Princess and dragon

[5] One of the earliest examples of the motif comes from the Ancient Greek tale of Perseus, who rescued the princess Andromeda from Cetus, a sea monster often described as resembling a serpent or dragon.

Most ancient versions depicted the dragon as the expression of a god's wrath: in Andromeda's case, because her mother Queen Cassiopeia had compared her beauty to that of the sea nymphs, and in Hesione's, because her father had reneged on a bargain with Poseidon.

Both dragons also demand the sacrifices of citizens from the kingdom, men and women, to appease them, until prince Schalu and his faithful companion Saran decide to put an end to their existence.

[11] In some tales, however, the princess herself takes steps to ensure that she can identify the hero—cutting off a piece of his cloak as in Georgic and Merlin, giving him tokens as in The Sea-Maiden—and so separate him from the false hero.

An unusual variant occurs in Child ballad 34, Kemp Owyne, where the dragon is the maiden; the hero, based on Ywain from Arthurian legend, rescues her from the transformation with three kisses.

[14] Mythological comparativist Julien d'Huy ran an analytical study of the antiquity and diffusion of the snake- or dragon-battling mytheme in different cultural traditions.

[15] Scholarship suggests a connection between the episode of the dragon-slaying by the hero and the journey on an eagle's back, akin to the Mesopotamian myth of Etana.

[17] In Ian Fleming's Dr. No, both the book and film versions feature a tank in the shape of a dragon that protects Dr. No's island from superstitious intruders.

Ann Boyd's 1967 book The Devil with James Bond explores the theory of the updating of the Princess and dragon genre.

In Jay Williams's tale The Practical Princess, a dragon demands that a king should sacrifice his daughter to him so that he will leave the rest of the kingdom alone.

In animated television series Wander Over Yonder episode, "The Hero", Sir Brad Starlight, the bumbling knight who believes in fairy tales, sets off to rescue the princess from the dragon king.

[18] In his study on the historical roots of the wondertale, Russian scholar Vladimir Propp interpreted the dragonslaying tale (ATU 300) as an inversion of the ancient ritual of a maiden sacrifice to a river to ensure good crops.

[19] In some stories, mostly in more recent literary works, the cliché involving princesses and dragons is somehow twisted to create a more exciting or humorous effect.

Indeed, there are a few examples when a curse or spell transforms a princess into a dragon or similar creature (e.g. an alligator, giant bird, or fictional reptile species).