Something I haven't seen anyone mention yet is how the opening tale in the pilot is clearly refering not to only Gwen herself, but ALSO Olivia, who to me is clearly supposed to parallel Gwen's role as the captive princess of the Park's kingdom
Putting aside the whole "Princess trapped in a tower" symbolism which is *painfully* explicit here, this conversation with her father makes it clear what role she's supposed to play: while it's not clear if this scene happens at the beggining of the Park's history or if it had already existed for a while, what IS clear is that Olivia's father is, well, grooming her to continue his legacy and take over the Park's operations, watching over the guests from afar and keeping the magic flowing while sitting contently in her gilded cage, with all her shiny toys and machines. He frames it all as a big shiny gift for her, compensation for something that happened in the past while also urging her to forget that same past and accept the now
So naturally Olivia complied and became some sort of "ruler" of the Park, at the very least acting as a (human) face for the public. And she has kept this role for YEARS, so much so that in the present she STILL remains on the same damn room, just now bedridden and surrounded by medical staff and freaky androids instead of toys. She's a much of a prisoner of the Park's underlying structure as Guinevere is, the main difference being that while Gwen apparently recognizes that and is constantly trying to escape, Olivia probably never realized she was one to begin with (how could you, if most of what you've ever known was a prison?)
That is also the reason why adult Olivia seems so distraught about Gwen's scape: she doesn't realize she's living in a cage and so can't for the life of her understand why Gwen, her friend/toy/surrogate mother figure(?), keeps escaping. She rationalizes it as an error in Gwen's programming and thus is always trying to "fix her", not necessarily out of malice but because she's desperate to keep her one and only companion at her side, jailed together, forever
It's downright tragic and a GENIUS idea for a villain: a captive princess that rules her kingdom from afar while subsequently being a slave to it. I can't wait to see what direction the show takes
This is very much my read on it also, and it's what elevates Knights of Guinevere for me. Before the pilot aired, there was a lot of "ha ha Dana Terrace hates Disney she is going to Epically Own Them!" going around, and a bit of a presumption that the sum total of the show's imagery and messaging would amount to "fuck you Disney! Blood and guts dystopian Disney Princess imagery ha ha fuck you!"
Which would have been fine and fair enough, and certainly a sentiment Dana Terrace has earned the right to!
But the show doesn't stop at a South Park-ian raised middle finger to the corporation, it doesn't just scoff and spit and cry "it's all phoney!"
The pilot is premised on an understanding that no matter how fake or how toxic it might be, the Disney Princesses and their stories are important to people (Frankie seems to most directly embody this, hallucinating Gwen in her most glorious form even when she's broken and damaged), and that finding love and meaning in these things does not make a person weak or stupid or bad.
It's... not necessarily healthy to fixate on it, and Frankie is very explicitly shown to retreat from reality into hallucinatory fantasy, and those fantasies cause her to act rashly and put herself in serious danger. But it's not evil, it's not stupid, and she isn't wrong to love Gwen and the beauty that Gwen represents.
Gwen, the Princess, is not the problem.
And neither is Olivia, really. She's a deeply traumatized child who was not only groomed and isolated by her father, but who seems to be stuck in a state of permanently arrested development, absolutely cocooned in saccharine childish fantasies, and consumed by the obsessive idea of "fixing" Gwen. If she can only "fix" her properly this time, then... then she'll stay. Then it'll work. If she can only make her PERFECT, then it will work.
There's a heavy implication that Orville is acting out of guilt for something, some trauma or pain that Olivia was put through because of him, and my read is that Olivia's obsession with fixing and "perfecting" Gwen is a sublimated obsessive desire to somehow fix, somehow undo, whatever that trauma is. My first guess would be the death of a loved one, and my first guess would be Olivia's mother (there's that conspicuous family portrait we see a couple of times + the umbilical cord imagery when Olivia pulls on her guts: a child yanking on the connection to a mother).
Olivia and Frankie seem somewhat parallel with one another in that way, opposites and complementaries. Both of them obsessed with Gwen, both of them in a state of alienation from reality. Olivia is physically frail, Frankie is physically potent, Olivia is rich and privileged, Frankie is poor and marginalized. Both of them are deeply marked by the neglect and abuse of father figures who think they mean well.
Olivia is not the problem, she's the product of the problem. The problem is the fucking park. This hovering, consuming leech on the world, gorging on resources and throwing up garbage and poison on the world below. It is the world, the structure, the system of cyclical and constantly escalating consumption - this is the thing which is not only poisoning the world, but which is strangling Olivia's life out of her with endless swaddling childhood, and which produces and commodifies Gwen's body (bodies?) for consumption and abuse, and which exploits the fantasies and dreams of people like Frankie and Andi, and poisons their world and impoverishes their lives.
And I think that's a lot more interesting and salient and complicated than "this show is about how Disney is bad and princesses suck" that I have seem some people kind of reduce it to. The art isn't the problem, the characters aren't the problem. It is the ravenous maw of consumerist exploitation which uses them as a lure.
