow student Olympus even though she is royal and he is common in Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile.
  • Sondok and Chajang in Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars, knew each other since they were children. This dips into borderline Childhood Friend Romance at one point because they have romantic feelings for each other, but ultimately, it doesn't work out when Chajang is exiled and becomes a monk.
• Continuity Nod: Kathryn Lasky wrote the diaries for Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots and Jahanara, Begum Sahib. Both of the latter two books contain references to Elizabeth, including Jahanara wearing a pendant of Elizabeth I.
• Costume Porn: At the Pleiades ball in Mary, Queen of Scots: Queen Without a Country, Mary's outfit is described from her jewels on and off the dress to her detailed Scottish cap and her instructions for how her companions are to dress to contrast her.
• Courtly Love: Even after she's married to her prince, Eleanor's knight in Eleanor: Crown Jewel of Aquitaine pledges a vow of loyalty to his duchess.
• Covers Always Lie: The cover of Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile portrays Cleopatra as brown-skinned with black hair and dark eyes, making her look like an Egyptian. In the book, she describes herself as having blonde hair and green eyes like the past Ptolemys.
• Daddy's Girl:
  • Princess Elizabeth in Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor is her father's little princess and considered the true Tudor rose — until she makes him mad, that is.
  • In Catherine: The Great Journey, Catherine has a better relationship with her father than with her mother, as he's kind and affectionate while her mother is cold and abusive. When she's about to leave for Russia, he hugs her and urges her to hold on to her Lutheran faith (which she later gives up to become an Orthodox convert, something she acknowledges will upset him).
  • Subverted in Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile. Cleopatra initially thinks of herself as this because of her devotion to finding her father, who was forced into hiding from his enemies, and joins him in his journey to Rome to regain control of Egypt from her sisters. His incompetency while they're in exile and ruthlessness in dealing with threats to his power, however, make her much warier of him, and their relationship is no longer as close in the end.
• Dances and Balls:
  • Marie Antoinette was presented as the future queen of France to her people and the French delegation at a couple of royal balls.
  • In Mary, Queen of Scots: Queen Without A Country the French hold a grand ball just before Christmas where the queen gets to wear her new ball gown.
  • In Kaiulani: The People's Princess despite being only thirteen Kaiulani attends a some evening outings. One was a ball in honor of her cousin's twenty-first birthday as a reminder that he is third in line for the throne after the princess. The waltzes are her favorite dance.
• Dated History:
  • The epilogue of Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess mentions the question of whether Anastasia could have survived, since at the time, there were still two members of the family unaccounted for, including one of the daughters^note due to the condition of the remains, it was impossible to conclusively determine which one — forensic experts analyzed the bodies to try and make identifications, but different types of examination suggested different answers. The matter was finally laid to rest when a second burial site was discovered in 2007.
  • Also in The Last Grand Duchess, Anastasia indicates that her brother sustained a severe injury trying to ride his sled down a flight of stairs, and this is the reason he was unable to walk in the final months of his life. While this story has long persisted, more recent analysis of primary sources has suggested this is an Urban Legend, and that the true cause of Alexei's injury was that while battling a respiratory illness, he coughed so hard that he damaged blood vessels in his abdomen, which, due to his hemophilia, resulted in a hemmorhage.
  • Tryphaena is depicted as Cleopatra's eldest sister, based on a record from Porphyry that claimed Ptolemy XII had a daughter named Cleopatra Tryphaena who ruled with Berenice during their father's exile in Rome. This conflicts with other records that list Ptolemy with only three daughters (Berenice, Cleopatra, and Arsinoe); the consensus among modern historians is that Ptolemy's wife, Cleopatra V Tryphaena, is the Tryphaena who ruled with Berenice (in other words, Tryphaena was Cleopatra's stepmother or mother, not her sister).
  • Another example involving Sondok is the existence of her sister, Sonwha (which, under the current Romanization system, would be spelled Seonhwa). At the time of the book's writing, there was only one record and a folk myth to attest to Sonwha's existence; archaeological evidence dug up years later proved that the son attributed to Sonwha was mothered by a different woman, meaning Sonwha was likely not a real person.
• Death of a Child:
  • Catherine's toddler sister, Ulrike, dies of fever off-page in The Great Journey while she and her mother are in Russia, which especially devastates her because she cannot be at her funeral. Years previously prior to the book, she also lost her little brother William.
  • In Princess of Versailles, Antonia's young niece Titi dies of pneumonia midway through her story. (A later conversation between Antonia and her mother hints at the prevalence of child mortality.) The epilogue also notes that all but one of Marie Antoinette's own children died young; her youngest daughter died in infancy, and her two sons died of tuberculosis at the ages of 8 and 10. The only one to survive was her eldest, Marie Therese, who was released to Austria (her mother's birth country) after her parents' executions.
• Democracy Is Bad: Although this is expected, considering that, well, they're royals, it's still quite jarring to hear this presented from the protagonists, who are supposed to be sympathetic. This also counts as Deliberate Values Dissonance.
  • In Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess, Anastasia says that the idea of the Czar sharing his power is crazy.
  • In Marie Antoinette: Princess of Versailles, Antonia thinks that it is impossible for a person to really be handsome if he is of low birth.
  • In Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile, Cleopatra relates how her father claimed that studying the arts is only for the noble class, and the peasantry are better off using their skills to farm the land and fish the rivers instead of sitting around and thinking. Cleopatra doesn't like it (and states she's not sure if it's true), but agrees.
  • In Jahanara: Princess of Princesses, Jahanara admits she never thought of servants thinking about anything but the most practical matters.
  • Inverted in Elisabeth: The Princess Bride with Elisabeth, as it was stated in the end that she preferred a democracy.
  • Averted in Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars, where Sondok is proud of how forward her kingdom is for requiring an unanimous aristocratic vote before they can enact any important law.
  • A more sympathetic example appears in Kaiulani: The People's Princess. Yes, as a royal, Kaiulani might be expected to react poorly to the suggestion of democracy in general, but given that "democracy" came to Hawaii by way of an invading army, she had a valid reason to be upset about that particular situation.^note She wasn't the only one to think so; the vast majority of Hawaiians, regardless of social class or their feelings on the monarchy, opposed the coup — which wasn't so much true democracy anyway as it was a case of replacing one unelected ruler with another and then claiming it was more democratic because it was under the governance of a democractic country, despite the actual people of Hawaii still having no voice until much later — and the United States itself eventually admitted wrongdoing and issued a formal apology to the Hawaiian people in the early 1990s.
