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jadinerhineI mentioned on a previous entry that I was thinking of reposting from Tumblr a very long headcanon thread I had about Sapphire from Princess Knight. Turns out it's been about five years, which is interesting -- because I've had more thoughts built on it, some of it changed. But skimming through this, more or less, I think besides maybe reconsidering some phrasing and adding some more/changed thoughts, I'd probably still stick to this. I am posting this as it was posted exactly the way the tumblr post linked above. No edits done. Like I said, maybe someday I'll update it, including with actual images lmao.
I WOULD like to add, that I just found this flag randomly while checking artist twitter -- whatever you may think about there being too many flags for the queer community, I gasped because I think this flag does fit one headcanon mentioned below for Sapphire.
I urge you to mind all the posted disclaimers below; those are still the same ones I'd use in an updated version, tbh.
Now on with the show!
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Hey hey hey, Sapphire fans, have another dumb hot take on our gurl, this time on a topic I’ve had thoughts on for the past few years. Because it’s potentially a hot button one, all I ask is that you read the entire thing before diving into a civic discussion about it! What am I saying, it’s tumblr, there is no such thing as critical thinking and civility anymore thanks to this hellsite.
Disclaimer #2: this is based strictly on Tezuka manga canon. I’ve seen the PK anime on-and-off and I don’t trust my memory on elements from it.
Disclaimer #3: I don’t have my manga copy with me, so no scans of panels and such : ( But I will make sure to explain the scenes I reference, as well as include links to definitions of things.
Disclaimer #4: I researched and read about this often, but I’m pretty sure I will make mistakes. As respectful as I’ve tried to be, I am sure people out there are smarter than me about things pertaining to this topic. Let me know constructively if I messed up.
Unpopular opinion that’s actually never been mentioned so maybe it’s not really unpopular?: I believe Sapphire is intersex, more gender-fluid rather than just a minimally tomboyish girl or female-to-male transgender.
No, this has nothing to do with transphobia or any other -phobia. It’s primarily based on how Tezuka, even with the problematic views spoused in the manga, accidentally gave us aspects of Sapphire’s self that for me, lend credence to her being intersex. (Yes I know, Takarazuka influenced Tezuka and PK too, but again, only paying attention to manga lore.) I’m going to list two main facts, and within each one, state why I think the fact lends credence to my opinion. I’ll try my best to write my reasons for intersex Sapphire as best as I can.
Since this turned out to be such a long post -- longer than I thought, yipes! -- I’ll be putting it under a cut. It will be tagged “long post” too for those who have that tag or are on mobile and can finally have blacklisted tags work. Hurrah!
FACT 1: Sapphire was forced to become a boy for the sake of the throne.
Sapphire was born a girl, and as we all know, her family didn’t want to give up the throne to Silverland if it meant giving it over to Duke Duralumin, who’s basically a dictator waiting in the wings for the chance to out Sapphire as a girl. Why? Girls can’t rule in Silverland.Solution? Keep it in the family! Make your daughter a son instead and declare him prince!
Because that will do wonders for possible gender and/or body dysphoria!
Gender dysphoria, as defined here (emphasis mine):
[GID] involves a conflict between a person's physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify. People with gender dysphoria may be very uncomfortable with the gender they were assigned, sometimes described as being uncomfortable with their body (particularly developments during puberty) or being uncomfortable with the expected roles of their assigned gender.Body dysphoria, as defined here (emphasis mine):
[...]
Gender dysphoria is not the same as gender nonconformity, which refers to behaviors not matching the gender norms or stereotypes of the gender assigned at birth. Examples of gender nonconformity (also referred to as gender expansiveness or gender creativity) include girls behaving and dressing in ways more socially expected of boys or occasional cross-dressing in adult men.
