Princess Tutu – Episode 26

As Gold Crown Town falls under the shadow of the Raven, and Rue is drawn back into her father’s malevolent clutches, I still can’t help but feeling total elation at how far our heroes have come, and how fully they have surpassed their roles in Drosselmeyer’s story. Rue has broken free of the raven’s influence, and declared a love for Mytho so sincere that it broke him free of his own shackles, and reversed his transformation into the Raven’s puppet. Fakir has accepted his role as storyteller rather than knight, and guided his friends towards an ending he hopes might save them all. Mytho has rejected the narrative of falling in love with Princess Tutu, and instead pledged himself to Rue at any cost. And Ahiru has accepted she might never be with the prince, but can feel only the slightest tinge of regret at that; after all, her feelings of distant adulation for Mytho were only ever the pangs of adolescent infatuation, combined with her own desire to express herself so freely and beautifully.

But at this point, Ahiru has learned to express herself so freely and beautifully. Not necessarily in dance – though Princess Tutu dances with grace, Princess Tutu isn’t truly her. But through her every action, through her pledges of protection and personal sacrifices and striving to protect her friends, Ahiru has learned to paint the world in her colors, and impact everyone around her with her charity and kindness. We’ve talked a great deal about how fiction can impact the world in these writeups, which is understandable – this is a story about writers, and I’m a writer, and we writers have a tendency to inflate our own self-importance. And yet, while fiction certainly has the power to change the world, you can also simply change the world through action – through rejecting the narratives you’ve been given, and proving that for all of narrative’s power to bind us, our selfhood and personal truths can always grow beyond them.

Ahiru’s dance across Princess Tutu has been an incredibly rewarding performance, a demonstration of passion and imperfection and fundamental decency that has not only proved she is as heroic and gallant as any princess, but has changed the lives of all her friends, as well. Ahiru, who once desired her storybook role more than anyone, has broken all her friends free of their chains. Ahiru, who possesses no particular physical strength or intellectual acumen, has shaped the fates of all in this storybook town. Ahiru is a great character in her own right, and also a plea from Princess Tutu’s creators, a promise that all grand narratives can be pierced, and often by the most unexpected of heroes. You don’t have to be a master storyteller to rewrite your world’s narrative; sometimes simple, unerring kindness is all the strength you need. Our heroes have all led interesting lives within the bounds of Drosselmeyer’s pages. Now, with Ahiru’s love and charity leading them, they must write an ending of their own.

We begin our final opening fable on an image of Drosselmeyer’s possessions, packed as if he’s preparing for departure. Over this image, the narrator begins her tale with that most familiar phrase: “Once upon a time, there was a man who died.” She continues, “The man tried to keep spinning a story after his death, but the story just wouldn’t move along. The man lost patience and called a duck into the story. The little duck tried her best for the prince, and eventually she transcended her standing in the world and came to love the prince. However, she was only a duck. She was fated to someday turn into a speck of light and vanish. Yes, that was the tear-jerking ending the story had decided on.”

The time for fables as vague metaphors for our own narrative has clearly passed; at this point, the narrator is directly describing the events of Princess Tutu, and the pitiless behavior of Drosselmeyer himself. There is no sense of ambiguity anymore, or inevitability guiding Ahiru’s fate – it is, and has always been, Drosselmeyer’s will that she be punished. But even the clarity of that framing seems to offer a kind of freedom, and echo how far our characters have come. Like the narrator herself, they have learned the circumstances of their lives are not immutable facts of nature; they are intentional variables assigned by active parties, as are all elements of any narrative.

As Princess Tutu has continuously emphasized, stories like Drosselmeyer’s can chain us down or lift us up in myriad ways. Even if the narratives we consume don’t so directly impact our worlds as Princess Tutu’s do, they still shape our conception of what is possible, what is allowed, what is noble and what is wicked. As audiences, we must understand the frailties and limitations of stories, know that they all come from human hands, and be aware that even passive consumption can lead to active internalization – in fact, it is that which we consume most blindly, and with the least awareness of authorial perspective, that we are most likely to unquestioningly internalize. Always remember the author’s hand.

