Origins-Disney Version

The Princess and the Frog

Tiana is nothing like the original princess that features in the Brothers Grimm The Frog King. The unnamed princess is insincere, pampered, and spoiled. Some folklorists have suggested that the Brothers Grimm made her this way on purpose, instead giving male characters all the virtue in the story.

Whatever the case, the protagonist of The Frog King is a beautiful princess who spends her many hours of leisure tossing a golden ball in the air.* She’s doing this outside one day when her bauble falls into a deep well. She starts bawling her eyes out, and a frog appears to ask her what’s wrong. After she explains, he promises he will get her ball back if she’ll make him her constant and close companion.* She thinks the frog is disgusting, but figures she won’t have to make good on her promise, so she agrees. Then once she gets her ball back, she runs off without him.

However, the frog catches up to her while she’s eating dinner. She tries to refuse him, but when the king hears about what happened, he makes her fulfill her promise. Though the princess can’t stand the frog, she has to share food off her plate with him, and then take him upstairs to sleep in her bed with her. And being forced to do that by her father isn’t creepy at all.

Once she carries the frog to her bedroom, she just can’t take it anymore, and she throws the frog against the wall. For some unexplained reason, after he splats against the wall and falls to the floor, he becomes a handsome prince. I’m serious, no smoochies in the original. The moral of this version: domestic violence is the answer. Of course, once he’s a prince, she decides she wants to sleep with him after all. Then they get married.

The Englishman Edgar Taylor changed the ending in the first English translation so that the princess sleeps with the frog on her pillow, as requested, for three nights. After the third night, he changes into the prince. The whole kissing part was probably a variation of this translation, possibly created by Americans.* As Disney shows, we like our symbolic kisses.

The Brothers Grimm also added a random part at the end where they gush on about this super faithful servant the prince has. Apparently his name is Henry, and he had bindings put around his heart to keep it together after the prince was turned into a frog by a witch. As he drives the prince and princess back to the prince’s kingdom in a carriage, those bindings break out of joy for his master… it’s as if the brothers were writing their own fanfic.