BDD is a body-image disorder characterized by persistent and intrusive preoccupations with an imagined or slight defect in one's appearance.and here:
People with BDD can dislike any part of their body, although they often find fault with their hair, skin, nose, chest, or stomach. In reality, a perceived defect may be only a slight imperfection or nonexistent. But for someone with BDD, the flaw is significant and prominent, often causing severe emotional distress and difficulties in daily functioning.
When you have body dysmorphic disorder, you intensely obsess over your appearance and body image, repeatedly checking the mirror, grooming or seeking reassurance, sometimes for many hours each day. Your perceived flaw and the repetitive behaviors cause you significant distress, and impact your ability to function in your daily life.
Personally, I think Sapphire suffers/would suffer more from body dysphoria, as she’s an adaptable type of person and would force herself to accept her gendered lot for the moment, as she’s done clearly. She’s uncomfortable with most expected roles of being a boy, as stated above, but she knows why she has to do it. She has to keep the kingdom away from Duralumin, protect her people. She does seem to not mind some of the princely activities she does either – she enjoys sword fighting and fencing, for one! (Was it me, or was she really into the book How to Court Women that she was reading near the beginning of the manga?)
Sidenote: When we see Friebe and Sapphire fighting together, Friebe makes the comment of why Sapphire is a girl still "fighting like a boy” alongside Friebe – but Friebe is a girl and fighting “like a boy” too! Ain’t that odd…
Sapphire’s about 15, which means she’s likely going through puberty – if she liked doing (usually) male activities, able to convince her kingdom either way of her appearance, then how would she deal with either: her body might betray her by naturally evolving into the female body she was born as, or that her body might still remain the same, due to an imbalance of testosterone/estrogen, among other factors? With the latter, she would struggle internally but be able to be king (unless her mom’s drugged and outs her due to the drug, like in the manga) but with the former? You can imagine that struggle with her future, can you?
And as much as I hate to link to anything related to the Jezebel site, this article makes a good point about not conflating the two. A passage or two (emphasis mine):
Those who suffer from body dysmorphia have a disconnection between the reality they are perceiving and how that perception is recognised in their brains. They look in an ordinary mirror, but for them, the result is something like we might imagine a funhouse mirror to look. There is an inability to recognise the body for what it is. Features seem distorted, and flaws (real or imagined) are perceived as much much worse than they are (if they even exist, and if they're even flaws in the first place)
[…]
So how is this disconnect different from the disconnect between the assignment of gender at birth and the gender identity of a person with gender dysphoria? It is substantially different in that one of the strongest aspects of gender dysphoria for many (but not all!) individuals who have those feelings is an acute awareness of what their physical features actually are and why those features do not match up with the gender presentation expected of the gender with which they identify.
I digress. We see Sapphire constantly struggling with her identity. She wanted desperately to be a “girly girl,” so said when she wanted to go to the ball but couldn’t because she still needed to be the prince. Yet later, after Sapphire and her mother are prisoners in a tower due to Duralumin and Sapphire’s identity revealed, and after Sapphire escapes the dungeon with Tink and rides away, Tink asks Sapphire about her perception of herself. What is Sapphire, to Sapphire? That it’s Tink, the one tasked to take Sapphire’s boy heart from her, who asks this has always been fascinating – much more so when coupled with the times he tries to protect her and gives in to her having two hearts just so long as she’s able to fend for herself and survive past swordfights.
Anyway, Sapphire’s answer can be chalked up to “I’m not sure yet” and “I don’t mind myself as I am right now.” It’s a plot line that gets lost and muddied and retrofitted to fit the “proper wife model for a fifties audience” Sapphire ends up in, but it was still said. It counts!
Now, this is the part where I admit confusion when someone headcanons Sapphire to be transgender. I mean, I get it, I totally do – again, don’t mind that headcanon but in my head, I don’t think being forced to be a gender in the first place works like that, either?