And at the same time, as storytellers and even just actors within this world, we must understand the responsibility of our actions, and act with what consideration we are able. For storytellers, this means embracing the complexity of human experience, and giving your characters the freedom to express what human truth they possess. But as Ahiru demonstrates, it is not just overt storytellers who shape the world. We all contribute to narratives in our everyday lives, and we have no way of knowing how those narratives will impact the people around us. One idle act of charity might mean little to us, but still give someone without hope the motivation to keep going. An unconsidered act of kindness can easily become a treasured memory for another, a narrative that tells them “there is kindness in this world yet.” We are more than ourselves – we are all the stories spun of us, for better and for worse. We cannot control all those narratives, but we must still do our best to live with integrity, and hope to inspire the same kind of charity and self-knowledge as Ahiru’s journey.

We open the episode proper on Drosselmeyer within his clock tower, mockingly stating that “and then the prince and the princess lived happily ever after.” Drosselmeyer has little interest in happiness for his characters, but he is not alone in that instinct – as he immediately points out, “happiness in stories is at most only a couple lines at the end.” This is a sharp and true point; stories are based on drama, and drama is based on conflict. If characters are content in their lives, it’s much more difficult to create conflict, or to generate the hooks of tension and anticipation that compel an audience to keep reading. And yet, we want our heroes to succeed. It is not because they are suffering that we are entertained (well, most of the time) – it is because we care about them, and fear for them, and delight in seeing them triumph over adversity

Of course, Drosselmeyer actually is a sadist, and so his perspective on happiness in storytelling is a bit more blunt: “It’s truly boring. Now, show me the greatest tragedy! The greatest tragedy where no one is saved, and a happy ending never comes.”

Drosselmeyer’s attitude on storytelling echoes a perspective common during adolescence, when audiences have become disillusioned with what they see as “artificial” happiness within narratives. Instead, they start to crave stories which reflect what they see as the true ugliness of the world – but when you start from a position of “I’m going to write a story where horrible things happen to characters, because that’s what the world’s like,” you’re unlikely to write a story whose emotional impact offers anything but the most queasy and superficial thrills. We begin our lives seeing joy in the world, and at a certain point come to understand sorrow as well; but for the truly mature storyteller, joy and sorrow are always aligned, and great tragedies are always built out of great love

Tragedies can be powerful and important, but even tragedies should be written with concern for their characters, and sorrow for their fates. Drosselmeyer’s great failing as a storyteller might be that he never possessed the sympathy for his characters necessary to truly guarantee a tragedy. Instead of actually placing them in positions where their inherent desires were fundamentally incompatible, leading to inevitable sorrow, he instead merely shackled and tormented them, assigning them roles that they’ve learned to grow beyond. At this point, they have no need for him, and no use for the torment he has assigned them.

Princess Tutu’s final ballet title is, unsurprisingly, Drosselmeyer’s own home – The Nutcracker, the story of a wooden prince who fights a terrible rat king. The unshackled prince Mytho stands alone, as the Raven protects himself with the crows that were once the former townsfolk. As usual, Princess Tutu’s “battles” remain a mixture of combat and dance, as Mytho fiercely pirouettes up towards the raven, and then deflects the crow’s blows with his sword. Meanwhile, having been returned to her duck form, Ahiru can merely stumble along in Mytho’s wake, supported only by Fakir’s shaking pen.

At this point, Fakir has accepted his role as a storyteller, and consented to enable his friends’ journeys rather than fight beside them. Last episode, Fakir was so pained by the course of Ahiru’s narrative that he actually stabbed his own hand in protest. Through doing so, Fakir unwittingly demonstrated the true nature of great tragedy – tragedy that feels so inevitable, even its author cannot stop its course. Since then, Fakir has learned to do what all great storytellers must: trust his characters to find their own path. Fakir trusts the girl he loves completely, and so rather than trying to shelter her from her own feelings as before, he writes a gust of wind to carry her up towards Mytho.

