Princess Tutu’s twenty-first opening monologue commences with a familiar line: “once upon a time, there was a man who died.” This is the same line it used to open its first monologue, before introducing the founding myth of the prince, raven, and Tutu herself. In that monologue, after describing the story, the narrator went on to speak of how the characters lived beyond their author’s death, and ultimately escaped their pages – only for the author to ultimately reappear and signal his approval. So how does this new version of the tale compare to that first story?

Well, there are certainly some running themes. As the narrator tells us, “all the stories the man spun came true, so the king, the nobility, and the kingdom’s rich all went to him to get him to write their stories. But when their wishes were granted they feared his power, and began to abhor him. So when the man died, the people rejoiced that a source of misfortune had gone. No one heard the sound of the dead man’s scornful laughter.”

The overt narrative being described here is a familiar and archetypal one. “Unlikely hero gains powerful gift, is initially celebrated for it, and is then turned against when his admirers start to believe he is a threat” is a sturdy narrative template that has supported thousands of stories over the years, able to be easily retrofitted in order to describe the dangers of hubris, the importance of appreciating what you have, the fickle love of the public eye, and much else besides. Here in Princess Tutu, this story takes on a variety of additional resonances courtesy of our existing narrative, with both the “there was a man who died” and “scornful laughter” bookends echoing the first episode’s implications. The author clearly believes he has won out over the relieved townsfolk… but why?

Well, for one thing, Princess Tutu has made it abundantly and consistently clear that the power and responsibility of authorship do not end with a creator’s death. Though Drosselmeyer is now only a ghostly presence within this world, his influence in determining how Tutu’s stars view themselves extends far beyond his physical reach. But then again, as Tutu’s twentieth episode demonstrated, the power of the author also has clear limits. At the end of that episode, Raetsel decided she didn’t need another author at all, and wrote a personal journey that defied Fakir’s narrative. This spectral author may be laughing because his words are undefeated, but he may also be lying because there was never anything to defeat – because his power was far more limited than the powerful assumed, and thus his chief talent had only ever been convincing greater powers to surrender their agency to his will.

In the end, we are left with a frustrating and intentional ambiguity, and a renewed emphasis on the strange power of the author. Though Fakir has found himself uniquely burdened with the ability to reshape this world’s narrative, both this monologue’s ambiguity and the course of episode twenty have demonstrated that “authorship” and “agency” have a thoroughly tangled relationship. Raetsel herself struggled with the responsibility of authorship in her own way – by choosing to cede control of her own actions, determining that personal authorship of her own tale was too great a burden to bear. But it is only the stories we write for ourselves that ultimately express our personal truth.

The episode proper begins (these intros just keep getting longer, huh) with Ahiru experiencing a combined terror and relief at the freedom of ceding authorship. Though she is haunted by nightmares about returning to being a duck once the story is complete, she feels comfortable leaving matters in Fakir’s hands, content in knowing that Princess Tutu’s role is done. Though Ahiru has often fought against Drosselmeyer’s schemes, she has rarely denied his underlying framing – she has acted bravely, but she has acted in the ways Princess Tutu is allowed to act. By raging against Drosselmeyer’s directives without ever considering whether she might simply disobey them, Ahiru directly echoes the ambiguity of the opening monologue.

In contrast, Fakir finds himself paralyzed by the potential consequences of his own agency. After Ahiru urges him again to start writing a happy story for Mytho, Fakir demures with a variety of excuses, claiming “it’s not that everything I write comes true. And I don’t even know yet if I have the same power.” Fakir’s concerns are valid, and Ahiru’s insistence here reflects her own blind spots. As someone who’s always done her best to embrace the role she’s been assigned in the stories of others, Ahiru rarely considers her own agency, and likely hasn’t even spared a thought for the heavy responsibility of authorship.

Fortunately, Ahiru is still a supportive friend. Even if she doesn’t quite understand the scale of what she’s asking, she still feels bad about continuously pressuring the uncomfortable Fakir, and quickly berates herself for it. It’s a moment that doesn’t really reflect on Princess Tutu’s grand thematic argument, but feels wonderfully reflective of Ahiru’s personality, and a great lesson in its own right. We often feel like we must understand exactly how we’ve hurt others in order to redress such issues, but simply understanding you’ve caused hurt, and acknowledging the responsibility of that, is often enough. You don’t need to be a psychologist to be a good friend.