• Did Anastasia Survive?: The question is mentioned in the epilogue of Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess, since the last two bodies had not yet been found when the book was published. The epilogue explains why people believe that this could have happened, details some of the common theories as to how she might have survived, and notes that one of the Grand Duchesses was unaccounted for when most of the bodies were found (the text states that experts couldn't agree on whether it was Anastasia or Maria). However, it also notes at the very end that whether or not Anastasia would've turned out differently from her parents is a mystery for the ages because of how suddenly her life ended, which seems to suggest that the writers didn't believe these theories even before the question was given a definite resolution.
• Disappeared Dad: Mary, Queen of Scots: Queen Without a Country and Kristina: The Girl King, Sweden have these. Mary's father died when she was six days old; Kristina's father died when she was still a child.
• Downer Ending: Some of the books end at unhappy points, due to how their heroines' lives historically turn out afterwards.
  • Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess has an inevitably bleak ending, with Anastasia and her family overthrown and trapped in the custody of the Bolsheviks and Anastasia leaving her diary in the care of a maid with the hope that the maid will send it to her after she and her family have escaped. Obviously, this did not happen in reality.
  • Jahanara: Princess of Princesses ends on a surprisingly sad note, with Jahanara's beloved mother dying in childbirth and Jahanara only being able to take consolation in the fact that she and her mother were able to be together at all. The historical notes go further and explain how it only went further downhill from there when Jahanara's brother Aurangzeb seized power and had their brother, Dara Shikoh, killed.
  • Elisabeth: The Princess Bride leaves Elisabeth on the eve of her wedding to Franz Joseph, already feeling miserable and stifled by the rigid ways of court life and the nobles' constant scrutiny of everything she does but being powerless to do anything about it (which would plague her for the rest of her life).
• Dreaming of Things to Come:
  • Both Weetamoo and her friend Cedar have visions/dreams of the future during their initiation. Weetamoo's is more symbolic, a gathering of her friends where some are marked with red bloodroot juice. Cedar's is more realistic, with Weetamoo inviting Cedar to join in fighting the colonists and Cedar refusing.
  • Anacaona has visions that give her insight into the present and future. Of particular note is a dream of pale faced invaders come to destroy her home foreshadowing the European invasion of the Americas.
• English Rose: In Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor, Henry becomes furious at Edward for being lazy while his half-sister and her friends worked on the rose bushes. Elizabeth is quick to defend Edward by respectfully telling her father that she thinks that Edward's humors are out of balance. For this, Henry fondly tells Elizabeth that she is the true Tudor rose.
• The Fashionista: In Kaiulani: The People's Princess the main character at several times tells us just what she's wearing, loves to dress up especially in frilly things and once she gets invited to the White House she says that her biggest problem will be deciding what to wear. It is good that she's so fashion conscious because when she makes a presentation for her country the newspapers describe her outfit in painstaking detail.
• Fiery Redhead: Elizabeth of Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor has red-gold hair and can swear up a storm when she wants to.
• The French Revolution: Marie Antoinette: Princess of Versailles takes place in the period leading up to it. The book ends before the revolution actually happens, however, and it's only discussed in the historical notes.
• Foreshadowing: In a meta way. In Anacaona: Golden Flower, Anacaona receives a message that "invaders with fair skin" have arrived. When Anacaona finally meets them, she notices that while they do have light skin (lighter than those of Anacaona and her fellow Tainos), they were not as fair-skinned as the message claimed they were. Eventually, colonists from Northern Europe - with ever fairer coloring than those from Spain - would also come to the Americas.
• The Fundamentalist: Jahanara's brother Aurangzeb, who became extremely conservative Muslim (to the point where he tried to poison Indira because she was Hindu and embarrassed him). And to Jahanara's horror, he has plans to seize the throne.
• The Ghost: Julius Caesar is often mentioned in Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile when Cleopatra and her father go to Rome, but never actually appears.
• Gilded Cage:
  • At the beginning of Jahanara: Princess of Princesses, Jahanara and her family are being imprisoned by Nur Mahal.
  • The royals of Kazunomiya: Prisoner of Heaven are rarely permitted to leave the palace by the general who signed a treaty with the Americans.
  • At the beginning of Isabel: Jewel of Castilla, Isabel's brother, King Enrique, keeps her confined in one of his castles. She is relatively well-treated, especially compared to her younger brother (who Enrique once kept locked in a tower), but she is completely subject to his whims and he does not allow her to leave, even to see her own mother. She is eventually set free by rebels supporting her younger brother against Enrique.
• God Save Us from the Queen!:
  • Queen Juana in Isabel: Jewel of Castilla is Isabel's self-absorbed, egomaniacal sister-in-law who pressures Isabel to marry her repugnant older brother, tried to poison Isabel's younger brother Alfonso, and is all but outright stated to have cheated on Isabel's half-brother, Enrique, with his courtier Beltran de la Cueva (hence the nickname of Juana and Enrique's daughter, "La Beltraneja", who is rumored to actually have been fathered by Cueva). The historical afterword notes that Isabel herself was far from clean, given that it was under her reign that the Spanish Inquisition was established.
  • Cleopatra's eldest sister Tryphaena, in Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile, is a power-hungry tyrant who seizes the throne while her father is in hiding from assassins and threatens her sister's life. After her assassination, Berenice proves little better when she becomes queen herself; she takes a husband and has him strangled to death after only a few days out of boredom.
  • Empress Nur Jahan (referred to as Nur Mahal) in Jahanara: Princess of Princesses is the Wicked Stepmother to Jahanara's father, Shah Jahan, who keeps him and his family imprisoned and tries to undermine his claim to the throne. Jahanara relates a story she heard about how Nur Mahal's evil nature came from being nursed on the milk of a cobra as a baby.
  • Played with, in the case of Empress Elizabeth in Catherine: The Great Journey. She's not portrayed as evil, and she becomes quite fond of Catherine because of the girl's devotion to learning Russian (in contrast to Peter's preference for Germany and disdain of everything to do with Russia), but she's known for her short temper and ruthlessness towards those who displease her. Catherine's father tells her about how the empress had a countess's tongue cut out before banishing her to Siberia as punishment for spreading rumors about her. On her way to St. Petersburg, Catherine sees a duke's family being sent away to prison and is disconcerted by the reminder that she herself could be banished at any time.
  • While it doesn't come to pass until the epilogue, Elizabeth in Red Rose of the House of Tudor is terrified of what will happen to her if Mary becomes Queen. The epilogue briefly details the cruelty of Mary's reign and the danger Elizabeth, who was closely associated with the reforms Mary was trying to reverse, was in during that time.
