Being the Queen Can Be Miserable

Disney movies make little girls want to grow up to be a princess. They have beautiful dresses, loyal servants, a magical fairy godmother, and they end up marrying the prince of her dreams. But then what? Eventually you'll be a queen, and the lives of real queens were anything but fun. In real life as a queen, you didn't get to choose who you marry, possibly a prince or king who may be quite inbred, and you might not even speak the same language. Then your duty was to bear children of royal blood. Plenty of people wanted to kill your spouse or children or even you, and the rest of them wanted something from you. Meanwhile, you had to keep up the decorum expected from royalty. Your subjects might not even like you. It was a lifelong sentence of no privacy or agency.