Every Disney Princess Ranked In Order Of Lesbianism

A well-known secret is that Disney Princesses, as a whole, are all pretty gay. Other than a few who are really dedicated to their man (I’m talking to you, Ariel, giving up your voice for a fuckboy), Disney princesses are all hard working badass women and girls, who, if not for the patriarchy would take over the world. That describes 70% of the lesbians I know. I did some investigative journalism and gathered all the official Disney Princesses, some unofficial Dinsey Princesses, princess-like characters from any Fox movies that Disney may have recently purchased, and just a few villains (who are only villains because of THE PATRIARCHY), and I’ve compiled them all in a list for you, which I will now present without commentary.

Please accept my offerings, and if you disagree, as the youth say, don’t @ me.

27. Ariel—The Little Mermaid

26. Giselle—Enchanted

25. Snow White— Snow White

24. Attina, Alana, Adella, Acquata, Arista, Adrina (Ariel’s sisters)—The Little Mermaid

23. Rapunzel—Tangled

22. Anna—Frozen

21. Cinderella—Cinderella

20. Belle—Beauty and the Beast

19. Aurora—Sleeping Beauty

18. Princess Sofia—Sofia the First

17. Princess Elena—Elena of Avalor

16. Maleficent—Sleeping Beauty

15. General Leia—Star Wars

14. Shuri—Black Panther

13. Esmerelda—The Hunchback of Notre Dame

12. Tiana—The Princess and the Frog

11. Nala—The Lion King

10. Megara—Hercules

9. Jasmine—Aladdin

8. Pocahantas—Pocahontas

7. Empress Kida—Atlantis

6. Ursula—The Little Mermaid

5. Princess Anastasia—Anastasia

4. Princess Merida—Brave

3. Princess Elsa—Frozen

2. Chief Moana—Moana

1. Fa Mulan—Mulan

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Ari

Ari is a 20-something artist and educator. They are a mom to two cats, they love domesticity, ritual, and porch time. They have studied, loved, and learned in CT, Greensboro, NC, and ATX.

Ari has written 330 articles for us.

76 Comments

  1. I love this a whole lot. It combines two of my favorite things: Disney listicles and ranking things in order of lesbianism.

    I feel like statistically at least one of Ariel’s sisters HAS to be queer though, right?

  2. Great list, except that Elsa is Queen, not a princess, for the vast majority of the movie. Just thought that with your careful attention to other characters’ titles you might want to fix.

    Also Esmeralda always read as super queer to me?? Anyone else feel the same

  3. Last week my girlfriend asked what my favorite Disney princess movies are and I told her Frozen, Moana, and Mulan.

    Well then.

  6. Thank god Mulan is number one! I think Belle deserves to be higher on this list, though-she’s nerdy and smart, prefers books to people, clearly despises Gaston and most of the other men in her village, and feels like an out-of-place weirdo in her small town…that is a rural lesbian coming out story if I’ve ever heard one!

    • Agreed! I’ve said for years that Belle was my fave disney princess because her story was so much like me: she was nerdy with brown hair, rejected the mainstream love interest, and falls in love with someone who is taboo according to society.

    • nah nah, she’s one of those ones you get the vibes from but then she’s all about her man and you go home and cry about that time you lent her a jeanette winterson book and she gave it back three months later with the spine intact.

      perfect placement on the list imo

  7. If we’re including side characters, then we have to include Moana’s grandmother, as well as Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty. (Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather with their co-housing, co-parenting, processing feelings, DIY to the max, off the grid….) I have a feeling that, the longer I think about this, the more queer Disney characters I will discover.

  8. I knew it was gonna be between Merida, Moana, Mulan and Elsa
    Elsa even had a coming out song

  9. Before I opened this I thought, “Ariel’s gonna be high on the list.” Instead she was dead last! Ariel is queer- she doesn’t know why she feels so different than everyone else but she decides to run away to explore it.