• Gorgeous Period Dress:
  • In Eleanor: Crown Jewel of Aquitaine, it is the Aquitaine way to dress in bright colors with plenty of jewels. At one point Petra, Eleanor's sister, wears a gown of emerald while the main character wears one of blue and each of them wear white silk shoes beaded with pearls to contrast.
  • Kazunomiya: Prisoner of Heaven must dress in a style from the old classical period. She wears the colors of earliest spring, shades of wisteria, and the outermost kimono is lavender, lined with blue.
• Heir Club for Men:
  • Princess Elizabeth suffers from this trope, though she puts more emphasis on her father saying she and Mary are "illegitimate" than their genders. ^note Not that the two were entirely disconnected; all of the drama around Henry's marriages, and the consequent classifications of his children, stemmed from his desire to have a male heir, and then, once he had one, to ensure that his son, Edward, would be his immediate successor, rather than his daughters (although the epilogue notes that he did relent on the claims of illegitimacy, but still arranged his line of succession such that Edward would have first claim to the throne ahead of Mary or Elizabeth).
  • Anastasia tells the story of her birth: everyone was disappointed upon the birth of each of her sisters, since a girl could not be tsar. When she, the fourth child, was born, everyone was praying for a boy, and were especially disappointed to find she was another girl. A servant claims that her father was so upset, he cried. (The worst part is, given their ultimate fates, it turned out not to even matter.)
  • Sondok is heir to the throne of Silla because there are no males of the ruling rank in her generation. At first her father is matter-of-fact about this, but the Chinese ambassador convinces him that a female heir makes his kingdom look weak, and he should set aside his wife for a younger woman who might bear a son. Because of this, Sondok's mother leaves to become a Buddhist nun.
  • Zig-zagged with Anacaona, as women are allowed to rule the tribe, but unlike men, women have to choose between ruling and marriage, because a married woman is considered part of her husband's tribe rather than her own, so she cannot rule the latter. She decides she will only marry if she finds a would-be husband with equal status, so that the marriage will allow her to keep the same status that she would get by her birthright; fortunately, the young man she falls for satisfies this requirement.
  • Subverted in Jewel of Castilla. Once his younger brother dies, King Enrique's only possible heirs are female — either his (purported) daughter Juana, or his sister Isabel. As anyone who knows anything about Spanish history could have predicted, he ends up choosing the latter (seemingly due in part to questions about whether Juana is really his child). Ironically, when Enrique's wife is first scheming to place her daughter on the throne, Isabel thinks this is ridiculously far-fetched because no queen has ever taken the throne of Castilla, only to end up becoming that Queen.
• Hiding Behind the Language Barrier: Pompey attempts to exploit the language barrier upon meeting Cleopatra and her father Ptolemy, insulting them in Latin (which he assumes they don't speak) while using a tone and gestures that appear friendly. Unfortunately for him, Cleopatra does speak Latin, and promptly tells him in the same language that if she and her father are going to be mocked, they will leave. Pompey doesn't try that trick again.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: In Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess, Olga hides her diary by covering it with a jacket of black leather and placing it on the shelf with her prayer books.
• The High Middle Ages: Eleanor of Aquitaine's book is set during this period.
• Historical Domain Character: As Royal Diaries is a historical fiction series, expect to see many of them pop up in the books.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: Downplayed but still present in Jewel of Castilla, which gives Isabel, known historically for engineering the Spanish Inquisition that persecuted and killed thousands of Muslims and Jews, an entirely fictional friend in the form of Catalina, a kind and pious converso lady-in-waiting descended from Jews who converted to Catholicism. To its credit, the book does not gloss over this and openly discusses the Inquisition in its historical notes.
• Historical Villain Upgrade:
  • Mary I in Red Rose of the House of Tudor, who is portrayed as devious, cunning, and hateful towards her younger siblings. While her relationships with Elizabeth and Edward certainly cooled later in life, during their childhoods, the much-older Mary acted as a mother figure, and was on record as being hopelessly naive and guileless. The enmity between her and Elizabeth didn't really kick into gear until after Mary became queen; it's not until she starts burning Protestants that she really deserves this. Perhaps more notably, she's also depicted as scheming with foreign lords to steal the throne when their father dies, despite the fact that in real life she never contested Edward's claim to the throne, only Elizabeth's.^note Mary refused to recognize Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn because by her standards, he was still married to her mother, Catherine of Aragon, at that time, meaning that she considered Elizabeth to be born out of wedlock and therefore not eligible to inherit, but she did regard his marriage to Jane Seymour as valid because Catherine had died prior to that marriage, so even by Catholic law, Henry was free to remarry — and history suggests Mary really was concerned primarily with the legality (perhaps feeling that acknowledging Elizabeth's legitimacy would be disrespectful to Catherine's memory) rather than this being a simple pretense for a power play as it is in the novel.
  • Tryphaena in Daughter of the Nile, a figure about whom next to nothing is known besides her temporary rule over Egypt with Berenice when Ptolemy XII was in exile, is portrayed as Cleopatra's wicked older sister who takes her father's throne, wants Cleopatra dead so that she can rule, and is all-around cruel and contemptuous.
  • Nur Mahal in Princess of Princesses is portrayed as a cruel Evil Matriarch who bars Jahanara's father, her stepson, from the throne for her own ends. While she was indeed the power behind the throne to her husband Jahangir (Jahanara's grandfather) in addition to being cunning and ambitious, she was generally regarded as an intelligent administrator. She was also a devoted patron of the arts and architecture and introduced popular fashions like the nurmahali dress, which the book never mentions.
• Hot Consort: In Elisabeth, The Princess Bride Franz Joseph defied his mother in his choice of who to marry because of Elisabeth's beauty and spirited nature.
• I Ate WHAT?!: In Daughter of the Nile, Cleopatra has dinner with Julia (the daughter of Julius Caesar) after seeing The Clouds with her. Said dinner consists of sandwiches with some kind of meat; when Cleopatra asks her what it was afterwards, Julia tells her that it was dormouse. Cleopatra later finds a dead one, and throws it away in disgust at the idea of cooking it.
