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Jungle Princess - TV Tropes

  • ️Thu Jun 14 2007

Jungle Princess (trope)

Through the thick jungles roam wild beasts on the prowl, slave traders, hunters, and killers. The only law is a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye. One person fought the many injustices inflicted across the land — the Princess of the Jungle, who carried truth, honor, and friendship uppermost in her heart! Her name brought hope to the oppressed, and fear to the oppressors... Many tried to capture her so that they might strike without danger of her vengeance. Some succeeded... but her friends were many, both man and beast. Often her rescue from a desperate situation came just at the last minute.

— White Princess of the Jungle, issue #2 (Avon Periodicals, 1951)

Named after the 1936 film of the same name, this Jungle Opera protagonist protects all peoples of the lawless Hungry Jungle, from the Ridiculously Cute Critter to the peaceful Lost Tribe. She is typically the orphaned heroine in her late teens or early twenties, and maybe living in a Treehouse of Fun if not a Homeless Hero. She is usually clad in a Fur Bikini and always Prefers Going Barefoot as she patrols as a Knight Errant, selflessly serving her people as she battles animals, monsters, Cannibal Tribes and Criminals, usually fighting them without any superpowers.

Despite her revealing costume, she is typically an innocent Chaste Hero. Though a Nubile Savage, she is much more likely to be an Amazonian Beauty than a supermodel nowadays and may even be completely unkempt, but the wind will still follow her everywhere. She is still almost always a free spirited Earthy Barefoot Character, even with the thorns and other hazards of the jungle. Some even consider giving her shoes as heretical as portraying Batman with a gun.

Her compassion and Undying Loyalty gives her many allies, both man and beast. While she may be unable to snap a gorilla's neck like her Distaff Counterpart, she can still hold her own in almost any fight. She can build any tool or she needs from the jungle, summon any nearby Action Pet with a call, walk volcanic rock and snow barefoot., understand animal behavior, and even speak multiple languages assuming she isn’t limited by Hulk Speak. She can be more of The Paragon than her Distaff Counterpart putting her life on the line to protect her people from the sadistic Evil Poacher or cruel Witch Doctor. She typically ends up a captured and bound often due to her own heroism, be it Take Me Instead or the price on her head from being a Nemesis Magnet.

Though she may appear another rip-off of Tarzan, she predates the ape man by almost a decade, when Rima made her debut in W. H. Hudson’s Green Mansions. Though the Archetype of a wild woman connected to nature may date all the way back to myth. She has received been portrayed in multiple different ways though out the years. She started as the occasional woman living out in the jungle without much story, and the Fur Bikini clad Damsel in Distress for the Tarzan Boy to rescue. Then after Sheena, she held the title of queen as nature and native alike bowed to her, and she even had magic to reinforce her will, but with time she became more limited. People preferred the Fragile Speedster who actually had to deal with the Hungry Jungle. She lost her superpowers and was portrayed as best friends of the animals and people alike protecting them out of compassion, and even saving the occasional villain. Due to focus on Green Aesop, some more modern variants became focused on protecting nature for nature’s sake, hating technology, avenging the ecosystem and even reintroducing superpowers through Magical Native American. It felt like a departure from her general free spirited portrayal as well as stereotypical, or inappropriate in regards to ecology. Thus it is something of a Discredited Trope alongside the classic queen.

Though the entire trope is sometimes considered Discredited Trope for racial reasons, these claims often neglect the archetypes at play. Like Moses and Superman before her, the jungle princess is a stranger from another world, there to help the people of a more dangerous one. Mother Nature, Father Science possibly contribute to why she’s more popular than the Tarzan Boy. Her royal title was not uncommon amongst similar characters. Tarzan himself usually held the title of Jungle Lord and Jo-Jo was Congo King. Though she is typically just called a “jungle girl” outside the wiki, the respect she still receives more than justifies her royal title. Her usual detection to protecting and serving her people can make her far more compelling than the other contemporary Action Girls.

See also; Tarzan Boy, who is usually her love interest. Jungle Opera where this normally occurs. The Chief's Daughter for less superhero, more actual princess.

Examples:

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Advertising 

  • The mascot for Indian butter brand Amul in this commercial featuring Tarzan.