Even if her heart is in the right place, Ahiru is still relatively paralyzed by her perspective on character agency. Her condition is soon noted by an unlikely supporter – Cat-sensei, who refuses to let Ahiru move into en pointe lessons because she “has decided she cannot do anything, and is not moving forward.” Having assumed Fakir can now fix Mytho’s issues, and knowing Princess Tutu’s role in the narrative is concluded, Ahiru truly has ceded her own agency. And even when Cat-sensei calls her out on this fact, her initial response is a hopeless “but what can I do?”

Ahiru’s sense of learned helplessness shouldn’t be considered a major personal failing. Rather, her genuine belief that she has no agency left reflects another power of the author, one of their most subtly manipulative and ultimately damaging techniques: setting the framework of potential action. In politics, this framework is referred to as the “Overton window,” the window of things which the current cultural climate dictates are politically possible. Things that lie outside of the Overton window are impossible because we’ve collectively come to assume or believe they’re impossible – but individual politicians can actually shift the Overton window through their own actions, literally rewriting the public consciousness of the nation, and through their own authority redefining what it is okay to seek and believe.

For a journalist, setting the narrative might imply asking a question like “do you think this man is the worst problem facing this country, or the SECOND-worst problem facing this country?” A question like that is an extreme example, but it underlines how narrative framing can force responders into immediately accepting the author’s perspective. And when it comes to an actual narrative like Princess Tutu, the fact that Ahiru’s heroic journey is taking place in a narrative that assumes Tutu will never succeed has taught her to actually believe that, and not to seek a disruption of this assumed template. Drosselmeyer never asks “are you going to obey me” – he asks “can you complete your role, or will you fail in that role,” leaving it assumed that Ahiru will accept his framework. Ahiru has been taught she is powerless, and fears that so much she dreams about it, and eventually that teaching becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Meanwhile, while still researching the nature of his power, Fakir is ultimately summoned by a student named Autor (which probably sounded less on the nose as an english word being spoken to a Japanese audience). Autor knows of Fakir’s power, and ominously informs us that this is indeed the “power of Drosselmeyer.” After agreeing to help Fakir control this power, Autor demands Fakir swear absolute loyalty to him… which prompts Ahiru to stumble in, and rally back on Fakir’s behalf. It’s a cute moment that reflects what may ultimately be Ahiru’s saving grace – even if she is not able to step outside of her narrative frame for her own sake, she would move mountains to save her friends.

As the episode draws to a conclusion, we further learn that Fakir may be a direct descendent of Drosselmeyer, and that ancient “tale-spinners” once used an oak tree in this very town to test their powers. Kneeling before this tree’s stone-marked grave, Fakir reaches out to something greater… and is met in turn, by a wild and captivating force that seems to dominate his every sense. As his physical body is wrapped in an old tree, Fakir is mentally urged to “submerge yourself in the bog of truth that lies far, far away.” The force within this tree seems like a spirit of pure narrative invention, chanting that familiar “those who accept shall find happiness, those who resist shall find glory” mantra, in a voice we know well: that of the opening narrator. As we’ve come to understand, every single narrative has its own perspective – there is no unbiased authorial voice, and no story which is “just” a story. And though he first wishes to submit to this great spirit, and to become some extension of this universe’s intangible narrative substance, a familiar voice calls him back to the living.

“I’m sorry, Fakir,” Ahiru sobs, clutching her friend’s limp body. “I couldn’t do anything.” And yet, without her, Fakir would have been lost. Though Ahiru isn’t yet able to realize it, her mere presence in the lives of characters like Fakir and Rue is deeply impacting their stories, and helping them find the strength to pursue their own happiness. We often consider ourselves relatively powerless, but that is itself a reflection of the stories we consume – stories of great movers and doers, stories of people who shaped the world, or at least had the power to make the world believe it. But most important actions don’t occur on the scale of world-shaking drama; they occur in everyday places to everyday people, when one person cares enough to be there for another. Princess Tutu could never have saved Fakir from the weight of his own regrets; it was only his precious, indispensable friend Ahiru who could possibly do that.

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