• Imperial China: Lady of Ch'iao Kuo. ^note Her name is "Xian Ying", and her husband is Feng Bao, an official in the Liang and Chen regimes during the Southern Dynasty era. Besides her personal achievements, she also asked her grandsons to be loyal to the emperor as she did. One of said grandsons is Feng Ang, who was featured in a tale showcasing Tang official Wei Zheng's wisdom. For many years, Feng had failed to appear in Chang'an to pay respects to emperor Taizong. In short, on Wei's advice, Taizong sent a messenger to Feng instead of troops, and Feng gladly presented his son soon afterwards, leading Taizong to muse that a few words from Wei is more effective than 10 thousand soldiers. One of Feng Ang's great-grandsons was the eunuch Gao Lishi, who served Tang Xuanzong loyally for many years.
• Inconsistent Spelling: Can be invoked, if not in the books themselves, then by the reader. Isabel and Fernando are better known as Ferdinand and Isabella to American audiences, and Sondok is best known as Seondeok because of changes in Romanization. Justified by language differences and interpretations.
  • For the first half of Marie Antoinette: Princess of Versailles, the protagonist is referred to as Antonia. (This is historically accurate: Marie Antoinette was actually born Maria Antonia and only took the name Marie Antoinette when she married; at the time, it was the general custom that if a woman of high status married a man from another country, her name would be altered to fit the language of her husband's country to signify that she was now a part of that country.)
• Informed Flaw: Cleopatra has a younger sister named Arsinoe, whom she calls as "spoiled and vain" as their elder sister Tryphaena, but she never really shows this in the book because of her very limited page-time. The only indication of this is when she has her nurse request Cleopatra on her behalf for a Pygmy playmate.
• In Mysterious Ways:
  • Isabel of Castilla refused to fight her brother, King Enrique, but instead become his heir because it was what God wanted. Eventually, this led to the union of Castilla and Aragon to form Spain when she married Fernando.
  • Elizabeth I of England and Catherine The Great each said that it didn't matter what religion they were as long as they worshiped God.
• Jidaigeki: Kazunomiya.
• Just Friends: Queen Kristina of Sweden from Kristina, The Girl King, felt this way about her cousin and good friend Karl even after he expressed desire to marry her.
  • Kazunomiya and Yoshitomi eventually settle on this sort of relationship on their own after after he lets her know that he not only knows about her love for Arisugawa but in fact is interested in another girl himself. Too bad their families persist in the Arranged Marriage.
• Kiddie Kid: In Catherine: The Great Journey, Catherine's betrothed, Peter, is a sixteen-year-old boy who plays with a collection of toy soldiers and owns a pet rat that he dresses in a military uniform and calls "General Fitzroy". Catherine gets in his good graces by playing along with his games.
• King Incognito:
  • It occurred to Kristina in Kristina: The Girl King that if she were disguised as a boy, she wouldn't have to ride sidesaddle.
  • Mary gets to take an exciting journey with Diane de Poitiers through the French countryside where they take none of the royal standards or emblems.
  • In Cleopatra: Daughter of the Nile, Cleopatra would wander the harbor with her maid, Neva, while dressed as common Greek girls in order to go around unnoticed.
  • In Eleanor: Crown Jewel of Aquitaine, after Eleanor's father had his conversion, he became more of a Wise Prince to the point of being seen doing servants' work while dressed like a monk on a pilgrimage.
  • For Isabel to marry who she wanted in Isabel: Jewel of Castilla, she had to sneak around her brother's back by traveling first as minstrels and later as monks.
  • Kazunomiya once catches Iemochi disguised as a trash collector so he could be with the woman he loves. This later inspires her to disguise herself as a commoner to get to the temple to meet Arisugawa.
• Knight In Shining Armour: Since Eleanor has a crush on a knight in Eleanor: Crown Jewel of Aquitaine she wants him to be her bodyguard. Once when they are attacked, he pulls her into his saddle and races her back to the safety of the castle.
• Last Request: Her Aunt Katrina's last wish to Queen Kristina of Sweden from Kristina, The Girl King, is for her to marry her cousin Karl. Kristina, who never wanted to marry, can't bring herself to do it, but she does name Karl her successor and make him King when she abdicates, which allows her to fulfill the spirit of Katrina's last wish (that she make Karl King of Sweden) if not the letter of it.
• The Late Middle Ages: Isabel: Jewel of Castilla takes place in fifteenth century Spain.
• Like Brother and Sister: In The Great Journey, Catherine and Peter become friends and develop this kind of relationship, with her playing along with his childish antics. In return, he at one point stands up for her when her mother slaps her and makes her cry.
• Mal Mariée: Discussed in Isabel: Jewel of Castilla. When Juana tries to persuade Isabel to marry her repulsive older brother, King Afonso of Portugal (nicknamed El Escorpión by Isabel, who loathes him), she waxes poetic about the upside to a marriage of this kind:
  And then [Juana] grinned boldly and winked at me. "Just wait and see! With an old husband who falls asleep as soon as he has eaten his supper, you are free to amuse yourself. There are many handsome young men at court, all eager to please you, to fetch you a glass of wine, to place a cushion under your feet, to wear your ring when they ride their horses in a tournament joust. So you see, my dear little Isabel, it will all work out very well for you to wed my brother. You will have yourself a merry life at court in Lisbon."
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: In Isabel: Jewel of Castilla, King Enrique and Queen Juana's daughter Juana is nicknamed "La Beltraneja" because of court rumors that claim that her real father is Beltran de la Cueva, a nobleman in Enrique's service. Isabel considers the rumors plausible because she sees that Juana slightly resembles Beltran, and she later sees him with the queen. This is also what leads to Isabel becoming Queen, as Enrique chooses Isabel — his sister — over Juana as his heir because he doesn't feel he can be certain that Juana is truly of the royal bloodline. (Historically, this uncertainty over Juana's parentage played a part in the War of the Castilian Succession between Isabel's and Juana's supporters, in which Isabel's side triumphed.)
• Marriage Before Romance: Marie Antoinette and Dauphin of France Louis Auguste have never met before their Arranged Marriage. At first she sees him as ugly and boring, but when they get to know each other she appreciates his kindness and he her directness and sense of fun. By the end of the book romance seems to be developing between them.
• Marry for Love: Isabella in Isabel: Jewel of Castilla went behind her brother's back to marry Fernando, the young, handsome, kind and intelligent heir of Aragon after he stole her heart.
• Masquerade Ball:
  • In Catherine, The Great Journey the empress commanded everyone to come to a number of balls dressed as a member of the opposite sex.
  • In Tudor England nearly every festivity is celebrated in costume. Most rowdy is Twelfth Night where everyone wore a disguise and Princess Elizabeth saw unmarried couples sneaking off to be with each other.