Anime and Manga 

  • Cutey Honey: This is one of Honey's transformations in episode 20.
  • Weda from Haré+Guu has this appearance, but the Jungle society she lives is fairly civilized and not totally disconnected from the Outside world (there are still buses to the city, for example). She can hunt, however, and does wear a Fur Bikini. In her backstory, it's revealed that she actually comes from a rich family in the city and moved to the Jungle at age 14 due to getting kicked out of her family for getting pregnant.
  • Magical Princess Minky Momo: Momo transforms into one in the episode "Lord of the Jungle".
  • Onegai My Melody: Mana's favorite movie, Beauty and the Beast in a Jungle, follows this trope and Kuromi's nightmare magic inserts her into the main character role.
  • Sapphire Birch, Pokémon Adventures' take on the female avatar from the third game, takes her role as Pokémon trainer and researcher so seriously she actually went native, wearing clothes made from leaves and moss and growing her fingernails into claws. She has little trouble reintegrating into human society, but she retains the mind-boggling strength and agility she developed in the wild.
  • Princess Mononoke: As a baby, San was given to the forest spirits by her parents in return for their own lives. Their cowardice disgusted the spirits so that they took in San to raise as their own. San grows up to be one of the spirits' fiercest warriors against the encroachment of human settlements. Eventually, she meets Ashitaka, whom as an Emishi facing the encroachment of the Yamato has some understanding what the spirits are going through, and forms a difficult but sincere friendship with him.

Comic Books 

  • Definitely Sheena, Queen of the Jungle herself. She is one of the Trope Codifiers.
  • Marvel Comics
    • Shanna the She-Devil. The similarity between her name and Sheena's is entirely coincidental, of course.
    • Storm of the X-Men spent part of her childhood and adolescence as a Jungle Princess; when her weather powers activated, she was also worshiped as a literal goddess.
    • The whole Marvel game actually got its first female-driven series in the 50s with a comic titled Lorna, The Jungle Queen (later retitled to Lorna, The Jungle Girl. Lorna's father loses his leg to a lion and later dies. Lorna, having nowhere else to go, chooses to train with her African friend M'Tuba and stays within the forest to defend her people (animals and humans).
    • Jann of the Jungle was a Jungle Princess heroine from Marvel Comics predecessor Atlas in the 1950s. She is still mentioned occasionally in the modern-day Marvel Universe.
    • After a bout of amnesia, Alpha Flight's Heather Hudson plays this role for the length of one annual.
    • The Marvel Universe has a tropical Lost World in Antarctica called "the Savage Land", the chief point of which at times seems to be to provide an excuse for heroines to get into skimpy Jungle Princess gear.
    • The She-Hulk of Earth-6160 acted as the guardian of a Polynesian island that was warped into an overgrown jungle with hostile mutated wildlife by Bruce Banner's experiments. She offers to help The Team only on the condition that they undo the damage he caused.
  • An extremely blatant fetish of comics artist Frank Cho, who has worked on such diverse series as the above-mentioned (and also Jungle Girl).
  • Cavewoman: Meriem Cooper is the titular Cavewoman who spent most of her life surviving in a prehistoric world after being stranded there as a child via Time Travel. Thanks to a special genetic modification from her grandfather, Meriem grows up to be a voluptuous Nubile Savage clad in a snakeskin bikini who can fight giant dinosaurs with her bare hands, which proves useful when her hometown ends up being transported into her prehistoric world and needs her help to survive their new environment.
  • Subverted in the French comic Sillage (a.k.a. Wake in English). In the first volume, the heroine Nävis (Navee) encounters a group of alien slaves who have been ordered to change the environment of her jungle planet for their masters' purposes and ends up winning them over not because they view her as a goddess but because she possesses superior logic. Unfortunately that still doesn't prevent the jungle from being destroyed, and she's adopted and "civilized" by the advanced culture of the title.
