Okay, so we all know and love The Princess Diaries movies starring Anne Hathaway and it always shocks me whenever I’m talking about them with someone and they’ve never heard of the books! Did you know that the movies are based on a series of books? And that there are 12 of them?!
I personally think they’re better than the movies and I’d really recommend reading them but please keep in mind that this will have spoilers for the entire book series.
Timeline
First of all, since there are so many books they span over a long period of time. We meet Mia when she’s 14 and just started her freshman year of high school in the first book. By the time we get to the tenth book Mia is about to leave high school. The author then took a break but came back with the 11th book set when Mia is around 25. And the most recent book was set a few years later. At this point we don’t know if there will be any more books but we’ve already seen over 10 years of Mia’s life!
Mia’s dad
One of the biggest differences between the books and the movies is that in the books Mia’s dad is alive! So this obviously changes the reason Mia finds out she’s a princess. In the movies she finds out because her dad died and now she’s his only heir. She is still his only heir in the books but it’s for a pretty different reason. Mia’s dad recently had testicular cancer which left him infertile so he can’t have any more children. The plan was for Mia to live her life without ever becoming a princess so when he married and had legitimate children they would become his official heirs.
It’s so sad that Mia’s dad didn’t make it into the movies because he was genuinely so much fun. He was really a big old mess, he’s always dating someone new and it’s clear he has never actually gotten over Mia’s mother despite what he says. Mia also had a pretty good relationship with her dad, unlike in the movies where it seems like she rarely saw him. Mia would spend time with him and her grandmother every summer in France!
Mia’s grandmother
One change you’ll be shocked about if you’ve only ever watched the movies is Mia’s grandmother. Or grandmere, as she insists on being called. She is so different in the books and I suspect she was changed so she could be more likeable to audiences since Julie Andrews plays her. She is rude. She’s mean. She spends all day, every day drinking and smoking and takes her horrible dog Rommel with her. Mia loves her grandmother but doesn’t always particularly like her.
She’s also not the Queen in the books because Genovia doesn’t have a queen since it’s a principality, not a country.
Mia’s friends
Mia is made out to be a total loser in the movies, but she’s not quite as unpopular in the books. She’s definitely not popular and a lot of the popular kids (e.g. Lana) doesn’t like her but she has a decent group of friends in the books!
Lilly Moscovitz is still her best friend and, unfortunately, she is 100 times worse in the book. She is such a bad friend and whenever I think about it I want to reread the series just to note down every horrible thing she does Mia. But as the series starts she also has two other friends, Shameeka Taylor and Ling Su Wong. These are more background characters than Lilly but are definitely still very important to Mia.
Mia has many fallings out with Lilly (usually due to Lilly being a bad friend) and during the first one which happens in the very first book, Mia becomes friends with a girl called Tina Hakim Baba. Mia bonds with Tina because they both have bodyguards following them around. Tina is the daughter of an oil sheik and a supermodel and her parents are super scared of her being kidnapped. Tina is definitely my favourite of Mia’s friends and is probably one of her best friends.
During another falling out with Lilly later in the series, Mia actually ends up becoming friends with Lana. Yes, the Lana that was her bully in both the movies and the books. And you know what? They become super close and are really great friends. Lana’s not the best person in the world but she and Mia stay friends until Mia is in her mid-to-late twenties at least!
Mia and Michael
As much as I loved the guy that Mia ended up with in the movies, I will always mourn the fact that we didn’t get to see a book accurate Michael and Mia onscreen. I’d die for a TV reboot! In the books, Michael is Mia’s main love interest throughout the entire book series. However, they’re not together for the entire series and Mia dates other people but it’s the type of relationship where you know they’re gonna find their way back to each other.
They start as friends in the first couple of books and start dating when Mia is a freshman and Michael is a senior. So… yeah. Not great. I’ve got to assume if it was written today the age gap wouldn’t be so big because if there’s one thing a teen book in the early 2000s loved it was an uncomfortable age gap for a 14-year-old girl. But if you can look past some of the uncomfy things that come from it being written over 20 years ago then they are truly one of the great teen fiction couples.
And in the later books we even get to see them later in life as they get married and have children!
Setting
One change that I hated was that the books were set in New York City! It was changed to San Francisco in the movies and I think that was such a disservice to the books. And to Mia! Mia loved living in New York and the city itself almost felt like another character. You really felt like you were in New York with these characters.
Even when Mia becomes a princess she never fully moves to Genovia. She splits her time between New York City and Genovia because she loves the city so much!
The movies make it into the books!
One really fun thing about the books is that the movies actually make it into the books. They talk about a movie series being made about Mia’s life and almost no one is happy with how they turn out. Lilly is especially mad as she thinks she’s portrayed horribly… except that she is even worse in the books. Some of Mia’s friends’ being written out of the movie was explained too! Tina’s parents threatened to sue the studio if they included her so they just went with Lilly!
