The Goose Girl

The Princess, also known as "The Goose Girl", is the titular main protagonist of "The Goose Girl", a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm.

Description
The Princess is an attractive young woman with golden hair. She is naive, modest and caring, as evident with her pleading for the person who killed Falada to nail him to the wall, so she can still talk with him.

Role in the Story
When the princess sets out to meet the prince she is arranged to marry, she brings her waiting-maid with her. When they stop to rest, the maid decides to no longer serve the princess. She breaks the princess' goblet and tricks the princess into dropping her charm in the water. She then swaps clothes with the princess and threatens to kill her if she objects. When the two arrive at the palace, the maid poses as the princess and the real princess is forced to work tending geese. The maid then orders the princess' talking horse Falada to be killed, and his head is nailed to the wall.

The maid gets away with it until the princess is forced to tell her story. She reveals that she is a princess and that she was forced to swap places with the maid. The king is informed of the truth, and he tries to think of a punishment for the wrongdoer. He tricks the maid into "choosing her own punishment". While each choice is different in each version of the story, in the classic version, the maid tells the king that a false servant should be dragged through town naked in a barrel with internal spikes. As a result, she is punished that way until she dies, while the princess gets to marry the prince, and they live happily ever after.

Trivia

 * In the novel by Shannon Hale, she is referred to as Anidori-Kiladra Talianna, or Ani for short.​​​​​