Sapphire, in manga canon, initially wants to be a girl just because she wants to experience life as the person she was born as. Sometimes she is comfortable being a boy, can shift quickly to her princely mindset if she’s suddenly caught indulging in feminine “vices” – and those are all okay! But she accustomed to that fast when she realized she will never be allowed to be a girl naturally, or as a girl with male tendencies. if you were someone who were forced to conform to a rigid gendered lifestyle and activities, and were told to never express your other self, would you really want to stay as the same gender after you’re “free”?
Having said that, it’s not like intersex people can’t be transgender. (More on that below.) And I did mention that I think she’s genderfluid, definition here --
Genderfluid: Someone whose gender identity or expression shifts between man/masculine and woman/feminine or falls somewhere along this spectrum.– and it’s because of that, because despite her own anger at this forced lifestyle, she seems to realize how much she does enjoy being good at male activities, how much she enjoys expressing her masculinity (for lack of a better word.) Equally as much as being a girl does. I feel as if, if she were in modern times, she would be comfortable being a boy one day, and a girl the next. She wouldn’t mind creating bouquets as she does in her first appearance, and wouldn’t mind strengthening her body with (usually) male-oriented exercises.
After all, according to the manga lore established by Tezuka, Sapphire’s two hearts allow her to live in two worlds at once!
FACT 2 : TWO HEARTS BEAT AS ONE
Having God decide your assigned gender by hearts was a viable candidate for suspension of disbelief enough, having a person born with two hearts sends Heaven into panic and despair! And the rest of us raise our eyebrows in collective “huh”?The manga makes it sound as if Sapphire is the first, and only, person born with two hearts. It’s either/or for the hearts, not and/and. You’re a boy who gets to fight, you’re a girl who gets to faint, nothing more.
Therefore, a boy heart + a girl heart = a girl + a boy = Sapphire. We’ve seen it happen, when Tink takes Sapphire’s boy heart out of her in the middle of a fight, and Sapphire suddenly forgets how to fight and is all a-flutter at the idea of -gasp!- violence! We’ve seen Sapphire’s body straight-up CHANGE from a female body to a male body when she loses her girl heart near the end, when Franz sets out to find her.
The fifties, fifties Japan, fifties Japan with a manga written by a man whose starting points were Cinderella, Disney movies and the all-female Takarazuka revue, which divides its actor into female or male roles. What a delicious soup of contradictions. What a delicious soup of weirdness.
Personally, I like to believe the two hearts concept can be translated into two souls. It’s a better version to grasp than actual literal hearts that can be taken out of your body and suddenly, bam, your gender and sex change automatically. (Seriously, what?) Two souls fits the pseudo-Christian-Pagan worldbuilding aspects of the manga, and it makes sense that at times, Sapphire feels empty without one of her hearts. Granted, there was the part where Sapphire fights without her boy heart and realizes she can still fight with her girl heart – which is a great snippet of character development, were it not for…the other pieces of dialogue…and Franz…who’s quite content with Sapphire “finally becoming a woman” by story’s end.
Two souls also helps understand a situation like Hecate, whose mother desperately wants Sapphire’s girl heart, so Hecate can be a proper girl. Hecate, the true tomboy of the series, lacks a physical heart and yet interacts and develops like any normal girl out there. But she has a soul, she does! One that loves mischief and silly pranks, who lives and breathes just like Sapphire does. It’s just not “perfect”/traditional in her mother’s eyes.
FACT 3: Wait, this isn’t a fact, back up, you said Sapphire with a boy heart changed her body entirely????
Okay, now this is where I get to, uh, cement? state my case better? for intersex Sapphire.Let’s say (using Tezuka’s own questionable plot devices/ignoring the literalness of the heart concept a bit) that the two souls co-exist alongside having either a girl or boy heart. The soul functions with who you are, the heart functions with your body. Similar to gender and sex, I think, if you want/need a real world simile to understand it better.