There’s not much a little duck can do to help Mytho now, though. In the face of the Raven’s minions and Drosselmeyer’s meddling, all our heroes seem at their wit’s end, as Mytho and Ahiru are battered down by crows while Fakir’s very home comes under attack from the book men. Unwilling to harm and unable to overcome the Raven’s minions, Mytho decides the only solution is to attempt the cycle once more – to seal his own heart, along with the raven and princess, and hope to succeed in some future century. Seeing this, Ahihu thinks back on all the memories they’ve shared, all the things they’ve suffered and cherished in pursuit of Mytho’s heart – thinks back, and decides these memories are too precious to lose. And before Mytho can pierce his own heart, Ahiru cries out, and stops the hands of both Mytho and Fakir at once.

Ahiru’s cry is an overt expression of all the strength she’s gained, and how much these characters have lifted each other up. Even here, in this moment of ultimate tragedy, she is too strong to give up. The memories she has lived through directly imbue her with confidence and resolve – though this was not a happy story, it has helped her grow into a passionate, confident heroine. These stories of the life she has led are her strength, bellowing out their significance, refusing to be denied by a turn back to the first page. Our histories can be a great burden, but even a painful history can be a source of strength – looking back, you can attest that you survived, that you grew beyond this, that you are greater than that story’s limits. Even if it is painful, we must move forward with the stories we have carried, and not forget the past.

And so Ahiru dances once more, not as Princess Tutu the fated hero, but as Ahiru, the duck. Her own dance, guided not by the rigid forms of fairy tale inevitability, but the strength and passion she herself has earned. Dance is ultimately a form of storytelling – a fiction, or perhaps a prayer. An aspirational performance of self, and a hope for what could be. Our stories are our hopes, and the grandness of fiction is that it is a sphere where hope becomes reality, both in the fictions we create, and the actions they inspire. Ahiru’s hope has carried her friends all the way through this story, and now, at the very end, she tells her own story unvarnished by myth, in the simple cadence of a little duck with a passionate heart

Though Ahiru dances her own truth, her feelings raise up the spirits of the crows around her, as she calls out “let’s all dance together.” Dance, song, stories; they are all unifying forces, telling us we are all connected, and that we can reach out to each other on a level more fundamental than speech. Carrying through on the strength she has demonstrated since the very first episode, victory comes not when Ahiru physically defeats her enemies, but when she extends her hand (or wing, as the case may be) and finds the common feelings that unite them. Ahiru’s ultimate strength was never her ability to inhabit the role of Princess Tutu – it was her ability to say “I see why you are hurting, and I acknowledge your pain.” It was never Princess Tutu who mastered that art – it was Ahiru herself, who continuously met all potential enemies with a sympathetic “please dance with me, and tell me your story.”

Having brought the Raven’s victims together through her unifying dance, Ahiru turns her self-expression into a universal defense of genuine selfhood. Denying either the arbitrary narrative of Drosselmeyer or the comforting conformity of the Raven’s touch, Ahiru declares that “I won’t decide I can’t do anything without even trying. Because I’m the one who’s going to make my story! Let’s go back to the real selves inside our own stories!” Though Ahiru promises genuine understanding, she’s at this point well aware of the danger of unconditionally believing in another. A promise of solidarity or understanding can also be a method of control – like for Rue, who was able to find at least comfort in making herself an instrument of the Raven’s will. Ahiru’s words speak to the crows, Rue, and all others who are listening, as she says “let’s treasure our own feelings, and not the ones someone’s decided on for us.”