  • In the comic The Maxx, Julie Winters manifests in the Outback as the Jungle Queen, the embodiment of this trope. Later, it's revealed that the Outback is her subconscious, and she created the Jungle Queen in order to have control as an all-powerful goddess after having been brutally raped and beaten years ago.
  • The Phantom Jungle Girl from the pages of Don Simpson's Megaton Man.
  • "Kara the Jungle Princess" made two appearances in 1946 issues of "Exciting Comics".
  • Tara Fremont from Femforce.
  • White Princess of the Jungle was a jungle girl anthology comic book published quarterly by Avon Periodicals in the early 1950s.
  • Judy of the Jungle appeared in comic books published by Nedor Comics. She debuted in Exciting Comics #55 (May 1947). Mostly remembered nowadays for featuring early art by Frank Frazetta.
  • Princess Pantha was a Sheena clone that appeared in comic books published by Nedor Comics. The character was revived twice; first by AC Comics, and second by writer Alan Moore for his Tom Strong spin-off, Terra Obscura. She first appeared in Thrilling Comics #56.
    • Tom Strong's own wife, Dhalua, is also an example, although she's actually black. (She's also a reconstruction of the trope — namely, what happens when The Chief's Daughter marries the hero and moves to a post-industrial nation, but never loses her edge.) There's also the alternate universe Tesla of the Tigers, who comes from a world overrun with jungle and whose father Tom of the Tigers was raised by... you can probably guess. Interestingly, Princess Pantha is romantically linked to Tom's Terra Obscura counterpart, Tom Strange.
    • One parodic issue of Tom Strong's Terrific Tales had Tesla going back to nature in a jungle, getting captured by poachers, and being put into a safari attraction with several other Jungle Princesses. It turns out they aren't a protected species.
  • Rulah, Jungle Goddess was Fox Feature's response to Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. Her real name was given variously as either Jane Dodge (Zoot #7) or Joan Grayson (Rulah, Jungle Goddess #20). In the latter version, Rulah is a young aviatrix on a solo flight over Africa when her plane loses control and crashes. She replaces her clothes (which were destroyed in the crash) with a bikini made from the skin of a dead giraffe. Soon afterward, Rulah saves a local tribe from an evil woman; the grateful tribespeople declares her queen. Rulah decides to remain in the jungle as its protector. Rulah's comic adventures are sometimes startlingly violent; and there are generous helpings of Les Yay among Rulah and her suspiciously-pale native maidens. Said maidens being the subjects of peril, hairdressing, abduction, experiments, and much hugging when rescued.
  • Parodied by "Libby in the Lost World" in Penthouse Comix. Libby was a Jewish American Princess stranded in a Lost World by a plane crash and forced unwillingly into the role of Jungle Princess.
  • Ya'wara from the New 52 Aquaman series. Unique in that she's one of the few examples of a Jungle Princess who is an actual person of color rather than a displaced white woman in jungle gear.
  • Fantomah may be an example. She's a blonde white woman who lives in the jungle and protects it from various Evil Colonialists and indigenous villains. However, she has extreme magical powers to the extent of being a Physical God, manifests a skull face when using them, and exhibits a sadistically vengeful personality, which combine to make her seem more like a Humanoid Abomination than an actual human.
  • Zhantika, Princess of the Jungle is the Big Bang Comics universe's equivalent of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.
  • Parodied in Tales Designed to Thrizzle with Jungle Princess, who wears the usual leopard-skin bikini but also a hennin.
  • In Maelstrom Media's Prymal Jungle Warrior, the titular heroine is princess of the lost kingdom of Atlantea, hidden somewhere near the Rio Negro in Brazil. She spends much of her time trying to protect the jungle from looters.

