Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper is the fourth in the film series and is billed as the first-ever Barbie Musical. It was released in 2004, preceded by Barbie of Swan Lake and followed by Barbie Fairytopia.

It stars Barbie as both Anneliese and Erika, a princess and a pauper. After a chance meeting, the two become quick friends due to their similarities and how they look just like each other (except for their hair colors and the fact that Anneliese has a royal birthmark). However, with the kingdom's finances falling, Anneliese is engaged to Dominick, the king of a neighboring kingdom, despite her love for her tutor. When the queen's scheming advisor Preminger arranges for Anneliese to be kidnapped so the marriage to King Dominick will not go through, Anneliese's tutor Julian arranges for Erika to replace Anneliese until the real princess is found.

Has two tie-in games. In the CD-ROM game, the player takes control of Erika as she takes on various tasks from the Book of Royalty to prove Preminger wrong before her upcoming coronation. In the Game Boy Advance game, Preminger has caused havoc around the kingdom and the player plays Anneliese, Erika, Serafina and Wolfie as they use their talents to fix up Preminger's troubles and stop him.

Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper provides examples of the following tropes:

• Actually, I Am Him: Upon their first meeting, Erika comments that Anneliese has the same name as the princess.
  "Well..."
• Adapted Out: Midas and Hervé don't appear in the junior novelization of the movie. Virtually nothing in the plot is changed by removing the former, but the removal of the latter means that Preminger doesn't get thrown off by Hervé while trying to escape at the end, and Dominick's the one who stops him just by blocking his exit.
• Against the Grain: Anneliese and Erika both dream of being more than what's expected of them. Anneliese desires to pursue her scientific studies and marry for love, despite being a princess who's supposed to marry the arranged match chosen for her, and Erika desires to become a famous singer instead of spending the rest of her life in indentured servitude. Finding out that they have this kind of dream in common is what causes them to become fast friends.
• Age-Gap Romance: Preminger plans to marry Anneliese, and is clearly a lot older than her. It does not actually have much to do with romance, though, as he only wants to marry her to become king.
• All Animals Are Dogs: Wolfie is actually a cat, but his sense of smell is akin to a dog. He even barks like one.
• Almost Kiss: Dominick and Erika almost kiss in the throne room after he gives her an engagement ring, only for Preminger to barge in and expose Erika for impersonating Anneliese. Admittedly, it's probably for the better that the kiss didn't happen at that moment because Dominick's consent to it would've been questionable (he thought he was about to kiss Anneliese, not Erika).
• Altar Diplomacy:
  • Queen Genevieve arranges Anneliese's marriage to Dominick so his wealth can revitalize her kingdom's failing economy. On Dominick's end, it's briefly mentioned that the two kingdoms would be joined after the wedding, making him king of both.
  • Preminger's plan to become king revolves around this; his original intent was to use his (stolen) wealth as a bargaining chip for Anneliese's hand. When his original plan goes off the rails, he instead brokers a similar deal with Queen Genevieve.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: Preminger forces this onto the Queen at the end, offering to "save" her kingdom from poverty only on the condition that she marries him and makes him King.
• Animal Motifs: Pink and blue butterflies for our pink and blue heroines.
• Animal Talk: Serafina and Wolfie talk to each other in English for the audience's benefit, but to the in-universe humans it just sounds like meowing. Or barking, in Wolfie's case.
• Animated Actors: Played straight in the credits, which treat "Barbie" and "Ken" as real actors. Barbie plays invokedboth Anneliese and Erika, while Ken plays both Julian and Dominick. There are even "bloopers" of Barbie and Ken messing up their takes in the end credits, which of course aren't real and had to be animated and voiced by the actual humans behind the movie.
• Antiquated Linguistics: It's downplayed and definitely intentional, but when Erika tries talking like a princess she's very formal and stops using contractions.
• Arranged Marriage: Princess Anneliese and King Dominick are betrothed, due to Anneliese's kingdom being in need of Dominick's wealth. Neither is happy about it, though Dominick warms to the idea after hitting it off with Anneliese (actually Erika in disguise).
• Artistic License – Biology: Wolfie is described as a "calico", but he's male. Calico cats are almost exclusively females, and in rare cases there are males, a genetic disorder stops them from breeding.^*Tortoiseshell males are often referred to as calicos.