Ahiru’s dance offers no easy victory – she is battered about by the crows even as she calls for their understanding, and falls repeatedly, only to slowly rise and continue. And though he continues to fear for her, and cringe at her injuries, Fakir continues to write – his love for her now expressed through him trusting her when she says she can continue. As the last of the book men crashes through Autor’s door, Autor throws himself against him, and turns back to offer Fakir one of my favorite lines in this whole series: “write for the person who’s waiting for your story.”

Autor himself only means this in an immediate sense, as Ahiru is quite literally waiting for Fakir to continue writing. But in a broader sense, Autor’s line feels a directive aimed at all authors: write for the person who needs your story, even if they don’t know it yet. Write for the person who needs a light in the darkness, a source of hope, or simply a trusted friend. Write for those who crave understanding, or are shackled by false pretenses and cruel narratives. Write your truth, and make it sing.

And so Fakir writes, as his tears spill out onto the parchment, as the girl he loves is battered by inescapable fate. This is how you write great tragedy – with tears in your eyes, sobbing at the fates that your gallant heroes inevitably befall. Fakir is a true author now, because he bleeds as his characters bleed, wishing desperately to save them, but knowing they must pursue their heart’s truth to the end. The essence of tragedy can only be reached through love, not cruelty or indifference.

And through the crucible of tragedy, true solace and catharsis might one day be reached. Reaching the end of his page, Fakir describes the unerring power of Ahiru’s dance, the power of hope. Hope in others, and hope in a better future – that power is Ahiru’s own, uninhibited by her relinquishing of Princess Tutu’s strength. Drosselmeyer, who only ever punished and never sought to truly understand his characters, could never have realized that Ahiru’s power would remain even when separated from Princess Tutu. To him she is either “Princess Tutu” or “a helpless duck” – simple narrative variables with unchanging qualities, rather than the strong and gallant hero Ahiru has truly become. Meanwhile, it is Fakir’s total understanding of Ahiru’s heroic nature that informs his writing of her triumph, and turns narrative contrivance into human truth.

With Ahiru’s expression of hope having returned to the townsfolk to their true selves, Mytho races to Rue’s side, and demolishes the Raven with one final thrust. Fakir then rushes to his own battered princess, and our heroes are led by Uzura to the town belltower. There, they discover the mechanism by which Gold Crown Town was directed, a massive contraption combining gears, puppet string, and pen and paper. Fakir promptly destroys this mechanism, and Mytho makes his formal pledge to Rue, saying that “I should love everyone, but right now I want to love Rue most of all.” After a journey that took her through ten thousand versions of false and fractured love, Rue’s true feelings are finally returned.

And so we hear those fateful words one last time, as the narrator tells us, “once upon a time, there was a man who died. The final story he spun was supposed to be a brilliant tragedy. However, the story had an unexpected happy ending. And it was triggered by one duck that the man himself had called into the tale.” Princess Tutu’s happy ending might have been unexpected, but such unexpected stories are constantly being told all around us, propelled by the most unlikely of heroes.

This last monologue feels like one final lesson from Princess Tutu, placed atop the mountain of lessons it has already imparted. As Ahiru and Fakir and Mytho and Rue all depart for their various endings, they serve as a reminder to never doubt your own power or potential. Remember that we are all constantly weaving stories around ourselves, and be mindful of that fact, and of the great power your words and actions possess. Be kind to those pursuing their own truths, and work to help those who are suffering under other’s narrative illusions. Love stories and their characters, but let them live their own lives, rather than simply assigning them roles in your narrative. Remember also that storytellers are all liars, and that we must be ever vigilant in questioning the narratives we’ve been given. Take what virtue you can from narrative, and more importantly, remember that virtue can grow. 

None of Tutu’s heroes began this story as the strong, empathetic people they grow into – they only became such kind and confident people through challenging themselves, and continuously reassessing the narratives of their lives. Our lives are a tempestuous string of unending calamities and unexpected joys, and though we cannot force the world to bend to our narrative will, we can at the very least play a sympathetic part in the lives of each other. In all things, be curious. In all things, be kind.

This article was made possible by reader support. Thank you all for all that you do.

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