Apollois?unmask

Apollo has so many titles he could be a one god pantheon. His numerous functions include light, healing, prophecy and averting evil. As the god of music and the arts, the lyre is a major symbol of Apollo. He healed, yet he could also bring ill health and deadly plague. He co-invented archery. As the ideal of the kouros (ephebe, or a beardless, athletic youth), he governs the passage of children into adulthood. If that wasn't enough, from the 5th century BCE, Apollo was often identified with Helios, the personification of the Sun.

So: which princess? The answer has all of it at once, and it begins with a drop of sunlight falling out of the sky.

Rapunzel.

Her powers come from the sun. Her kingdom is called Corona, and its emblem is a golden sun. She heals by singing, and that is as Apollonic as it gets, for he is the god where medicine and music are the same act.

As a disguise of the god of the arts, Rapunzel's a polymath.¹ She transforms a tavern of crooks with a song and has each of them express their hidden desire for the arts.² She's also the only Disney princess who picks up a stringed instrument (the guitar), which is an essential analog for Apollo's lyre.

But most importantly, the strands of Tangled's story come together over Rapunzel's defining physical characteristic — hair. Apollo is Phoebus, meaning brilliant, and Chrysokomes, golden-haired. As a kourotrophos, Apollo presides over a youth's passage into adulthood and his standing Homeric epithet is Akersekomes: he of the unshorn hair. The scholars explain it precisely: not cutting the hair implies eternal youth, and boys in Greece did not cut their hair short before puberty.

That's Rapunzel's defining physical characteristic and her narrative arc in one. Brilliant, golden, uncut hair. The film is Rapunzel's coming of age journey, and the cutting of her hair at the climax represents her leaving Mother Gothel for good.

That just about wraps it up, but in case folks wish to split hairs, we'll address a major item in Apollo's portfolio — his bow. Apollo is the co-inventor of archery and his arrows have killed half of Greek myth.³ Rapunzel fights with a cast-iron pan and has no ranged capability whatsoever. Except the 2010 film barely scratched the surface of her powers.

In Tangled: The Series (2017–2020), three seasons of Disney canon, Rapunzel's hair grows back — and it comes back indestructible. Weapons break on it. It forms a shield around her and her allies, read Apollo Alexikakos, the averter of evil.

Additionally, it is revealed that she has not one, but three incantations that unlock her Apollonic powers, and they run the whole span of the god's portfolio.

• The healing incantation is Paean — the movie version we are familiar with that heals wounds, reverses aging and restores the recently dead.
• The decay incantation is Smintheus — the same melody as the Paean but with different words. It triggers a massive Area-of-Effect (AoE) wave of death that instantly drains the lifeforce out of everything around her, wilting objects and shattering environments.
• Finally, the solar incantation is Hekatebolos — Rapunzel goes full super saiyan, I'm not making this up — her hair and eyes glow yellow, she levitates and fires destructive solar energy bursts that can shatter rock.⁴

Ordinarily it would be foul play to use future Disney Princess content to uncover a god's abilities. But there is one god for whom this is warranted. Because Apollo, who gave the gift of future sight to the Oracle of Delphi, the Sibyls, Cassandra, Calchas and Helenus, is also the god of prophecy.

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Extra-diegetic. Tangled cost $260 million, which makes it the most expensive animated film ever made to this day.⁵ The film employed a unique artistic style by blending together features of computer-generated imagery (CGI) and traditional animation while using non-photorealistic rendering aimed at a specific target: the Rococo paintings of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, particularly The Swing. The most expensive animated film in history is a film about the god of art and music, as the animators tried to capture light and paint on the screen.

Footnotes

1. According to Rapunzel's opening song 'When will my life begin?', she reads, paints, plays guitar, knits, cooks, puzzleses, dartses, bakes, papier maches, ballets, chesses, potteries, ventriloquies, candle makes, stretches, sketches, climbs and sews. ↩

2. According to the song 'I've got a dream', each one hopes to be a concert pianist, a rower, a florist, an interior designer, a mime, a baker, a knitter, a sewer, a puppet showman, and a collector of ceramic unicorns. ↩

3. Python. Niobe's sons. The mules, dogs, and men of the Achaean camp. The cyclopes. Patrocles. Achilles. The Aloadae. Tityos. Ephialtes. ↩

4. While Elsa operates on a national disaster tier and Moana commands a literal element of nature, the animated series scales Rapunzel up to an ancient, celestial god-like status. ↩

5. See Guinness World Records. ↩