  • Ends up being a significant plot point in Mary, Queen of Scots: Queen Without a Country. Everyone is dressed up for Midsummer Night, and the girls' tutor Signore Marcelline attempted to sneak up on one of Mary's friends whom he had been forcing his attentions on, but ambushed a different girl by mistake because he couldn't tell them apart in their costumes. This finally reveals what's been going on the whole time.
• Massive Numbered Siblings:
  • In Nzingha: Warrior Queen of Matamba, Nzingha's father has many wives, and another sibling to her is born almost every month.
  • In Marie Antoinette: Princess of Versailles, Antonia is the youngest in a family of sixteen children (albeit four died young, though the book only acknowledges one of those deaths).
  • In Jahanara: Princess of Princesses, Jahanara has two sisters and four brothers by the time the story ends.
  • The epilogue of Isabel: Jewel of Castilla notes that Isabel had six children.
• Matriarchy: Because Taino society of Anacaona: Golden Flower was matriarchal, one could only inherit a ruling position through a female relative, the way Anacaona's uncle, for example, inherited his rule from her grandmother.
• Meaningful Rename: Sophie, also known as "Figchen", is renamed Catherine in Catherine: The Great Journey as part of the process in making her Peter's soon-to-be empress of Russia. She's uncomfortable with it, likening having the new name to wearing a dress that is too scratchy and big for her.
• Missing Mom:
  • In Kaiulani: The People's Princess, Kaiulani tells the story of how her dear mother died.
  • Elizabeth in Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor asked to be shown where her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed.
  • Cleopatra in Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile was a small child when her mother died, and doesn't remember much about her.
  • While not dead, Mary's mother is in Scotland serving as regent, and Mary clearly misses her a lot.
  • In the first half of Isabel: Jewel of Castilla, Isabel is separated from her mother and is not allowed to even visit her. When she's finally freed from her Gilded Cage, she immediately runs to be with her mother again.
• The Mistress: Two of them show up in the books. In Queen Without a Country, Mary looks up to Diane de Poitiers, the mistress to Henry II of France, as a mother figure. Conversely in Princess of Versailles, Madame du Barry is the catty mistress of Louis XV of France and the rival to Marie Antoinette.
• Modest Royalty: In Isabel: Jewel of Castilla, Isabel's brother Enrique always dresses plainly and wears a dusty black hat so often that Isabel wonders if he sleeps in it. (This is in contrast with his wife, Juana, who always wears fancy gowns that show too much décolletage for Isabel's taste.) At the feast for Lent, as part of her self-imposed penance for listening to malicious gossip about Juana and her daughter, Isabel wears a plain yellow gown without any jewels.
  • Marie Antoinette invokes this trope, purposely dressing in a flattering but plain gown and wearing no jewels, to create a favorable comparison with the king's mistress du Berry who she knows will be decked out with Gem-Encrusted dress and hair.
• Momma's Boy: In Elisabeth: The Princess Bride, Franz Joseph is close to his mother and does nothing to help Elisabeth deal with her overbearing personality.
• My Beloved Smother: In Victoria: May Blossom of Britannia, Victoria chafes at the extremely restrictive, overprotective environment in which she's raised, in which she's not allowed to have her own bedroom, be left alone without someone hovering nearby (outside the door at a minimum) or even walk down a flight of stairs without holding someone's hand as though she were a toddler, all in order to protect her from some unspecified danger that supposedly lurks constantly.^note In real life, it was later revealed that the rationale of protection was just a pretense; the real reason she was raised this way was all part of a scheme to make Victoria entirely dependant on her mother in order to preserve her mother's political power — a scheme which backfired spectacularly, as rather than create dependence, the extreme restrictiveness only caused Victoria to resent her mother, leading her to cut her out of her life the moment she was able.
• Never a Self-Made Woman:
  • Played straight in Elisabeth: The Princess Bride with Elisabeth, who feels overshadowed by Franz Joseph's title during their engagement, but would never have become the people's beloved Empress of Austria without it.
  • Played straight with Jahanara in Jahanara: Princess of Princesses, who exhibited influence at court by taking her mother's place next to her father as the uncrowned empress even though her father had three other wives to choose from.
  • Played straight in Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess with Anastasia, who was merely known as the youngest daughter of Imperial Russia's last sovereign, and whose only claim to fame was for something she did not do (the myth that she possibly escaped her family's execution, which was proven definitively false when her body was found along with her brother's).
  • Exaggerated with Catherine: The Great Journey: Catherine was a daughter of a princess from a small royal family and a major general in the army, but went on to marry the heir of the Russian empress and, on his death, become Catherine II.
  • Justified in Marie Antoinette: Princess of Versailles with Antonia, whose biggest decision of the day was what to wear and who was ultimately beheaded for being an Austrian princess and the French queen.
  • Inverted in Victoria: May Blossom of Britannia with Victoria, who realized that she was closer to the throne than she thought and thus her husband would gain his success through her.
  • Subverted in Eleanor: Crown Jewel of Aquitaine with Eleanor, who was duchess of Aquitaine in her own right before she married the prince.
  • Double subverted in Isabel: Jewel of Castilla with Isabel, who—knowing that she was going to become a powerful queen upon her older brother's death—chose the heir of the less powerful, but adjoining Spanish kingdom as her husband.
  • Zig-Zagged in Anacaona: Golden Flower with Anacaona, who was next in line for the throne with her brother, but surrendered it to him to marry the ruler of an equally powerful region where she was called a warrior because her husband had fought so many wars, but then after he died she went to her homeland to rule with her brother until her brother died and she became the sole ruler.
  • Averted in Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile by Cleopatra, who knew that she was next in line to be queen after her older sisters' deaths.
  • Averted in Mary, Queen of Scots: Queen Without a Country by Mary, who was queen of Scotland by birthright and betrothed to the Dauphin of France.
  • Averted in Kaiulani: The People's Princess by Kaiulani, when her uncle the King reminds her that it will be her responsibility to do as well as possible in her education to further the hope of their nation that she will someday lead.
  • Averted by Nzingha in Nzingha: Warrior Queen of Matamba, whose father gives her his blessing to rule Ndongo when the time comes.
  • Defied by Sondok in Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars, who proved her worthiness to be her father's heir with her intelligence as a child and wanted the respect that a prince would receive.
  • Defied in Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor by Elizabeth, who was not expected to become queen because of her illegitimacy and told her best friend that she would never marry.
  • Defied in Kristina: The Girl King by Kristina, who told everyone that she would never marry and held true to this as an adult.
