Prince Charming - History of Term

History of Term

Charles 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'. Le Prince charmé de ces paroles... ne savait comment lui témoigner sa joie". ("'Are you my prince?' she said. 'You've kept me waiting a long time'. The prince charmed by her words... did not know how to express his joy.")

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).

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"). 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".

Although neither one was a prince and the first was not royal, this may have been the original use of "Charming".

Then, Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray refers ironically to "Prince Charming", perhaps the earliest use of the exact term. The main character, Dorian, is supposed to be a young actress's "Prince Charming", but he abandons her and in despair she commits suicide.

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. However, he is never referred to specifically as "Prince Charming."

In other languages, like Spanish and Italian, he is called the "Blue Prince". In Portuguese, a translation mistake occurred and he is called "Prince Charmed" (Príncipe Encantado; the correct term for "Charming" should be Encantador or Charmoso), coincidentally closer to the sense in Perrault's story mentioned atop this section.