manga: Twin Knights
Twin Knights is the sequel to Osamu Tezuka's Princess Knight, and is about Princess Sapphire's twin children, Princess Violetta and Prince Daisy. Mostly Princess Violetta, though. With only one volume, it's shorter than its predecessor. For better or worse, it's also much less prone to random sidetrips, and so also much more comprehensible. I am not using a spoiler cut because I'm assuming no one actually cares about spoilers.
The kingdom is in an uproar because everyone is feuding over which royal twin should be heir. Now-Queen Sapphire and King Franz pray to God for help, but God is on vacation, and left an angel in charge. The angel in question is Tink, the angel responsible for the whole mess in Princess Knight, because nothing says "qualified to run the universe for a week" like total incompetence. In a show of extreme wisdom and competence, Tink writes "Prince" and "Princess" on the ground and drops his bow to determine which twin is the future ruler, and Prince Daisy is the lucky baby.
When word gets out, a "supporter" of Violetta kidnaps the prince and dumps him in a cursed forest. Fearing civil war, Sapphire and Franz decide to raise Violetta as both herself AND Daisy. One day she's the prince, and the next, she's the princess. For 15 years, exactly one person questions why the twins are never seen together (They're being raised separately! In the same castle!) or why no one ever sees both on the same day at all. There are also a pair of brothers named Prince White and Prince Black. You only get one guess at which is Violetta's dashing love inetrest, and which is the villainous bully.
Violetta and Prince White's romance goes about like this:
PRINCE WHITE: Prince Daisy, you are so wonderful and amazing and I want to spend all my time with you. Also, I'm straight and so completely not into you, but you'd be a totally gorgeous girl. Do you have a sister, by any chance?
VIOLETTA: As a matter of fact, I do.
PRINCE WHITE: Does she look like you?
VIOLETTA: Well, we are twins...
PRINCE WHITE: I am totally and completely and eternally in love with your sister even though we've never met, purely because she looks like you. BTW, I'm still straight.
PRINCE WHITE: *gets injured*
VIOLETTA: Hello, here I am at your sickbed as a girl. In a dress. Meeting you for the first time.
PRINCE WHITE: You are obviously the twin of my precious and beloved Prince Daisy, for whom my love is completely platonic! I am in love with you.
VIOLETTA: I'm ok with this.
Eventually, there's a rebellion and Violetta and her parents get locked in a tower. Somewhere in there, she learns that she actually DOES have a brother named Daisy (because apparently no one ever bothered to tell her why she had to be a boy every other day) and sets out to find him. Along the way, she joins a band of gypsies and becomes a masked swashbuckler named Knight Ribbon, and has various adventures with the gypsy princess, Emerald, who is in love with her.
Daisy, meanwhile, becomes a Disney Princess, after being found in the woods by a deer named Papi. Papi asks a goddess to turn her into a human so she can raise Daisy properly, and is allowed to become human at night only, with the condition that she'll die if Daisy ever learns the truth about her. There's no particularly logical reason for the YOU WILL DIE, it just is. And so Daisy grows up in the woods with only his "sister" for company, and is forbidden to leave the cottage during the day. After Daisy's inevitably tragic origin story-complete with all the forest animals loving him and tending to his wounds even though he's a hunter-ends, Daisy ends up back at the palace, being forced to impersonate himself while Violetta is off having all the adventures.
It's less frustrating than Princess Knight in its gender essentialism (though there's still plenty of that) and has a pretty straightforward story that you can actually follow, and keep track of the plot developments. But if you think the person raised and trained to rule for fifteen years will become the ruler instead of the guy raised by a deer, think again. I mean,the angel flipped a coin, after all. Also, the series totally does not end with a romantic splash page of Violetta tenderly adjusting the necklace of flowers that Daisy is wearing for some reason or another as he stares adoringly at her.
The kingdom is in an uproar because everyone is feuding over which royal twin should be heir. Now-Queen Sapphire and King Franz pray to God for help, but God is on vacation, and left an angel in charge. The angel in question is Tink, the angel responsible for the whole mess in Princess Knight, because nothing says "qualified to run the universe for a week" like total incompetence. In a show of extreme wisdom and competence, Tink writes "Prince" and "Princess" on the ground and drops his bow to determine which twin is the future ruler, and Prince Daisy is the lucky baby.
When word gets out, a "supporter" of Violetta kidnaps the prince and dumps him in a cursed forest. Fearing civil war, Sapphire and Franz decide to raise Violetta as both herself AND Daisy. One day she's the prince, and the next, she's the princess. For 15 years, exactly one person questions why the twins are never seen together (They're being raised separately! In the same castle!) or why no one ever sees both on the same day at all. There are also a pair of brothers named Prince White and Prince Black. You only get one guess at which is Violetta's dashing love inetrest, and which is the villainous bully.
Violetta and Prince White's romance goes about like this:
PRINCE WHITE: Prince Daisy, you are so wonderful and amazing and I want to spend all my time with you. Also, I'm straight and so completely not into you, but you'd be a totally gorgeous girl. Do you have a sister, by any chance?
VIOLETTA: As a matter of fact, I do.
PRINCE WHITE: Does she look like you?
VIOLETTA: Well, we are twins...
PRINCE WHITE: I am totally and completely and eternally in love with your sister even though we've never met, purely because she looks like you. BTW, I'm still straight.
PRINCE WHITE: *gets injured*
VIOLETTA: Hello, here I am at your sickbed as a girl. In a dress. Meeting you for the first time.
PRINCE WHITE: You are obviously the twin of my precious and beloved Prince Daisy, for whom my love is completely platonic! I am in love with you.
VIOLETTA: I'm ok with this.
Eventually, there's a rebellion and Violetta and her parents get locked in a tower. Somewhere in there, she learns that she actually DOES have a brother named Daisy (because apparently no one ever bothered to tell her why she had to be a boy every other day) and sets out to find him. Along the way, she joins a band of gypsies and becomes a masked swashbuckler named Knight Ribbon, and has various adventures with the gypsy princess, Emerald, who is in love with her.
Daisy, meanwhile, becomes a Disney Princess, after being found in the woods by a deer named Papi. Papi asks a goddess to turn her into a human so she can raise Daisy properly, and is allowed to become human at night only, with the condition that she'll die if Daisy ever learns the truth about her. There's no particularly logical reason for the YOU WILL DIE, it just is. And so Daisy grows up in the woods with only his "sister" for company, and is forbidden to leave the cottage during the day. After Daisy's inevitably tragic origin story-complete with all the forest animals loving him and tending to his wounds even though he's a hunter-ends, Daisy ends up back at the palace, being forced to impersonate himself while Violetta is off having all the adventures.
It's less frustrating than Princess Knight in its gender essentialism (though there's still plenty of that) and has a pretty straightforward story that you can actually follow, and keep track of the plot developments. But if you think the person raised and trained to rule for fifteen years will become the ruler instead of the guy raised by a deer, think again. I mean,the angel flipped a coin, after all. Also, the series totally does not end with a romantic splash page of Violetta tenderly adjusting the necklace of flowers that Daisy is wearing for some reason or another as he stares adoringly at her.