Fan Works 

  • Vow of Nudity: Haara, a reclusive warrior monk who lives alone and naked in the wilderness, showcases many elements of this archetype within her characterization. The other half of her background (an escaped slave from the Genasi Empire) averts some of the Fridge Logic usually present within this trope, justifying her familiarity with most scavenged tools, cultured grasp of language, and lack of body hair.
  • Wild Child AU features Madison Russell as a downplayed version of this. After being rescued from San Francisco by Godzilla following the battle with the MUTOs and taken to his island, she tends to dress in clothing Godzilla ‘stole’ for her rather than making her own attire, but she is respected by the other titans as Godzilla’s ‘pup’, making her essentially their princess if Godzilla is the Titans’ king.

Films — Animation 

  • In Barbie as the Island Princess, Ro grew up on an island after washing ashore as a child in a shipwreck, with no memory of her past, and has lived her entire life with only animal companions. The "princess" part of this trope becomes literal when she finds out that her true identity is Princess Rosella.
  • The end of Tarzan (1999) shows that this is the role that Jane Porter took.

Films — Live-Action 

  • The Ape Woman series.
    • Captive Wild Woman: The Ape Woman started life as an exceptionally intelligent gorilla, Cheela, from the Belgian Congo. Brought over to the United States, she is turned into a human, Paula Dupree, by means of human hormone and cerebrum transplants. While she doesn't ever return home, she has an approximation of the jungle in the Whipple Circus, where she gets employed for the lion taming act once it's discovered that she has an eerie control over animals, whom she can gaze into submission. As a gorilla with no human past or education, she is incapable of human speech, but she does understand it. Her love interest is the American Fred Mason, for whose safety she ends up sacrificing herself.
    • Jungle Woman: The possibility is brought up that the gorilla Cheela actually started life as a human and was turned into a gorilla by an undisclosed scientific experiment. All the same, even as the human Paula Dupree she has the strength of a gorilla. In human form, she is a skilled swimmer and over time has picked up some capacity for human speech. Her playground this time around is the Crestview Sanatorium, which grounds contain a lot of vegetation. With Fred no longer in the picture, Paula's romantic interest shifts to the American Bob Whitney, who does not return her feelings.
    • Jungle Captive: The Ape Woman is brought back to life with science and soon after given a new hormone donation to bring back her human self Paula Dupree. However, as a human she's not all there anymore due to damage to her human cerebrum. She's killed before she receives a new one (or her old one heals).
  • In Blonde Savage: An expedition into the deep jungle discovers a native tribe led by a tall white blonde woman.
  • George of the Jungle: Ursula Stanhope becomes this at the end of the movie after she marries George.
  • Gator Bait: Claudia Jennings, just switch the jungle for the Louisiana bayou.
  • Josephine Baker played this part in many of her stage performances and subsequent films.
  • Jungle Girl: Nyoka the Jungle Girl.
  • Jungle Goddess, which was given the MST3K treatment.
  • Jungle Queen, serial featuring Lothel as mysterious anti-Nazi jungle queen.
  • In Liane, Jungle Goddess, researchers in the African jungle find a young white woman living with a tribe, that adores her as goddess. She is Liane, the long lost daughter of the rich shipowner Amelongen.
  • Mara Of The Wilderness: Mara an Orphan Raised by Wolves, just like Kipling’s Mowgli. She is a classic free spirited Earthy Barefoot Character fighting an Evil Poacher. The only subversion is the a change in scenery for Alaskan tundra instead of the humid jungle. Obviously she should have frozen to death in her short fur dress.
  • The Mighty Peking Man: A particularly dim-witted version who was constantly on the verge of a nip slip.
  • Shandra: The Jungle Girl is a rare case of jungle princess as antagonist, with the heroes initially setting out to capture.
  • Sheena: Tanya Roberts made a pretty good jungle princess.
  • The Tiger Woman, a 1944 Republic film serial, later edited into the feature ''Jungle Gold''.
  • Trader Horn: Nina was a toddler when African natives attacked her family, killing her father and spiriting her away. When white people find her 20 years later, she's the queen of her tribe.
  • Who's That Girl?: There's one of these in the artificial jungle.
  • Yor: The Hunter from the Future: A desert version with Roah, a blonde woman who was raised by a clan of mummy-like creatures, who revere her as a goddess. Or something. It's kind of hard to tell what's going on in this movie.

Literature 

  • Discworld has lost kingdoms of Amazons which use their male prisoners to do specifically male jobs ... like opening pickle jars, sorting out those funny noises in the attic, capturing spiders and putting them outside, and rewiring plugs.
  • The 1904 novel Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson may be the Trope Maker. Rima, the female lead, wasn't white or European; she belonged to a lost race that even the local Indians didn't know of. Her skin — depending on the lighting, it seems — varied in color, and in bright sunlight seemed "luminous". The novel was made into a film starring Audrey Hepburn and Anthony Perkins in 1959.
  • Meriem, the wife of Korak the Killer, The Son of Tarzan (1915) literally fits this archetype. The daughter of a French general and a "princess in her own right", young Meriem was kidnapped by Arabs, and rescued by Korak. The two then spent their teen years together in the jungle before being found by Tarzan.
  • In Tarzan and the Lion Man (1933), Tarzan meets Balza, who lives with a group of English-speaking gorillas. One year later, she's Hollywood royalty.
  • Deconstructed in Gentlemen, the Queen! by Wilson Tucker. The titular character, a human girl raised by Martian desert rats and referred to as the Desert Queen, has suffered a lot of realistic consequences from her environment. She has Wild Hair, is missing one eye and most of her teeth, can barely speak, and has a broken arm that didn't set quite right.
  • Jasmine from Deltora Quest. A variation is that she only appeared to Lief and Barda to steal their stuff, but eventually came back and saved them before they could be eaten by the Wen. She also appears in the anime adaptation. Frequently paired with Lief in fanfiction, and the anime has a few hints of it as well, though you have to look for it to see them. Although by the end of the second series, it's clear that Jasmine and Lief are interested in each other romantically, and get married at the end of the third series.
  • Downplayed in The Lost Years of Merlin with Rhia(nnon)—she was raised in the woods and wears Garden Garments, but she speaks fine and all that, since she was raised by a Plant Person and her house is a sapient tree. Also, she's Merlin's twin sister.
  • Helene Vaughn of the Ki-Gor tales in the Jungle Stories pulp magazines becomes this after leaving civilization behind to stay with him in the jungle.

