We open Princess Tutu’s seventeenth episode with yet another strange, thematically resonant image; a rose standing alone, captured in either a mirror or a picture frame. “Once upon a time, there was a young man with a beautiful face” our untrustworthy narrator explains. “The people loved the handsome young man, but he never showed any interest in loving anyone. This is because all he loved was himself. When the young man, who had neglected to love anyone and sought only to be loved, found someone he truly cared for, he realized he had lost even the words to express those feelings.”

This vaguely Narcissus-themed parable feels like it could only apply to our wayward prince, Mytho. Mytho has spent all of Princess Tutu searching for his feelings, and now that he’s regained some of them, Kraehe’s influence has left him unable to truly express them. However, like so many of Princess Tutu’s fables, the framing of this story is a purposeful deception that obscures its moral intent. It was not Mytho’s fault that his heart shattered, and that he lost the capacity for love. But by starting this narrative after the actual motivating incident, our narrator is able to frame Mytho’s heartless state as his initial, natural state of being, a flaw that he himself must overcome. Begin a story with one scene, and it may come across as a senseless tale of unwarranted violence; pan a few scenes back, and you may find that violence contextualized as justice, revenge, or something else entirely.

The visual illustration of this introduction emphasizes the importance of framing, as well as the impossibility of achieving a truly “correct” perspective when it comes to Mytho specifically. Mytho is simply a rose in a blank canvas; beautiful, but lacking in any meaning or human context. When you pan backwards from him, you discover not genuine context, but simply another portrait frame, another interpretation of his fundamental nature. A beautiful object stranded in a blank canvas, Mytho has no past and no future – he is an object, an ideal, and this makes him the willing prey of anyone who wishes to dictate his story.

Willful framing of Mytho’s narrative is preeminent throughout this episode, as Princess Tutu continues to expand its scope and focus on the larger social narrative of Mytho’s existence. Early on, we see some colorfully designed classmates gossiping about how beautiful Mytho is, framing him as an object for their own fantasies. Ahiru’s own friends go several steps further, and directly lament about how Mytho has lost his “mysterious side.” Mytho was most enchanting to these girls when he remained at a distance, possessing no motives and no personality of his own. When Mytho is just a rose in a frame, you can believe whatever you want to believe; he is a perfect object of worship, an actor whose range can encompass whatever fantasy you picture him fulfilling.

To be a worshiped prince might seem appealing, but as scenes of gossip and rumor build up, it becomes clear that the framing others choose for you will never reflect an honest selfhood, and are often based in motives that possess no sympathy for your own feelings. Ahiru’s mildly sadistic friend Lillie makes this point most clearly, when she outright admits that her idea of a “good couple” is simply one that provides entertainment to her, a third party observer. This focus on how outsiders perceive and frame our nature plays naturally with this episode’s interrogation of what it means to truly be a “prince.” In Tutu, a prince is not simply a young male member of royalty; a prince is a public figure of worship and renown, someone who “loves everyone and is loved by everyone.” Of course, no one can truly be loved by everyone – and ultimately, it is only through the establishment of a clear emotional distance that princes can exist at all, maintaining their mystique by never coming close enough to be truly hated or loved.

This episode’s focus character may understand that better than anyone, in spite of being a total buffoon. Along with Mytho, this episode’s opening monologue is clearly aimed at self-styled new prince Femio, an absurd ham who truly claims to love and be loved by everyone. Accompanied by a butler-slash-matador and constantly awash in rose petals, Femio is a ridiculous clown, one whose endless confidence in his own charm leads Tutu’s heroes to alternately spurn and simply gape at him. Femio is essentially the inverse of Mytho; instead of being a figure who everyone heaps their love and expectations upon, he believes everyone else is acting out of their love for him. This being in spite of the fact that he’s a probationary class reject who can’t actually dance, and who sees Cat-sensei’s skepticism as a reflection of the fact that “geniuses are never appreciated in their own time.”

Femio may be an idiot, but as it turns out, he is precisely the idiot Princess Tutu needs at the moment. In spite of seeming like a character from one of Utena’s farcical Nanami episodes, his classroom declaration that “there is a feeling that gets across even without words” actually sparks Mytho’s own heart. Though the Kraehe-poisoned Mytho has become corrupted to the point where he’s even starting to abuse Rue herself, Mytho’s true self uses this break in the fog to express his own love, miming “I love you” in dance before collapsing. Of course, even this one brief declaration of intent ends up being ruthlessly recontextualized by the peanut gallery; ultimately, it is only Ahiru’s understanding that the true Mytho is a boy possessed by sorrow that lets her see this act as a cry for help. The crowd does not care about Mytho’s pain; embodied through Lillie once again, all the onlookers care about is that they “smell blood to be spilled.”

Desperate to please her father and spurned even by her prisoner Mytho, Rue ultimately latches onto Femio’s bountiful love in order to steal his heart. But when the moment of truth come, Femio reveals he is as insecure and human as everyone else; in spite of claiming to “love everyone,” he believes he and Rue must actually know each other to fall in love. The role of the prince is fundamentally incompatible with genuine human connection, and in the end, even Femio’s silly but honest desire to love everyone ends up helping to disrupt Rue’s ritual. After being mocked as unlovable by both Mytho and her father, Rue’s concentration breaks when Femio, having seen her transform into Kraehe, offers just as much affection as before. Neither Rue nor Kraehe are truly unlovable people, but having been assigned that role by the only people who say they love her, Rue cannot break the frame of her own accord.

In the end, it’s actually Femio’s absurd performances and endless self-confidence that save him. Though Tutu offers to dance with him, Femio simply doesn’t need the help; his profoundly sturdy (if also misguided) self-image breaks through Rue’s manipulation, and his willingness to love even the dejected Kraehe shocks Rue so much she retreats. Princess Tutu’s seventeenth episode doesn’t fully scorn the ideal of the prince, and accepts that our public and personal perceptions of self will always be a compromise between what people wish to believe and what truly is. Frames can easily trap us, but they can also offer something to aspire to, a vision of selfhood that we do our best to live up to. By believing he is destined to love so fiercely, Femio actually delivers his love to the desperately wanting Kraehe. Not too bad for a guy who can’t even dance.

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