• Babies Ever After: Serafina and Wolfie manage to get together, having lots and lots of little kittens.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Preminger, because he's evil. His henchmen, because they're just that stupid.
• Bad Boss: Madame Carp is awful to Erika and the other dressmaker. Preminger is also pretty nasty to his cronies, but they still seem to like him quite a bit.
• Bag of Kidnapping: Preminger's thugs use this on Anneliese, and later to capture Julian when he confronts the former.
• Batman Gambit: Anneliese's fondness for her cat is used to lure her to her kidnappers.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Anneliese and Erika are the conventionally attractive heroines, while Preminger and his minions Nick and Nack are goofy-looking at best.
• Because Destiny Says So: The narrator states this as the reason for why Anneliese and Erika, Identical Strangers who were born on the same day, would eventually meet.
  "But fate decreed they would..."
• Bedsheet Ghost: Anneliese creates one to escape her kidnappers by putting a blanket over Serafina.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Preminger seems to mistake his relationship with Anneliese as this, claiming in his Villain Song that Anneliese acts cold to him in order to hide her attraction. While she's never shown treating him that way, it could be that she was just so happy to be rescued from Madame Carp's that she didn't really care who showed up for her.
• Beta Couple: Anneliese and Julian are this to Erika and Dominick, already being close and in love before the movie's plot starts. In contrast, Erika and Dominick only meet while Erika is disguised as Anneliese and the movie shows them falling in love during her time masquerading as the princess.
• Be Yourself: Erika tells her cat to do this (The Cat's Meow) because he doesn't have to be a normal cat who meows.
• Big Bad: Preminger, the queen's treasurer who intends to claim the crown and rule over the kingdom.
• Big Damn Heroes: Two instances. First Julien and Dominic arrive to help Anneliese and Erika break out, then Anneliese shows up at the wedding to object to her mother's marriage with Preminger, confirming her identity and exposing him.
• Big "NO!": Queen Genevieve lets one loose when she thinks Anneliese has been killed in a mine collapse.
• Book on the Head: Erika, while practicing to impersonate Anneliese, once walks with a book on her head during her Training Montage song - and immediately succeeds.
• Boy Meets Girl: Erika alludes to this trope in the song "If You Love Me For Me" which begins with, "Once a lass met a lad..."
• Brainy Brunette: Julian is a male example. Erika, though she lacks education, is far from stupid, either, given she's able to convince everyone she's Anneliese, even her mother, and escape from a dungeon.
• Breakfast in Bed: When Erika wakes up for the first time in Anneliese's room while impersonating her, a maid walk in with the breakfast tray. Erika asks if it will be served in bed and the confused maid answers: "As always."
• Breaking Old Trends: The first Barbie fantasy movie to not include a Framing Device where Barbie tells a story to Kelly.
• Brick Joke: Anneliese spends a moment in the movie establishing that one of the stones she's studying isn't gold, but iron pyrite, also known as "fool's gold". A few scenes later, Preminger steals it because he mistakes it for a gold nugget.
• Bumbling Henchmen Duo: Nick and Nack are Preminger's dimwitted henchmen, and mess up almost every task he gives them. The only thing they succeed at is abducting people, and that's only because their respective targets were taken completely by surprise with a Bag of Kidnapping.
• Cassandra Truth: After she returns, almost nobody (from the palace guard who refuses to let her in to Madame Carp, who thinks she's Erika wearing a wig) believes Anneliese's assertions that she is the princess. The only one who believes her is Bertie, Erika's co-worker at the dress shop.
• Cats Are Mean: Averted. Wolfie and Serafina are perfectly sweet and nice, and the mean animal is Preminger's pet poodle, Midas.
• Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Erika walks into the closet in one gown and out of it in another almost immediately.
• Chastity Couple: Both Erika/Dominick and Anneliese/Julian are pretty chaste, but the latter even more so. Where Erika and Dominick embrace and hold hands multiple times and even get an Almost Kiss, Anneliese and Julian only hug once and hold hands in the carriage. Could be justified due to the 18th century-ish setting and them being used to their social class keeping them at a distance.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Anneliese loves roses and Julian knows that. He is later able to determine that the letter supposedly left by Anneliese when she "ran away" is a fake, because it's scented with lilac rather than rose.
