Princess Alice

Princess Alice
Sovereign Princess of Centralia
portrait: @paintbrushDjinn character design:@CC_Reisz
race	Asterian
pronouns	she/her/hers
age	a few billion years (chronologically) ~12-13 (apparent)
birthday	August 10
titles	Her Royal Highness Her Majesty
residence	Stellar Nursery Palace of Serenity Queen City, Centralia (official residence) Dame Adorabelle's Academy Havensborough, Centralia (part-time)
preceded by	Princess Jeanette

• Headmistress: You can wait your turn like everyone else, Princess. The world doesn't revolve around you.

• Princess Alice: Hmph. I'll have you know several worlds revolve around me!

Princess Alice is the third and current sovereign princess of Centralia. She is a functionally omnipotent celestial entity with the body and mind of a mercurial human child. Don't even worry about it, everything is gonna be fine. Trust me!

Origin

Princess Alice is an Asterian, a star that has assumed incarnate form to live among mortal creatures as an adolescent rite of passage. Like all Asterians known to have come to Earth, Princess Alice assumes the physical form of a young human girl. This "humanesque" form, as she prefers to call it, typically appears to be about 12 or 13 years old, though she sometimes appears as a much younger child or, on rare occasions, even an infant.

Nobody is quite sure why Princess Jeanette appointed Alice to be her successor as the ruler of Centralia. It honestly seems like an uncharacteristic lapse of judgement on Jeanette's part, right? Nevertheless, many have speculated that Jeanette believed Alice's chaotic nature would preserve and reinforce the kingdom's whimsical and imaginative nature.

Powers

Like all Asterians, Princess Alice possesses seemingly unlimited power over reality itself, being able to bend space, time, and even the laws of physics through will alone. She frequently describes herself as omnipotent, though this claim should not necessarily be taken at face value, as she has a well-known habit of presenting herself in the most self-aggrandizing manner possible. Princess Alice has yet to fully master control of her reality-warping abilities, often leading to unintended consequences, especially in moments of intense emotion. She does not always know how to undo something she's done without conscious effort.

While her claims of omnipotence are debatable, the Princess is very definitely not omniscient, as she possesses an extremely limited memory. Although she is quick to remind others that she is several billion years old, she is generally unable to recall events beyond her apparent human age: For example, when the Princess looks and acts like a 13-year-old, she is unable remember events that occurred more than 13 years ago, and the earliest of those memories are hazy and vague, just as a human child's early memories would be. If reminded of events "older" than her current age, she can often recall them to some degree, though the memories are often incomplete, and she has a tendency to "fill in the gaps" by just making things up.

Like all Asterians, the Princess has no physiological need to eat or sleep. She does, though. Upon being introduced to food and sleep by her Earth friends, she quickly became addicted, and she now indulges herself with junk food and sleeps the day away like any ordinary human teenager. Adults working in the Palace of Serenity have nicknamed her the "Sleepy Princess" for her tendency to nap at inopportune times.

The Princess's clothing, like her body, is a magical construct she can alter at will—with the exception of her usual school uniform, which is an ordinary material object and requires laundering just like any other mundane article of clothing.

Personality

Princess Alice in her school uniform @CC_Reisz

Princess Alice is infamously capricious and temperamental, frequently experiencing rapid, intense mood swings. She has little impulse control and tends to act without considering long-term consequences. She is nearly always desperate for attention, going to great lengths to try to impress her subjects and gain their admiration. Her emotional volatility and impulsiveness, in combination with her unchecked ability to manipulate reality through thought alone, frequently become everyone else's problem. Her royal guard unit, the Centralia Honor Guard, predominantly serves to protect the world from the Princess rather than to protect the Princess from external threats.

Princess Alice's behavior and level of maturity generally reflect her apparent age. The causal relationship is unclear: whether her age is determined by her mood or her demeanor is determined by her age has been a point of debate for centuries.

The Princess takes deep pride in her own immaturity, which she views as a positive trait. She considers it a compliment to be told she's acting "childish" or "juvenile", even when she is fully aware that it was intended as an insult. Conversely, when she is praised for her maturity in handling a difficult situation, she takes offense, though this doesn't stop her from eagerly taking credit for whatever resolution she's just accomplished.

