Back in 2012, via my RSS feed, there was an article about an artist that was in the middle of a series of various Disney heroines reimaged to wear period accurate clothing. Me being the curious cat I tended to be was intrigued and sifted through the images available and was floored with what I saw.

Jasmine (from the Aladdin series) was one character I would love to attempt to pull off if I had the abs for her… and I don’t. But even if I did I still would have preferred to be as historically accurate as possible, so when I saw what the artist had drawn up for her I was disappointed when I couldn’t see the front of the outfit due to the position drawn of the character.

Le sigh…

Fortunately after a little more digging around the artist provided information about their primary inspiration for the piece that stemmed from pre-Islamic Middle East (aka Persia).

With a bit more research it was realized just what / how Aladdin developed Princess Jasmine:

Jasmine is also the first princess of any ethnicity. Keeping in mind that this film was released pre-September 11th, (not to say 9-11 affected the way we view these characters today) but unlike the princess Tiana in The Princess and the Frog, racial sensitivity and political correctness was surprisingly not as touchy an issue in the creation of a Muslim princess.

In fact, in the book 1001 Arabian Nights the story of Aladdin (and subsequently the princess) was Asian. However Aladdin was most likely not originally apart of the stories dating back to about 1000 A.D., but was added to the compilation by Antoine Galland, a French author/translator, who published the books in 12 volumes between 1704 and 1717.

Gotta love backstory… But wait there is more…

While the Disney version underwent many contemporary changes, the princess’s predicament of being pressured to find a suitor remained relatively the same. However, originally the princess’s name was Badroulbadour and was very vain and spoiled.

Yup… They didn’t want a vain and spoiled princess that may actually grow over the course of the film, they wanted someone more heroic… Oh the irony. (And people wonder why I scour the globe for the original source material for the Disney films – or any animated films – to read)

Ah well… So what were earlier depictions of this Princess Badroulbadour? Well, that turned out to be a much more scarce proposition… But the following appears to be more of a compromise between various sources, drawn up beautifully:

While as the following goes along the mindset that the original Princess Badroulbadour was indeed more of a Far East Asian… persuasion:

Does anyone else here think that the second one kind of looks like Disney’s rendition of Mulan? Anyway… Gotta love history…

So the artist (Shoomlah) has a fantastic collection of their works over at their deviantart page and of course their tumblr (LIGNE CLAIRE)… it would appear that they have additional pieces in the works for future characters from the Disney line-up, it is just the matter of paring down the pieces and designs and settling on a choice.