    • Yes! Glad Mulan is #1! I second the ‘how is Ariel last’ though? Maybe I’m biased cause I’m pretty sure she was the first crush I had on a girl! All I’m saying is there were complex, queer reasons I rewatched that movie constantly as a child, and so I feeeeel like maybe Ariel is a bit queer.

      • I’m pretty sure I am biased since Ariel was very important to me! The same birthday where I got to see The Little Mermaid in the theatre I also got a case to hold my Barbies so they could u-haul with each other soooooo… yah know. Very important time in my life!

        But also these are some gay lyrics:

        I’ve got gadgets and gizmos aplenty
        I’ve got whozits and whatzits galore
        (You want thingamabobs?
        I got twenty)
        But who cares?
        No big deal
        I want more
        I want to be where the people are
        I want to see
        want to see ’em dancin’

        ….

        Betcha on land
        They understand
        Bet they don’t reprimand their daughters
        Bright young women
        Sick o’ swimmin’
        Ready to stand
        And ready to know what the people know
        Ask ’em my questions
        And get some answers
        What’s a fire and why does it
        (What’s the word?) burn?

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMsyd1gZVVA

  10. Helga Sinclair (the henchwoman of the bad guy in Atlantis) is FLAMINGLY queer fyi.
    Scratch that, all the women in Atlantis are queer. It is done.

  12. Everything about this is right except Anastasia is not a Disney princess. But if we’d like to retcon reality to make her one, I’m down.

    • Alaina mentioned this just before starting the list (something about Disney having purchased Anastasia? No idea, personally).

      • Disney is currently in the midst of buying the studio that produced Anastasia so teeeeechnically the film is about to be a Disney property and then Anastasia will be a Disney princess!

  13. when i got to maleficent i was like wha why so low on the list, but i really couldn’t argue once i kept scrolling. i feel like a lot of thought went into this.

  15. 22 snow white
    21 rapunzel
    20 aurora
    19 cinderella
    18 eilwony
    17 pocahontas
    16 esmeralda
    15 tiana
    14 belle
    13 jasmine
    12 anna
    11 leia
    10 megara
    9 ariel
    8 kida
    7 shuri
    6 elsa
    5 mulan
    4 nala
    3 judy hopps
    2 moana
    1 princess rosalinda maría montoya fiore

  16. Rapunzel should be higher because Flynn Rider looks like a lesbian. The mullet, vest, tool belt – he’s got it all. Plus she gets an alternative lifestyle haircut at the end of Tangled.

    • I may be biased because I had a crush on both Flynn and Rapunzel, but examine the evidence ? rest of the list is spot on!

    • @ukulelejj You’re so right!

      (Also? How have I never recognized that before…I’ve had to suffer through that movie so many times!)

  17. We all know this “D” in Disney logo is really a “G” which obviously stands for gay agenda

  18. I definitely agree with the top three but I feel like the last two should be Aurora and Snow White.

  19. Good list but I really don’t feel like Nala should be on it. I mean she is so straight that she fell in love with her brother!

    Also I totally ship Ariel and Belle. They would be sooooo cute together and make each other so much happier than the 30 year old perv Ariel ends up with or the domestic abuser Belle ends up with.

    • Nala being included on this list was totally unexpected for me. ? As I was scrolling through this list I saw her and just sat there thinking “Why are you here…?”

    • Nala is a lioness, lionesses immediately belong the list because the go out and bring home the bacon and co-parent each other’s kids (very gay) while the lions mind the house.

      • You bring up a fair point. I always think hyenas when I think feminism so I forgot how gay lionesses were.

  20. Belle was the nerdy introvert queer of my dreams! Also idk Ariel’s sisters look a lot like a badass group of femmes just saying

  21. Seeing Mulan on these kinds of lists always cracks me up because this homophobic Evangelical white boy at my college used to call me “Ping” (Mulan’s fake name as a soldier) as an attempt to insult but hey it’s better than outright getting called a dyke so I kinda just rolled with it.

  22. I honestly expected Belle to be higher, but that’s a me problem.

    Another thing that is a me problem that I’m fixing to make an everyone problem: Hela has EVERY RIGHT to be on this list.

