Though Princess Tutu is a story about the nature of narratives, and how stories sculpt our lives, its sympathy has mostly been limited to the players within those stories. While characters like Rue and Ahiru try their best to write their own stories, they are ultimately constrained by the whims of their author – and Drosselmeyer himself isn’t sympathetic at all. Drosselmeyer has never hesitated in inflicting hardship upon his characters; he seems to believe they exist entirely for his amusement, and that he has no responsibility to respect their feelings or dreams. But here in its twentieth episode, Princess Tutu at last reveals that it fully understands the plight of the author, and the heavy responsibility of holding characters’ lives in your hands. Princess Tutu’s characters struggle even to choose their own paths, but if they are to succeed, they will have to embrace the power of authorship, and the responsibility of writing a happier future.

Episode twenty’s ultimate themes are only hinted at in its opening fable, which mostly just gestures towards the general difficulty of making consequential life choices. We open with the evocative image of a chair on a stage, a bouquet in its seat and a pendulum swinging ominously in the distance. “Once upon a time, there was a young woman. The young woman was to marry a groom chosen for her by her parents, and not her sweetheart, whom she loved. She knew that her groom loved her very much, but did her sweetheart care for her even more than that? The young woman wasn’t certain. In the end, after wavering between them, the young woman even became unsure which of them she really loved.”

There are faint echoes of our heroes’ stories in this narrative, from the idea of choosing between two lovers to the restriction of having your romantic path set by your parents’ wishes. So too does the imagery echo some of Tutu’s narrative choices, from the focus on windows as a stand-in for romantic longing, to the scattering of raven’s feathers in the final image. You could frame this story as a metaphor for Ahiru, Rue, or even Fakir, as the loose papers of that final image will soon reflect his own struggles. But ultimately, simple echoes and visual references do not in themselves create meaning – it is through the contrasting of known concepts against unknown frameworks, and the challenging of our existing assumptions through new framing, that turns base concepts into arguments and themes. And in this case, there is little challenging of our existing assumptions; instead, this introduction is mostly just introducing this episode’s focus character, the conflicted Raetsel.

The episode proper opens on Fakir in the library, once again furiously seeking an answer for Mytho. Though he pores through any book that seems like it might have an answer, every book he choses is for some reason lacking an ending. Fakir sees this issue as one of his own making, and asks “why do I choose only books whose endings are missing?” It’s a very appropriate and portentous question, but before he can really examine it, he runs into Raetsel herself.

While episode eighteen honed in Fakir’s ongoing emotional struggles, the twentieth offers some welcome context on his past. Through the ever-helpful meddling of Pike and Lilly, Ahiru is soon dumped in the path of Fakir and Raetsel, and learns that Raetsel essentially acted like a big sister or surrogate mother for Fakir and Mytho. Warm scenes at Karon’s house remind us that Fakir has actually experienced a full life in this picture book world, and Raetsel is able to bring a sympathetic outsider’s perspective to the fond relationship developing between Ahiru and Fakir. And walking home with Ahiru, Raetsel ultimately drops an incredible piece of information – that Fakir used to write stories, and that some of those stories came true.

The power to sculpt narratives is very clearly the greatest of all powers in the world of Princess Tutu. Drosselmeyer’s power essentially makes him the god of this world, though things have failed to go his way often enough that it’s clear he is not omnipotent. Outside of Drosselmeyer, characters like Rue’s “father” and the tainted Mytho have expressed themselves primarily through their ability to rewrite the stories of others – Mytho never takes his victims by direct force, he gaslights them and rewrites their stories such that they can only see happiness through joining with him. But such methods likely come naturally to characters like the raven; in contrast, when Ahiru asks Fakir to use his powers for good, he responds with panicked anger and a defiant “I don’t take orders from you!”

Fakir’s growth through these past several episodes has been Princess Tutu’s most prominent dramatic thread, as he’s learned to embrace Ahiru’s friendship and possibly even expand his own conception of self. But all throughout, his pride as a knight and commitment to acting out the story’s narrative have remained solid, the one thing he could truly see as his own. In spite of Mytho’s mockery and his own failures, Fakir still thinks in terms of “how can I protect Mytho as a knight,” a tendency that has slowly shifted from gallantry to desperation. But fortunately for Fakir, his friend Ahiru has already grown so much that she cannot accept this answer. Defiantly stating that “I don’t want things to stay like this,” she asks Raetsel why Fakir is so scared of his own power – and learns that when Fakir was a child, his attempt to write himself into a hero’s role immediately resulted in the maiming of his family by those malicious crows.

In light of this, nearly all of Fakir’s actions make more sense, and reflect the fundamental difference between him and this story’s antagonists. I’ve talked in the past about how characters like Drosselmeyer and the raven underline the potential cruelty of the writer’s positions. While Princess Tutu the show urges sympathy for all our fictional characters, writers like Drosselmeyer delight in torturing their characters purely for their own entertainment. In contrast, Fakir only saw his power as a positive thing when he didn’t realize it could hurt people – the moment he realized his stories could have negative consequences, he locked that part of himself away entirely. Terrified of the possibility of using his gift for evil, Fakir found solace in embracing a role in someone else’s story. As a knight he may be largely powerless, but he is also free of responsibility – no matter how he rages or swings his sword, his stories will never bring another sorrow again. Of course, even Fakir’s very fears demonstrate his fundamental suitability to this task. Just as great leaders cannot be people who desire power for its own sake, so too must great storytellers understand the humbling responsibility of holding characters’ lives in their hands.

But before Fakir can accept this heavy mantle, he must fight as a knight once more. Episode twenty’s finale brings us to one more seduction by the poisoned Mytho, as he attempts to draw Raetsel away from both her promised husband and still-beloved sweetheart. As in the previous episode, Mytho’s promise is clarity: clarity of love and of purpose, an escape from the perpetual hesitance and emotional contradictions of our mixed-up lives. Though they are far apart, Mytho’s entreaty feels almost like an answer to Fakir’s own struggles – “embrace this one single role, and escape the maddening responsibility of authorship and personal agency.” And to this alluring simplicity, Ahiru answers in the kindest possible way. “What’s wrong with wavering?” she asks. “That’s something you feel because you truly love people.” Only the entirely self-interested can escape the pain of contradictory desires. Whether it’s Fakir desiring the simplicity of knighthood or Raetsel desiring a prewritten story of her own, there is certainly a comfort in defining yourself by another’s pen – but it is a false comfort, and it will never bring you true joy.

Mytho is ultimately unable to carry through with his plan, and incapable of striking down his friend Fakir. And with the kind words of all the people who care about him on his mind, Fakir is able to take a brave step of his own, and commit pen to paper for the first time in years. In the end, Fakir’s worries are unfounded – even though he wrote the story he thought Raetsel wanted, she ends up discovering her own happiness. Perhaps that itself is the final solace of the author, a welcome limitation of that terrifying, godlike gift. Though we have a responsibility to be kind to our characters, we can take comfort knowing that great characters have their own agency, and will surprise us with their choices again and again.

This article was made possible by reader support. Thank you all for all that you do.