• Not So Above It All: In Princess of Versailles, Antonia expects her mother to be angry when she and her niece are caught wading in the palace fountain late at night during a heat wave, but instead she joins them, declaring it "the best idea of the whole summer" and confessing that she had once done the same as a young girl.
• No Periods, Period: Averted in three cases:
  • Princess Elizabeth told Robin that they couldn't play games to calm the ghost of Catherine Howard because they weren't children any more and therefore unrecognizable. She had that winter begun her monthly courses.
  • Shana'Kin Yaxchel Pacal finds out that the way women-including her, when she starts to have them-make blood sacrifices is to burn the cloths they bleed into when on their period.
  • Weetamoo briefly mentions that she and Cedar have already started theirs, and soon after had their women's initiations.
  • The other books play this trope straight. Granted, it's plausible that some of them haven't started having them yet, but it's weird in a couple cases when you consider Anacaona gets pregnant in her book, and in real life the Generale Krottendorf (as it was so euphemistically referred as) was a regular topic of conversation between Marie Antoinette and her mother Maria Theresa, and Antoinette moved to France pretty much as soon as she achieved menarche.
• Off With Her Head: In Red Rose Of The House of Tudor, Elizabeth recounts the beheadings of both her mother Anne Boleyn and her stepmother Catherine Howard.
• Offing the Offspring: In Daughter of the Nile, Cleopatra's father Ptolemy XII orders at separate times for his elder daughters, Tryphaena and Berenice, to be assassinated and executed, respectively, for seizing his throne in his absence. This leads Cleopatra to grimly realize he could have her killed too on a whim, despite his claims of her being his favorite child.
• Ojou Ringlets: Archduchess Antonia of Marie Antoinette: Princess of Versailles purposely told her hairdresser to let one long curl fall down upon her collarbone, which she began to wind around her middle finger as she talked to the king.
• Old Man Marrying a Child: While this doesn't actually happen to the protagonists of any of the stories, it does get referenced on occasion.
  • In Jewel of Castilla, Isabel's brother tries on multiple occasions to set up a marriage between a teenaged Isabel and men in their 30s or 40s, but ultimately none of them come to pass (much to Isabel's relief as she was repulsed by the idea).
  • In Red Rose of the House of Tudor, Elizabeth makes mention a few times of how young her father's fifth wife, Catherine Howard, was (Howard was only about 17 when she married Henry), noting that she considered Howard as more of a peer than a maternal figure because she was not that much older than Elizabeth herself. She also questions whether Catherine's youth may have contributed to why things went so poorly for her, wondering if she was simply not old enough for the responsibility that was placed on her.
• One of the Boys: Queen Kristina of Sweden from Kristina, The Girl King, is happier competing and swearing with the boys than spending time with the girls.
• One-Steve Limit: Massively averted in Mary: Queen Without A Country, where the eponymous character's entourage consists of four girls also named Mary. The protagonist refers to them almost exclusively by full names to prevent confusion.
  • Elizabeth: Red Rose of the House of Tudor has two Marys (Elizabeth's sister Mary I and her maid Mary Ward) and two Janes (Lady Jane Gray and a servant known as Jane The Bald). There's also Elizabeth's stepmothers Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr, although the latter is only mentioned retrospectively as she's already dead when the story begins.
• Opposites Attract: Though the couple never interacts on-page, Cleopatra is shocked upon their first meeting to find out that the demure Proper Lady Julia is married to the brutish warmonger Pompey. Truth in Television, as by all accounts they were Happily Married until Julia's death in childbirth (which helped to deteriorate Pompey's relationship with her father, Julius Caesar).
• Outdoorsy Gal:
  • Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess would rather climb trees than dance.
  • In Marie Antoinette: Princess of Versailles, Archduchess Antonia's favorite activity is horse riding astride through the mud.
  • Kristina: The Girl King takes this up to eleven since Kristina studies everything a prince would (e.g. fencing) and is a huge tomboy.
• Perfectly Arranged Marriage:
  • In Jahanara: Princess of Princesses, Jahanara's mother selects a bride for her oldest son Dara Shikoh, who is quite eager for the marriage to take place as they have met before and were quite taken with each other. (It should be noted Jahanara's parents were an example as well.)
  • The marriage between Sisi and Franz Jozef in Elisabeth: The Princess Bride seems to start out as this...but as revealed in the historical notes, their marriage collapsed until they were married in name only.
  • Kazunomiya's arranged marriage with Prince Arisugawa was perfectly arranged. Until her family decided to go back on it and re-arrange her marriage to the heir-apparent to the Shogunate instead.
  • Marie Antoinette and the Dauphin Louis's marriage didn't start out this way, but over the course of the book they start to fall for each other (and in real life did genuinely love each other, with Louis refusing to take a mistress).
• Pimped-Out Dress:
  • To show her status as the next queen of France Archduchess Antonia was dressed for the ball in violet blue satin with French lace sleeves and ruffles with her hair most pimped out. It was piled up very high and woven into it were silk roses and toy birds with real feathers. This took four hours.
  • In Mary, Queen of Scots: Queen Without a Country, at the liveliest ball of the season, Mary wears her most dazzling costume ever in homage to the greatest poets in France.
  • In Catherine: The Great Journey, for the state dinner with Frederick II in Berlin, Catherine wears a gown (borrowed from Frederick's sister) made of blue brocades and satins with jewels all along the seams, in addition to silver fox fur around the neckline and wrists.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Robin Dudley is Princess Elizabeth's best friend and the child she most enjoys spending time with.
• Politically-Active Princess: None of the main characters are expected to participate in politics because they're all under age. Many of them will never be expected to be political since they're supposed to just be the wife or sister of the king. Those who defy expectations are Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile who stands up for her father and country, in Latin, to General Pompey the Great, Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars, Kristina: The Girl King, and Elisabeth: The Princess Bride.
• Precious Puppy: Catherine in Catherine: The Great Journey receives a black cocker spaniel puppy as a gift that she names Ivan Ivanovitch (after a diplomat with similar curly black hair), whose main role is to look cute in costumes and cheer her up.
• Pretty Princess Powerhouse:
  • Nzingha wants to hunt with her father once before she gets married which she gets to do and the men are impressed with her skill in Nzingha: Warrior Queen of Matamba.
  • Anacaona in Anacaona: Golden Flower surprised her new husband with her skill with the spear. After that he welcomed her to train with the warriors.
• Prince Charming:
  • Emperor Franz Joseph I, was able to win over Elisabeth because she considered him to be playful, considerate and charming.