  24. Oh man… I went through a major Mulan phase as a child (as in, my brother and I had every word and lyric of the film memorized and would recite it to each other for fun) and this list made me realize it was also *definitely* one of my roots. Particularly 1:12-1:30 in “A Girl Worth Fighting For”: https://youtu.be/Uivb9bq-QLs?t=1m12s

  25. I’m hoping they decide to make up for taking the queerness out of Black Panther by giving us Shuri.

    • And I haven’t seen the newest Avengers movie (or most of the MCU, if I’m being honest), so if they’ve already taken this away from us, don’t tell me!

  26. Rapunzel needs to be a hell of a lot higher on this list. She is literally the only Disney princess to have a legit butchy galpal sidekick. Idk how to do photos but Google Rapunzel and Cassandra. There’s apparently a Rapunzel TV show (?) and a couple of shorts that feature Cassandra as her lady-in-waiting with a super alternative lifestyle haircut who is secretly trained in combat and wears pants and runs away with Rapunzel and spends a lot of time glaring at Flynn Rider. Seriously. Canon lesbianism, basically. My wife got me a Christmas ornament of Rapunzel and Cassandra together… You can buy doll Rapunzels that come packaged with a Cassandra instead of Eugene and I’m so here for it.

  27. I haven’t read the list yet but it’s obvious Mulan is the most lesbian of all the princesses, right?

  28. I absolutely hate that I created an account just to say this but *sigh* here we go. Read anything by superfluouskeys on ao3. It’ll change your mind about maleficent. Did I just recommend fanfic? Absolutely. Is my mother rolling over in her grave? Probably. But cheers to the end of my lurking days and to many hours lost reading very, very gay material ?

  31. All I cared about was Mulan being #1 and someone posting a particular gif when the pedantics come out to play with the Anastasia’s not a real disney princess thing

    Animated royal female characters of our childhoods and beyond is too long okay and my Anastasia coloring book was with the official disney princesses as well as at the craft fair booth stuff of with the rest of the princesses.

    Anybody else had clip in hair bows with princess character buttons hot glued to the center of the bow?

  32. Erm… Not all of them are princesses, right? And if we include non-princess-people, I really think, Lilo from Lilo & Stitch should be ahead of pseudo feminist Elsa. Cause Lilo is the real deal! I ship grown up Lilo and Mulan ;)

  33. I agree with the first three, so what else matters? XD

    I’ve tried several times to watch Anastasia and turn it off after ten minutes. It’s not something that I can tolerate being made into a fairy tale or appropriate for children. No… not only did she not escape, Rasputin was a friend of her parents and savagely murdered, before the entire family and all the children were murdered.

    Who thought that was a good idea to spin into something Disneyesque?! Sure fairy tales are dark, but ignoring the October Revolution and brutality of Lenin, as well as the brutality of Tsar Nicholas the II and his batshit wife? NO!

    *takes deep breath*

    • My sister-in-law thinks that Anastasia is the best animated movie of all time. That, and finding my brother attractive, are two of her wrongest opinions.

  34. (First time posting images here, so I hope this works…)

    No love for Princess Katherine from Gargoyles?

    OK, so she’s a bit obscure and was only in a few episodes. Still memorable, though. Being tied up and threatened by Vikings didn’t faze her at all. “You traitors! I’ll see you both hanged for this!”

    Also, if I recall correctly, she wasn’t shown to have any kind of male love interest until late in Season 2. And she was the only human woman on an isolated island at the time, so her options were limited.

    Of course I can’t bring up Gargoyles without mentioning a few other female characters of note:

    Fox

    Demona

    Hyena

    … and of course the one and only Elisa Maza!

    I’ll leave it up to others to figure out where they’d belong on the ranking…

    (Why yes, I did register an account just to rave about Gargoyles. Ahem.)

  38. Flik is a male-identifying butch quasi-lesbian (all worker ants are quasi-female and sterile and flik identifies as male). Thus princess Atta is quasi-lesbian

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