Which Disney princess is the only one based on a real historical person?

Which Disney princess is the only one based on a real historical person? Pocahontas.

Pocahontas is generally identified as the only official Disney Princess directly based on a documented historical individual. Disney’s 1995 animated character is loosely based on Pocahontas, a Powhatan woman who lived from approximately 1596 to 1617 and was the daughter of the paramount chief Powhatan.

The historical person and the animated heroine are very different. Pocahontas was probably about eleven or twelve when she encountered John Smith, whereas Disney portrays her as a young adult. The film also centers a romantic relationship with Smith, while the historical Pocahontas later married the English colonist John Rolfe and traveled to England.

The movie was inspired by accounts of early English colonization in Virginia, but historians have long noted its substantial inaccuracies. “Based on a real person” does not mean the film is a reliable biography. Other Disney Princesses, including Mulan, draw on legends or traditional stories rather than securely documented historical individuals. Pocahontas was also the seventh character inducted into the Disney Princess franchise and the first American Disney Princess.