Sapphire states herself to Franz as a boy, all boy, when Franz finds him after Venus (I believe it was in the Venus arc) has taken away Sapphire’s girl heart in order for Franz to run away to Venus. Y’all can guess why obviously. Sapphire is boisterous, proud, every stereotype you can think of, and stands proudly as a boy. Sapphire also is insulted when Franz insinuates otherwise, and makes a distinct notion that everything about him is boy.
But of course, this is short-lived. Sapphire does get her girl heart back, only to lose her boy heart later. Presumably, if the scene above applies, then that means that Sapphire is all girl.
As stated above, a boy heart + a girl heart = a girl + a boy. If we use the soul concept, then Sapphire is a boy + a girl in both soul and body. More so body, really, because she’s the same person with both hearts, and more or less the same person with only a girl heart. (I think the difference in personality with only a boy heart was for plot reasons...she was boisterous and proud in the anime and manga with both hearts at times.)
In the real world, there are different conditions for intersex people. I have a not-solidified idea of which one applies to Sapphire, but the definition of intersex (emphasis mine):
“Intersex” is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male. For example, a person might be born appearing to be female on the outside, but having mostly male-typical anatomy on the inside. Or a person may be born with genitals that seem to be in-between the usual male and female types—for example, a girl may be born with a noticeably large clitoris, or lacking a vaginal opening, or a boy may be born with a notably small penis, or with a scrotum that is divided so that it has formed more like labia. Or a person may be born with mosaic genetics, so that some of her cells have XX chromosomes and some of them have XY.and a little bit from here:
[...]
In the same way, nature presents us with sex anatomy spectrums. Breasts, penises, clitorises, scrotums, labia, gonads—all of these vary in size and shape and morphology. So-called “sex” chromosomes can vary quite a bit, too. But in human cultures, sex categories get simplified into male, female, and sometimes intersex, in order to simplify social interactions, express what we know and feel, and maintain order.
So nature doesn’t decide where the category of “male” ends and the category of “intersex” begins, or where the category of “intersex” ends and the category of “female” begins. Humans decide. Humans (today, typically doctors) decide how small a penis has to be, or how unusual a combination of parts has to be, before it counts as intersex. Humans decide whether a person with XXY chromosomes or XY chromosomes and androgen insensitivity will count as intersex.
In cases of intersex, doctors and parents need to recognize, however, that gender assignment of infants with intersex conditions as boy or girl, as with assignment of any infant, is preliminary. Any child—intersex or not—may decide later in life that she or he was given the wrong gender assignment; but children with certain intersex conditions have significantly higher rates of gender transition than the general population, with or without treatment.Before I continue, let me tackle ‘gender transition’ -- as I said above, it’s not that intersex people can’t be transgender people. Some intersex people do change their gender from the ones they were forced to be, much like Sapphire was forced to be -- and yes, in this case, it means that Sapphire can be both intersex and transgender. But sometimes it does feel as if people are in love with the idea of a princely Sapphire so much, that they forget that she was forced to be a prince/a boy in the first place, and that she is content with being a girl. Or both. (Remember her initial answer to Tink’s question!) In the words of a wise little girl once: ¿porqué no los dos (headcanons)?
There are other intersex people who are equally happy with the gender they were assigned to, just not exactly with their bodies, thanks to parents being convinced by doctors that butchering their newborn baby’s body is for the best. (Seriously, there are horror stories.) And much like gender dysphoria and body dysphoria are conflated, so are intersex and transgender people (emphasis and italics mine):
People who have intersex conditions have anatomy that is not considered typically male or female. Most people with intersex conditions come to medical attention because doctors or parents notice something unusual about their bodies. In contrast, people who are transgendered have an internal experience of gender identity that is different from most people.Tink gave Sapphire a boy heart in Heaven, because he wanted to help/be funny, I guess? God decided she deserved a girl heart. If you want to ignore the religious details, then nature/science gave Sapphire the body she has. (Sapphire’s mom also had a difficult birth, so that...could also apply...?) As I said too, Sapphire is/does become/
Many people confuse transgender and transsexual people with people with intersex conditions because they see two groups of people who would like to choose their own gender identity and sometimes those choices require hormonal treatments and/or surgery. These are similarities. It’s also true, albeit rare, that some people who have intersex conditions also decide to change genders at some point in their life, so some people with intersex conditions might also identify themselves as transgender or transsexual.
