Disney Prince Review: Prince Florian, Snow White

Florian

It's interesting that when you think of the early days of Disney, that you would have a character that feels so forgotten for the sole fact that he was forgettable. For the longest time people didn't even know he had a name other than "The Prince" or the default "Prince Charming", he wasn't even officially given a name until a few years ago. Out of the 83 minute run time, Florian only has two scenes, one in the beginning where he meets Snow White and one at the end when he wakes her up and takes here away to happily ever after. This was a conscious decision made due to Florian being difficult to draw for the animators, he was mostly rotoscoped in those two scenes. Originally he had had a much bigger role where he would have been kidnapped by the Evil Queen and locked in the dungeon and he would escape, fighting off skeleton guards but arriving too late to stop Snow White from eating the apple. These things would later be used in Sleeping Beauty with Prince Phillip.

Florian is a lot like Prince Phillip in that they both are hopeless romantics who actually do persue their love interests. When people say Snow White falls in love with him when they first meet, I kind of wonder if they saw the same scene as Snow White was aware of him, watching from afar. The two of them share a very heartfelt romance, they just know that they belong together and Snow White is honestly waiting for him to say it. However, there isn't much to Florian as a character and that is due in part to not only his lack of appearance in the film but due to the fact that only the dwarfs really get obvious character moments. I mentioned earlier that Snow White was an ideal of what her character should be and I think the same could be applied for to Florian, except it's a bit worse. Snow White gets you to like and care about her through the course of the movie but Florian is honestly just there, he only exists to start the movie and to end it.

Useless Counterpart

 "I don't only want to be remembered as a man who kissed a sleeping princess awake thirty years ago." 

Once Upon a Time honestly shows us the best version of Florian we could honestly hope to get but even he proves to be rather boring at the end of it. Now I don't plan to compare every prince to their counterpart on Once Upon a Time; if for no other reason than the characters are vastly different like Beast. Charming (David) is a much more fleshed out character than his movie counterpart but when I look at the series itself, he honestly hasn't changed, while he does have stories of his own, they mostly exist to reinforce his relationship with Snow or his daughter and he himself is mostly unused in the series, especially in later seasons. The quote I used I think in a lot of ways summed up his character's history, that is what he's remembered for over anything else because that was the only thing he did.

Though I use the word "useless" to describe him, I should go on record to say that I do enjoy his character a lot, but he rarely has anything to do. He's one of the few people in the series to not have magic at his disposal but honestly, Once Upon a Time has a problem not using all their characters (among other things).  In a show that seeks to flesh out and give new takes and twists to Disney films and properties, he always felt like a walking example of Florian, a character that in one form or another can only go so far. 

Do you have an opinion on Florian or his counterpart David?