SoRiku the Disney Princesses
(this is a minimal effort crack post because i discovered another riku-as-ariel parallel)
SNOW WHITE: sora is often put to sleep by the narrative and, though he has been awakened by the likes of kairi & pluto, it is riku who is sora's designated rescuer (CoM, DDD, KH3). likewise, snowy-coloured riku's designated rescuer is sora (KH1, KH2, KH3).
CINDERELLA: the ending of melody features cinderella's fairy godmother telling riku to believe in his dreams (of sora) and go get his man follow them to find sora. as for sora, if every oldschool JRPG ever has taught us anything, he is almost certainly the setting's plucky common-born "cinderella" to whatever the princely heck riku has going on.
SLEEPING BEAUTY: the entire premise of dream drop distance.
THE LITTLE MERMAID: riku has been wanting to explore the world beyond the destiny islands (with sora) since he was a toddler. riku's POV of the series has been a reenactment of the little mermaid as it was originally written, by a queer person desperately pining for someone who has conformed to the bounds of heterosexual society, with a dash of disney's subversive optimism. the transition from riku's following the original mermaid's tragedy into disney's happier telling is marked by riku's meeting cinderella's fairy godmother.
BEAUTY&BEAST: kh1, CoM, & kh2 all feature soriku in alternating roles of beauty/beast, with respect to each other, in the main events of said games. everything from cinematography to dialogue to the literal dianey incarnations of these characters was used to emphasize the parallels between soriku & disney's beauty&thebeast.
JASMINE&ALADDIN: sora idolizes aladdin when he meets him in kh1, just as he idolizes riku, and the agrabah narrative treats riku's redemption as something equivocal to jasmine's returning aladdin's love for her. from riku's POV, sora is the impossible princess whom he must hide his true ("dark") self from and, simultaneously, a dazzling boy who embodies freedom (from responsibilities, from restraint, from living a life dictated to you from persons and customs of bygone eras).
PRINCESS&FROG: i am, like, 90% convinced that we'll see a new orleans or bayou world in kh4? i would tentatively speculate that riku would find himself relating to human tiana's uphill battle against [jim crow laws] and her retention of her ideals in spite of them. sora may find himself relating to frog prince naveen's struggle to win back his "true" power (pretty privilege/wealth/political impunity), human form, and the respect of someone beautifully extraordinary.
RAPUNZEL: a remix of the b&tb and little mermaid themes but through a context of [true love's] heroic sacrifice. riku sacrifices himself to save sora from a demon tide-induced total party kill: sora, after mistaking kairi as his saviour, sacrifices himself in turn for kairi (and since neither he nor kairi are in true love with each other... sora does not survive this attempt).
SNOW QUEEN: had frozen played truer to the story it was based on, both riku & sora could have played as the story's saved & saviour. kay takes a cursed mirror to the eye (& heart?), his perception of reality skewed towards cynicism by consequence (hello easy metaphor for comphet), and gets kidnapped by a beautiful sorceress. the warm tears (true love) of a friend saves kay from "darkness" (self-loathing/comphet). in the final version of frozen, a "my superpowers are evil" approach was taken & this was transposed unto pre-kh3 riku.
while disney has other princesses and other heroines, these are the only ones i'd consider to be "princesses of heart" in a sense pertinent to soriku. alice & kairi, as non-characters who serve as narrative devices rather than as romantic heroines, have been discounted. for similar reasons, the following "princesses" are also excluded: mulan, kida, merida, moana, raya, sofia, elena, vanellope, whoever the heck was in wish, leia.