Live-Action TV 

Music 

  • Katy Perry invokes the "Western girl trapped in jungle by plane crash" variant of this trope in the music video for her single ''Roar," complete with a leopard-print bikini top and grass skirt. It does hold one aversion: the handsome explorer-type who was also in the crash with her immediately gets eaten by a tiger.
  • The song "Queen of the Savages" by The Magnetic Fields from 69 Love Songs.

    My girl is the queen of the savages
    She don't know the modern world and its ravages
    Instead of money she's got yams and cabbages
    She lives in a dome
    I don't care if I never get home

Pinball 

Professional Wrestling 

  • Jungle Woman in GLOW, apparently from some part of South America, typically teamed with the very urban Spanish Red. In WOW she had an expy in Jungle Grrrl apparently from Mexico. She blended into urban civilization very quickly but still came to the ring barefoot and smeared with dirt.
  • Brooke Adams wore a Jungle Princess costume for the 2007 Cyber Sunday Halloween contest. She even posed with a snake!

Tabletop Games 

  • In Wasteland 2010, Cammie is the series' equivalent, although her "jungle" is "the forests of the Midwest."

Video Games 

  • Jill of the Jungle: Jill is the leotard-wearing blonde heroine of the series. She climbs vines, throws knives, and eventually saves and marries a prince.
  • Zhu Rong, from Koei's Dynasty Warriors franchise, takes this to its logical extension as a fully-fledged Jungle Queen. Not only is she the only blond female in an ostensibly all-Asian lineup, but she's married to a barbarian king and worshiped as a bona fide Goddess by her people. Oh, and there's the obligatory jungle-kini in which she wanders round, too.
    • Her being worshipped as a Goddess is, in DW canon (and the book it was based on), justified. She's the descendant of the god of fire.
  • Ayla of Chrono Trigger - Chieftain of the prehistoric peoples, one of the two blondes among the group, and insanely strong. She's engaged to marry one of her own tribesmen, but she most definitely is the "man" in that relationship.
  • One of the playable characters with the actual name in TimeSplitters series.
  • Maya from the Killer Instinct series, especially in KI2 - the 2013 reboot reimagined her as a member of a clan of guardians.
  • Rima from Brütal Legend. While the Zaulia are a tribe of amazons (who wear KISS-style facepaint), Rima fits better by virtue of being their leader.
  • Nidalee, the Bestial Huntress, from League of Legends is a mysterious human/cougar woman who one day was discovered in the jungles of Ixtal, eventually growing up as the territorial leader of a pack of native, implicitly magical cougars.
  • Citra from Far Cry 3 is a Western note  woman who rules a Pacific island and doesn't wear very much. She wasn't raised by the natives but has enthusiastically taken to their ways. She is attracted to the game's American protagonist and not to the local men. Also qualifies as an evil version, because she encourages Jason's Blood Knight attitude and Sanity Slippage, and eventually entices him to kill his friends and loved ones and have sex with her- and then decides that since their child(if she actually is pregnant) will grow to be a greater warrior than his father, Jason has now outlived his usefulness, so she stabs him to death.
  • A Damsel in Distress version is Miho from Toki, who's the princess of Toki's tribe.
  • In Star Sweep, Princess Rio lives in a jungle and has tanned skin to match.
  • Cookie Run has Tiger Lilly Cookie, a mysterious cookie with floor-length hair, a tiger, and limited language skills. She's a formidable warrior with her spear and often rides her tiger into battle. She's also a literal princess, being the long lost twin of Princess Cookie and granddaughter of Hollyberry Cookie.
  • Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire had Aiela, princess of the Kurak tribe, from the Valley of Eodon,. Aiela is the bronze-skinned jungle beauty that haunts the Avatar's dreams, the same guy who underwent an epic quest to represent the 8 Virtues. Aiela is supposed to be the Avatar's designated romance partner and even joins your party, but you can opt for a different princess - Aiela's younger adopted and pyromaniac sister Tristia.

Webcomics 

Western Animation