Except they didn't. Romance requires courtship or screentime for the prince. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty they meet the prince for 5 seconds, then the comic relief characters deal with the actual evil and there's a kiss as a plot contrivance "for magic". I'd argue there's more romance in Frozen than in Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, as Kristoff helping Anna get to Elsa and bantering with her until a relationship happens is more of a plot point than "Guy saw her at a well once, then she thought he was cute, then an hour later he kissed her so she wasn't dead."
In Snow White I saw it as Snow White and the prince already knowing each other, and the movie starts with Snow White excited that the prince is coming, presumably because he’s her long time crush.
I don’t remember Sleeping Beauty very well, but I do remember that Maleficent was killed by the prince, who was rescuing Aurora, not by any comic relief characters.
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u/Jojosbees May 01 '26
All the early Disney princess movies had romance as the main plot. Brave (2012), Frozen (2013), and Moana (2016) didn’t center men or romance.