Princess Ozma of Oz | |
---|---|
Oz character | |
![]() Illustration from The Lost Princess of Oz by John R. Neill | |
First appearance | The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904) |
Created by | L. Frank Baum |
In-universe information | |
Alias | Tippetarius, or Tip |
Species | Human-Fairy hybrid |
Gender | Female Male (as Tip) |
Title | Queen of Oz (officially) Princess of Oz (more commonly) |
Occupation | Supreme Ruler of Oz |
Family | Pastoria (father) Lurline (mother) Ozana (first cousin) Ozga (cousin) Mist Maidens (cousins) |
Children | N/A, though Jack Pumpkinhead thinks of himself as her son. |
Relatives | Lurline's fairy band; L. Frank Baum said she descends from a long line of fairy Queens |
Princess Ozma is a fictional character from the Land of Oz, created by American author L. Frank Baum. She appears for the first time in the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), and in every Oz book thereafter. [1]
She is the rightful ruler of Oz, and Baum indicated that she would reign in the fairyland forever, being immortal.
Baum described her physical appearance in detail, in The Marvelous Land of Oz: "Her eyes sparkled as two diamonds, and her lips were tinted like a tourmaline. All adown her back floated tresses of ruddy gold, with a slender jeweled circlet confining them at the brow." As originally illustrated by John R. Neill, she fit this description; however, in most subsequent Oz books, Ozma's hair became darker.
Ozma is the daughter of the former King Pastoria of Oz. As an infant, she was given to the witch Mombi of the North by the Wizard of Oz. Mombi transformed Ozma into a boy and called him "Tip" (short for Tippetarius) in order to prevent the rightful ruler of Oz from ascending to the throne. Ozma spent her entire childhood with Mombi in the form of the boy Tip and had no memory of ever having been a girl. During this time, Tip had managed to create Jack Pumpkinhead who was brought to life by Mombi's Powder of Life. In The Marvelous Land of Oz , Glinda the Good Sorceress discovered what had happened and forced Mombi to turn Tip back into Ozma. Since then, the Princess has possessed the Throne of Oz (although many realms within Oz remained unaware of her authority). [2]
In some of his last Oz books, namely The Tin Woodman of Oz and Glinda of Oz , L. Frank Baum indicated that Ozma has the appearance of a fourteen-year-old and is therefore older than Dorothy Gale. By that point in time, Baum had also established that the inhabitants of Oz cease to age, suggesting that Ozma would always appear to be an extremely beautiful young girl.
Baum was not inclined to worry about strict continuity in his series, however, and so there were discrepancies in the origins and very nature of Ozma. In her initial appearances, she was portrayed as no more than a human princess, born shortly before the Wizard's arrival in Oz. Later in the series, Baum revealed that Ozma is actually a fairy, descending from "a long line of fairy queens" as stated in The Scarecrow of Oz . In The Magic of Oz , Glinda tells Dorothy that no one knows how old Ozma really is. And in Baum's final book, Ozma herself explains that she was in fact a member of the Fairy Queen Lurline's band when Lurline enchanted Oz and turned it into a fairyland.
Jack Snow attempted to reconcile Baum's disparate accounts in The Shaggy Man of Oz , which explains that the Fairy Queen Lurline had left the infant Ozma in the care of King Pastoria, making the Princess the adopted daughter of the last King of Oz. This does not gel with the version of Ozma's story which says she is an ageless fairy who has ruled Oz for centuries.
Ozma frequently encounters difficulties while ruling her kingdom. In The Lost Princess of Oz , for instance, the Fairy Princess is kidnapped, although her dearest friend Dorothy comes to her rescue with a search party. Both Dorothy and Ozma are captured by the wicked Queen Coo-ee-oh in Glinda of Oz , while trying to stop a war between two races, but Glinda manages to save them with the help of the Three Adepts at Sorcery. In order to circumvent trouble, Ozma prohibits anyone other than the Wizard of Oz and Glinda from practicing magic in Oz unless they have a permit.
L. Frank Baum portrayed Ozma as an exceedingly benevolent and compassionate ruler, who never resorts to violence and who does not believe in destroying even her worst enemies. In Ozma of Oz , she even left Oz in order to rescue the Royal Family of Ev from the clutches of the Nome King, demonstrating that her kindness and concern extends far beyond her own kingdom. When the Nome King tried to conquer and destroy Oz in revenge, Ozma insisted on maintaining a pacifist disposition, which led to the Scarecrow's suggestion that Ozma's enemies be made to forget about their wicked intentions by drinking from the Fountain of Oblivion.
Furthermore, Ozma discontinued the use of money in Oz, and took systematic measures to ensure that all the citizens of Oz receive the land's resources in equal measure, without having to work harder than necessary.
Ozma invited several people from the outside world to come live in the Land of Oz, most notably Dorothy, The Wizard, Aunt Em, Uncle Henry, Betsy Bobbin, Trot, Button Bright and Cap'n Bill.
According to the timeline of The Road to Oz , Ozma's birthday falls on August 21.
When Ozma first meets Dorothy, Oz's greatest heroine, in Ozma of Oz , they immediately like each other and become best friends; in the canonical Oz books by Baum, Dorothy and Ozma are each other's closest relationship. [3] [4]
In The Emerald City of Oz Ozma arranges, at Dorothy's request, for Dorothy and her family to move into the palace, and Ozma declares her an official princess of Oz and her "constant companion". In The Lost Princess of Oz the first page mentions that Ozma loves Dorothy very much and by page two says that Dorothy is the only one privileged to enter Ozma's rooms without an invitation. In turn, Dorothy often represents Ozma when some task takes the latter away from the Emerald City.
Ozma was born a girl but was magically transformed into a boy named Tip while an infant to hide her from Glinda the Good. Tip was raised as a boy until his early teens, at which point, after the adventures detailed in The Marvelous Land of Oz , Tip is informed that he was born a girl. After some trepidation, Tip agreed to be transformed back into a girl and assumes rule of The Land of Oz as Princess Ozma.
In the interactive fiction adaptation of the Oz books by Windham Classics, Tip is made monarch of Oz and no reference at all is made to Ozma.
Jack Snow, Melody Grandy, and Scott Andrew Hutchins have all made divergent attempts to bring Tip back alongside Ozma. Snow's device, which Hutchins followed as if canon, was that Tip seized his life from Ozma, but that Glinda and the Wizard were able to restore them both and make them siblings. Grandy made the characters totally unrelated through the use of a "Switcheroo Spell", with Ozma unrelated to Tippetarius and therefore suitable as a possible love interest. Snow's story, "A Murder in Oz" (1956) was rejected by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and published in The Baum Bugle . Grandy's The Disenchanted Princess of Oz has been published by Tails of the Cowardly Lion and Friends. Hutchins's Tip of Oz, heavily mulling over ideas such as Pastoria-as-tailor and the execution of Mombi in The Lost King of Oz and similar material in The Giant Horse of Oz , received a one-paragraph citation in Eldred v. Ashcroft , and remains unpublished under the Copyright Term Extension Act. [5]
Ozma was a direct influence on the design of the protagonist Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. In a 2022 interview with Star Wars Insider , concept artist Iain McCaig related the instructions that Lucasfilm provided its artists to visualize characters, saying, "Amidala was described as 'Kind of like Ozma' from The Wizard of Oz." According to McCaig, he chose actress Natalie Portman as a model for his designs because he felt evoked the Oz character, saying, "She had Ozma's aura of vulnerability and strength." After producer/director George Lucas spoke with McCaig about this inspiration, Lucas cast Portman to play her. [9]
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