  • In Isabel: Jewel of Castilla, it takes less than two hours for Fernando, Prince of Aragon and King of Sicily, to steal Isabel's heart with his humor, authority, and kindness.
  • Archduchess Antonia is a princess who uses all her charms to get the king to reinstate her banished lady-in-waiting.
• Prince Charmless:
  • In Catherine: The Great Journey, Catherine is repulsed by her betrothed, Peter III, a weak and spoiled Manchild who plays with toy soldiers, refuses to have anything to do with the country that he'll one day rule, and is later disfigured from smallpox (admittedly the only trait that's out of his control). They eventually develop a Like Brother and Sister relationship instead of anything romantic.
  • Archduchess Antonia's "horrifying" first impression of her husband is that he is fat, oafish, pimply, dirty and silent. However, she later realizes he's quite gentle and kind, allowing her to see past his flaws and start genuinely caring for him.
• Princess Classic: In Victoria: May Blossom Of Britannia, Victoria really wants to be this. Being an ambitious artist, she tears out her diary pages because she hates how she expresses sadness or anger in her desire to be good.
• Princess for a Day: In Catherine: The Great Journey, Catherine has nothing nice enough to wear to the royal court until King Frederick lets her borrow a gown belonging to his sister. When she has to return it, it reminds her of the story about the little ash girl who was beautiful until the stroke of midnight.
• Princess Protagonist: Most of the heroines are princesses who have yet to be crowned queen (or, in Anastasia and Kaiulani's cases, never got to become queen). It's played with for Elizabeth, who was made illegitimate after her mother's death and whose only title is "Lady", and for Anacaona and Weetamoo, who aren't princesses (due to the title not existing in their cultures) but are instead future chiefs of their tribes.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Borderline case in the book about Ka'iulani. After the coup d'etat that removes the Hawaiian royal family from power, Ka'iulani complains that the new President of Hawaii is not elected by the people. This completely ignores the fact that none of the previous rulers were elected by the people, and she didn't care too much. Granted, the Americans were no saints, to say the least, but the book seems to imply that autocratic rule is okay when the protagonists do it.
  • Two of the three previous rulers were elected by the people (well, some of them, anyway). When the previous ruler died without naming an heir, the next ruler had to be elected among suitable royals. Lunalilo, the future king, insisted.
• Puppet King: Isabel's younger brother, Alfonso, is the figurehead king for the rebels against Enrique's reign. He takes this role very seriously and tries to act like a true king, to the point of demanding Isabel bow to him when they reunite.
• Rebel Prince: Sondok's father Chinpyong in Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars tells her that when he came to the throne, he would hunt for days and completely ignore the needs of the kingdom.
• Rebellious Princess: Elisabeth is an unhappy example. She spent her youth as a carefree girl who enjoyed taking rides in the countryside and spending time with the common people, but at fifteen, she ends up stifled and trapped in an impending marriage that she agreed to without understanding the consequences.
• Reluctant Ruler: Queen Kristina of Sweden from Kristina: The Girl King, wishes that she could be free of all restraints so that she can travel which she does do after abdicating the throne.
• Rite of Passage:
  • Nzingha is presented at a coming-of-age dance to show her eligibility to marry in Nzingha: Warrior Queen of Matamba.
  • Anacaona has a hair cutting ceremony to show that she has become a woman in Anacaona: Golden Flower.
  • Weetamoo and her friend Cedar, as future leaders, undergo a ceremony where they spend time alone, fasting and praying, and experience dreams and visions.
• Royal Blood: Their birthright dictates that either Anacaona or her brother Behechio are to one day rule Xaragua in Anacaona: Golden Flower.
• Royal Brat:
  • Though well-intentioned, Nzingha in Nzingha: Warrior Queen of Matamba accuses her father's loyal adviser of wanting to betray them because he was from the invading people. Her father gets angry and she realizes that she has shamed her family.
  • Sondok in Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars is accused of being one because she feels that her royal rank means she should speak her mind, which gets her in trouble when she calls out the Chinese ambassador Lin Fang for his sexism and close-minded behavior. She grows out of this later on.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: After Sonwha accuses her sister Princess Sondok of being in love with Chajang, a lower class boy, despite thinking to her self that that kind of talk makes all girls look simpleminded and ridiculous Sondok starts to realize that she is attracted to her friend.
• She Is the King: In Kristina: The Girl King, Kristina prefers to be called a future king instead of a queen because she was raised like a prince as per her father's orders. In the end, the chancellor at last refers to her as a "king".
• Sheltered Aristocrat: Cleopatra's father Auletes is the epitome of this trope, being a pampered and self-centered royal whose memories of his reign focus entirely on his favorite festivals and banquets. When Cleopatra asks him what he thinks of the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx, and of possibly visiting the Great Wall of China or the Acropolis in Greece, his response is to yawn.
• Silk Hiding Steel: In Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile, Cleopatra stands up for her father and country by calmly and gracefully calling out Pompey for insulting them in Latin, a language that she also speaks. Because of this, he immediately gives her the respect she deserves.
• Small Reference Pools: The series started with some of the most well known princesses and queens (such as Elizabeth I, Marie Antoinette, and Cleopatra), but starting at about the sixth book they started mixing in some of the more obscure female rulers (such as Nzingha, Kazunomiya, and Anacaona).
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Sondok and Chajang in Princess of the Moon and Stars are constantly compared to the titular characters of Chilseok, the Korean tale of the Weaving Maid and Herd Boy, who were separated by a river in the sky and could only meet once a year.
• Taking the Veil:
  • In Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars, Sondok mentions that her grandparents were unable to reconcile their Buddhist obligation not to kill with the need to defend their kingdom in war, so they abdicated the throne and entered a Buddhist monastery. Her friend Chajang enters the monastery for much the same reason, angering Sondok's father, who wanted him to take a position at court and eventually marry Sondok. Not long after, Sondok's father sets her mother Ma-ya aside to take a new queen, and Ma-ya chooses to enter the monastery rather than watch another woman take her place.
  • Catalina in Isabel: Crown Jewel of Castilla desires to enter the convent and become a nun after her tenure as Isabel's lady-in-waiting ends, as her father is unable to find a suitor for her because of her disability (she has a leg that is noticeably shorter than the other). It doesn't come to pass, due to her untimely death from pestilence.
• Tell Me Again: Kazunomiya: Prisoner of Heaven:
  Kazunomiya: Tell me the story of the dragon ships.
  Auntie: Chikako, I tell you this story a million times. Now is not the time.
