Dungeons & Disney: Charm Animal

Sleeping Beauty: Aurora / Briar Rose by Marc Davis and Tom Oreb

Rachel Weisz as Disneys Snow White | photo by Annie Leibovitz

Cinderella giving orders to the Proletariat mice.

It's a weird thing. The Disney Princesses Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping beauty all have the innate ability to Charm Animals. Maybe Pocahontas and Mulan do too, but I don't know. Why they have a supernatural ability to control wildlife is beyond me. Snow White charms the animals to clean up the Seven Dwarfs cottage. Cinderella charms them to do her chores. Sleeping Beauty charms them to well, be a composite agony aunt and surrogate boyfriend / dancing partner.

These animals seem to have no chance of a saving throw, and perhaps the Disney princesses 18 Charisma just ensures small woodland creatures become suggestible, if not totally enslaved to their sweeter-than-thou mistresses.


The "goons" from Sleeping Beauty may have influenced 1e Pig Faces Orcs. Is it possible that somewhere in the back of Gary Gygax labyrinthine mind, the image of the pure-as-spring-rain, sweet-as-sunshine Disney princess sat alongside Poul Andersons 3 Hearts and 3 Lions Swan-may to inform what Druids (and Princesses) should be like.