Somewhat ironically, given her position as an autocratic ruler, the Princess seems to have a strong anti-authoritarian streak. She displays a casual disregard for rules and restrictions, much to the consternation of The Handler. When asked why she thinks the rules don't apply to her, she simply replies that "The rules don't apply to anyone if you don't want them to." Professor Forneus has been noted as one of very few authority figures the Princess generally acquiesces to.

As one might expect, however, the Princess's attitude towards rules shifts dramatically when she is the one making them. She insists that her status as the monarch of Centralia makes her the supreme authority in all circumstances, including private and interpersonal interactions, and that her will is supreme and absolute. Few in her day-to-day life share this view, naturally, and she often does not get her way, much to her chagrin.

Reign

Princess Alice in her military uniform @CC_Reisz

As the sovereign princess of Centralia, Princess Alice is ostensibly the nation's absolute ruler, though in practice she delegates nearly all of the day-to-day work of running the country to her adult subordinates, finding it all to be "a bunch of boring busywork". She is, however, very fond of the aesthetic trappings of royalty, insisting upon wearing her large, elaborate crown even when it is obviously impractical. When she is unable to wear her crown, such as attending classes in the prescribed uniform at Dame Adorabelle's Academy, she insists on wearing something with a crown shape or crown emblem somewhere on her person, often in the form of a hair decoration.

As sovereign, Princess Alice is the commander-in-chief of the Centralia Guard Forces, though she has little practical involvement in their operations. She has been known to occasionally wear a military uniform, especially when she wants to "remind" adult authority figures that she "outranks" them. She was once sent to detention for wearing her military uniform to class instead of her approved school uniform. (Her argument that The Headmistress never specified which "uniform" she needed to wear to class was not entertained.) Her military uniform is adorned with what appear to be various medals and decorations, but, when pressed on the fact that she's never been in combat—and, in fact, Centralia has never been at war—she will reluctantly admit that she made them all up to make herself look cool. Her only "real" medal commemorates the time she stepped on Supreme Leader Malice's foot at a conference and pretended it was accidental. To date, this incident is the only casualty in the cold war between Centralia and Discordantia.

Princess Alice's role as sovereign of Centralia entitles her to know where the Fairies originate—knowledge held by very few other than the fairies themselves—but she is sworn to absolute secrecy. The Princess often brags to her schoolmates that she knows where fairies come from, but when they ask her to tell them, she reluctantly responds that she just can't tell anyone. Naturally, the other children dismiss her claim, assuming she's simply making it up for attention.

Divinity

Princess Alice has been known to self-identify as a deity, though by her own admission, nobody actually worships her. On one occasion she did manage to amass a small group of followers who venerated her as their supreme goddess and obeyed her every whim, but she quickly distanced herself from them, finding the whole situation "just a little bit too creepy". To this day, she finds herself occasionally having to block so-called "Alismatics" on Blathr or Tamblr.

Relationships

Princess Lexi

Princess Alice was introduced to Lexi, Princess of the Mile High Kingdom, as a fellow student at Dame Adorabelle's Academy. The two princesses, realizing they had much in common, quickly became close friends, and today they are virtually inseparable. Princess Lexi is the only student Princess Alice has been willing to share a dormitory with, and Lexi often stays with Alice at the Palace of Serenity in Queen City, where she is the only person other than Alice herself who is permitted to enter the Stellar Nursery. While she would never admit it to anyone else, Princess Alice has confided in Princess Lexi that she is the one person she truly views as her equal.

Supreme Leader Malice

Princess Alice first encountered Supreme Leader Malice on an online forum for anime discussion. Malice responded poorly to Princess Alice's opinion that she prefers the second season of Magical Guardian Himeko!! to the first, instigating an argument that ended with both heads of state being banned from the forum for a week. The following day, the Princess hosted Malice as part of a diplomatic visit at the Palace of Serenity. Malice's first remark to Princess Alice was to ask for her wifi password, but she quickly recognized the Princess as the girl she had been arguing with online, and immediately declared Princess Alice her sworn enemy, pledging to bring about the downfall of Centralia "for the glory of Discordantia".

Princess Alice does not regard their "rivalry" particularly seriously, especially because Supreme Leader Malice has never meaningfully acted on it beyond various attempts to embarrass her on social media. She does freely admit that Malice "really gets on her nerves" when they're forced to be together in person, though.