  Kazunomiya: Yes, it is. I shall roast you some beans - beans and green tea.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: Weaving is often used in Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars as a signifier of femininity; Sondok's mother and sisters excel at it, while she is poor at it. Near the end, she improves and wins the women's weaving competition with a tapestry so well-made that onlookers think she was possessed by the spirit of the Weaving Maid from the Chilseok myth.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: A variation. Sondok in Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars, is the tomboy to her sisters Sonwha and Cheonmyeong's girly girls, in that she prefers stargazing and astronomical observations to weaving, and Sonwha and Cheonmyeong do more traditionally feminine activities such as dressing up and sewing.
• Tomboy Princess: Anastasia would rather climb trees than dance while Archduchess Antonia's favorite activity is horse riding astride through the mud.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Catalina, Isabel's closest friend among her ladies-in-waiting in Isabel: Jewel of Castilla, dies tragically from pestilence shortly after Isabel's brother Alfonso does. She first fell ill on the same day that he did, causing Isabel to wonder if Catalina died to join Alfonso—whom she had unrequited love for—and be Together in Death with him.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot: In Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars, Lin Fang tries to assert more of his power by predicting the exact date of a future solar eclipse. Everyone believes him except Sondok, whose astronomical observations and calculations show that his prediction is false and the day of his presumed eclipse will be like any other. When the day arrives and the eclipse doesn't happen, Sondok saves her father from humiliation by claiming that his power as king prevented the mythological Fire Dog (a creature believed to eat the sun and cause eclipses) from leaving his den. The failed prediction causes Lin Fang to fall permanently out of royal favor.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Jahanara in Princess of Princesses loves julabmost (a sherbet-like dessert) so much that she and her brother Dara get an eunuch to sneak some of it to them during Ramadan.
• Translation Convention: While most of the diaries don't explicitly state the language they're written in (although a few do), it's likely that most of them wouldn't be English since many of them wouldn't even know English, let alone be comfortable enough with it to choose English as the language to write their diary in. For that matter, even some of the books that would be in English but are set further in the past — like Elizabeth I or Mary, Queen of Scots — are still "translated" into a more modern English, rather than the English that would be accurate to the time period.
• Unlimited Wardrobe:
  • In Kaiulani: The People's Princess, Kaiulani states that she will be getting a whole new wardrobe for her trip to England and lists some things that will go into it, finishing with, "Oh, there seems to be no end to it!"
  • This is also applicable to Marie Antoinette: Princess of Versailles and Elisabeth: The Princess Bride, where Antonia and Elisabeth have enormous wardrobes upon going off to become the queen of France and the Empress of Austria, respectively.
  • In Lady of Palenque: Flower of Bacal, Shana'Kin has to change her clothes three times a day to be able to wear everything that she is given upon becoming queen.
  • In Catherine: The Great Journey, Empress Elizabeth is said to have never worn any of her thousands of gowns more than once.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Octavian, Cleopatra's historical Arch-Enemy who brought about her downfall and death, makes an appearance in Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile as a cheerful little boy who adores her company and enjoys playing at the seaside during her stay in Rome.
  • In the same book, it's implied that Tryphaena used to be this. Cleopatra reminisces on how she, Tryphaena, and Berenice would play with the silks that came to the palace in the trading caravans and run around with them together as children. Now that Tryphaena is an adult, however, she treats the goods and jewelry that arrive with disdain and threatens Cleopatra with a knife to the throat for trying on a new pearl necklace.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: While all of the diaries are centered around people who actually existed, historical accounts don't contain the level of detail needed for a diary, meaning that much of the actual stories depicted are created by the authors. A few even have aspects that directly run counter to historical records, such as Mary and Elizabeth's rivalry in Red Rose of the House of Tudor (historical records suggest they were actually close during the time period the diary is set in) or Isabel being put off by Father Torquemada (history indicates that she was all-in on everything he professed from the first time they met).
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: A mixed-gender example in Daughter of the Nile, with Auletes as the immature, wacky Manchild parent and Cleopatra as the serious, high-minded child. It's Played for Drama, as they're royals in exile with the vital task of convincing Romans to lend aid to take back Egypt from Cleopatra's sisters, and Cleopatra is a twelve-year-old girl who is deeply unhappy about being forced to be more mature and responsible than her father.
• Warrior Prince: Henry VIII commanded a massive invasion force against France to teach the French king about England's power.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Elizabeth I is frequently concerned that her father may hold contempt for her.
• The Wise Prince:
  • In Catherine: The Great Journey, Catherine wonders about how so much honor is bestowed on the royalty, even though they have no power to help those who someday will be their subjects.
  • Kristina: The Girl King: Kristina, after seeing the suffering of people in prison, begs her almoner to give them extra bread and meat. By the end of the story, she notifies her adviser that she wishes to leave soon for the lengthy trip through Sweden so that she may get to know her country and her subjects.
  • In Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars, Sondok, heir of the kingdom of Silla, questions if rank can be so important that those without it are denied even a final resting place when she sees that peasants' bones are put in pots after they die, rather than tombs. When she sees the peasants hard at work, it makes her ashamed of how much rice she leaves in her bowl every day.
  • Eleanor: Crown Jewel of Aquitaine: Eleanor feels that if the people have suffered because of her father's harshness, she is truly sorry and will try to make it up to them.
  • Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile: Cleopatra studies to learn many languages so that she can communicate with her people and those of neighboring countries. At the end of the book, she decides to take a trip down the Nile to see more of her country's people in order to become a better ruler than her father and sisters were.
  • In Jahanara: Princess of Princesses, Jahanara sees starving people when traveling outside the palace and can't stop thinking about them. When she sees a baby look at her, she feels compelled to take her so she can give her a better life.
  • In Anacaona: Golden Flower, Anacaona states that she doesn't know what the future holds, but whether as a ruler or a mother, whatever she does will always be for the good of her people.
• Would Hurt a Child: As noted in the epilogue of Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess, the Bolsheviks did not spare anyone when they gunned down the Romanov family, not even children (Alexei in particular was only 13).
• Wretched Hive: This is pretty much the characterization of Ancient Rome. The air is filthy and putrid-smelling, Cleopatra witnesses people dumping out pots of their waste from their windows, and the streets are constantly dirty with sewage.
  • Versailles has shades of it in Princess of Versailles, as does the Tudor Court in Red Rose of the House of Tudor.
• Young Future Famous People: The books all focus on the adolescent years of prominent female royals or leaders in history, and end long before they go on to become famous.

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