In spite of these similarities, these two groups should not be and cannot be thought of as one. The truth is that the vast majority of people with intersex conditions identify as male or female rather than transgender or transsexual. Thus, where all people who identify as transgender or transsexual experience problems with their gender identity, only a small portion of intersex people experience these problems.
BUT WAIT, you say. What about Twin Knights??!
Oh, you mean the fantastic sequel that eschew the hearts plot, still maintains some fifties ideals despite playing more with gender (and sexuality, I wager but also I don’t want to stretch that with a story like Twin Knights) and concentrates on Sapphire’s sweet, sweet twins who she loves and adores?
WELL.
I can’t find much information on intersex people being able to get pregnant from medical/science places, per se. I’ve heard that it’s both possible and not possible, depending on which condition you have. This link, this one, this one and this one have more information on pregnancy and intersex people, even if one of them is sighs Cosmopolitan and two are from Quora. Cosmopolitan does have stories, as do the Everyone is Gay one, and if there’s one thing I believe in, it’s hearing/listening to stories directly from sources.
So you know, Sapphire can have children still, depending. And even if we ignore the sequel, and it turns out she can’t? ADOPT SHE CAN ADOPT, SHE LOVES KIDS. Plus, and as a final ending note to this because wow this got long, I’ll leave you with this:
A final thought: we’re all raised in a world where we’re told that, after puberty, our bodies “should” be able to do all these things. When you learn that your body, in fact, doesn’t do all these things as an intersex person, it’s easy to think that this means there’s something wrong with you, since you “can’t” do these things. I’m here to tell you that just because you don’t get a period and won’t give birth, that doesn’t mean that your body isn’t able to do something it’s “supposed to do” – YOUR BODY IS DOING WHAT IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE DOING ALL ALONG. Or that somehow you’re less of a girl or a woman because your body doesn’t do these things. Not all of us are comfortable or okay with this knowledge – especially at first – and I am not trying to minimize your feelings about this. At some point, though, after you’ve processed all this more, I’d encourage you to reframe thinking about what your body “can’t do” (= is “supposed to do”) to what your body doesn’t do. <3and this, which is from the link in the quote:
As a fetus, I wasn’t going to turn into a girl. I wasn’t going to turn into a boy. I was going to turn into me, the whole time. To me, statements with the how-are-you-lucky-enough-to-have-gotten-away-with-this sentiment are akin to me being told by a bird that I’m so lucky I don’t have to fly around for long periods of time during migrations, or being told by a trout I’m so lucky I don’t have to try swimming upstream because it’s difficult. What the hell are you critters talking about?! I’m not a bird and never was, and never will be. I’m not a trout and never was, and never will be. I didn’t get away with not being able to do those things – I was never supposed to be able to do them in the first place, because I’m ME. Saying that I’m lucky not to do something it’s assumed my body “should be” able to do erases the realness of my intersex body. My body is only supposed to do what it was always supposed to do, and that includes not menstruating or being reproductive or bearing children. MY BODY IS ALREADY DOING WHAT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO DO ALL ALONG. The problem is in the perception that intersex bodies are supposed to be like or do things that male- and female-defined bodies do. But not all male bodies and not all female bodies do the same things anyway. Why would we assume that intersex bodies will all work the same way as all male and/or female bodies? Would we assume that all intersex bodies, with our many variations, work the same way as all other intersex bodies, too? These perceptions need to change.“I was going to turn into me, the whole time.” I can’t think of something that describes Sapphire better.
