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Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's relationship has been deemed a "fairytale romance by just about every publication. Granted, their relationship does bear a resemblance to many of the Disney fairy tale adaptations we grew up with. In those animated films, a non-royal girl — Cinderella, Belle, Snow White — happens to come across a prince, who falls in love with her beauty (and occasionally her personality).
The royal couple du jour met at London's SoHo house, not in an abandoned tower in a forest or while dancing at a grand ball. That said, Markle and Harry's story adheres to our conventional notion of pure romance. It's as if by snagging a royal, a person achieves some level of economic and social transcendence. We're told someday "our princes will come," but Markle's actually did. Not that Markle needed a prince to be complete, mind you; everyone just seems to be really stuck in this ingrained cultural narrative.
That's because royal romances are ubiquitous in all types of movies, animated and beyond. What does our obsession with commoners marrying royals say about us? Perhaps that marriage is a gateway to another way of life. Here are the movies that pair royals with civilians, and occasionally stick around to see whether life really is a fairytale.
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