  • The geodes in the mine are first shown as part of a humorous sequence that serves as Nick and Nack's Establishing Character Moment, but turn out to be a metaphor for Julian and Anneliese's love and the way to save the kingdom from poverty.
  • Anneliese's tiara-shaped birthmark. It's how Preminger exposes Erika as an impostor, because she lacks the birthmark, and later how Anneliese proves her identity when exposing Preminger's treachery at his wedding to her mother.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • Anneliese's interest in geology comes in handy when she's able to recognize that the drained out gold mine is full of precious gemstones, which restarts her kingdom's economy without her having to marry King Dominick.
  • Early on, Julian gives Anneliese a rose, calling it by its scientific name. His knowledge of the local flora comes in handy when he is able to locate her based off a single pine needle Preminger dropped.
  • Erika uses her beautiful singing voice to lull the guard to sleep before making her escape.
  • Wolfie, who is essentially a dog in a cat's body, is able to use his superior sense of smell to locate Serafina and her mistress.
• Childish Villain, Mature Hero: The Evil Chancellor Preminger is a preening schemer who throws playground insults at his henchmen and outright shrieks whenever he's inconvenienced. Anneliese takes her responsibilities as princess seriously and is willing to accept an unwanted Arranged Marriage to save her kingdom from poverty, and Erika is diligent and hardworking in her efforts to pay off all her late parents' debts.
• Commonality Connection:
  • Anneliese and Erika form this, first over the fact that they are nearly identical and then when they realize that they are both unable to do what they really want because of external circumstances—Erika cannot pursue her dream career as a singer due to crippling debt, while Anneliese must forsake her passion for science and her love for Julian because of her duty to the kingdom.
  • Downplayed and subverted with Julian and Preminger—both are peasants by birth who worked their way up to positions of trust in the palace, but they show nothing but dislike toward each other.
• Contrived Coincidence: Anneliese and Erika are born at the exact same second and look exactly alike aside from their hair colors.^note A partial reference to the overall Barbie toyline where she is available in different hair colors.
• Cool Crown: Anneliese has a tiara, which Erika wears while she's disguised as her. In the promotional materials, Erika gets a symbolic one made of flowers.
• Crowd Song: The ending of the very last number, "Written in Your Heart", is sung by the crowd.
• Censor Suds: The bath scene with Erika makes sure to not show her chest or private areas, keeping her entire body covered by soap bubbles.
• Corrupt Politician: Preminger, who bankrupts the kingdom by embezzling the contents of the royal mine, both for the gold itself and to create a situation in which Anneliese would need to marry him for his riches, making him her consort.
• Covers Always Lie: The cover and multiple official stills show Anneliese wearing her crown and Erika wearing a headband of flowers. Anneliese never wears her crown once in the film (save for a still at the beginning and her royal portrait with her mother), whereas Erika wears it while pretending to be her (she does wear a flower wreath at her wedding, but it's a bunch of roses that looks nothing like the headband). They're also depicted wearing chokers, which don't appear in the film and are only on their dolls. In the video games, however, they do wear all of those accessories.
• Damsel in Distress: Anneliese is kidnapped by Nick and Nack on Preminger's orders as part of his Evil Plan to ruin her engagement to King Dominick. While she's held captive, she invokes this trope to trick Nick and Nack into letting her escape by pretending to be scared of a ghost (in reality, her cat Serafina covered in a blanket).
• Damsel out of Distress:
  • Anneliese is kidnapped twice, and both times uses her brains to escape. When abducted by Nick and Nack on Preminger's orders, she escapes them by dressing up her cat in a blanket to look like a Bedsheet Ghost, pretending to be afraid of it, and then letting the blanket drop on them and fleeing on their horse while they panic about the "ghost". Later, when she and Julian are trapped in the mines, she gets the idea of using flooding water from the rocks and a barrel to float them up to the top of the mine shaft.
  • Erika, too. She single-handedly escapes from jail by using her singing to lull the guard of her cell into sleep, which lets her steal his keys and break herself out. She encounters another guard on her way out; fortunately, it turns out to be Dominick.
• Dark Reprise:
  • Erika reprises "To Be a Princess" while locked up in jail, breaking into tears by the end.
  • Preminger's "How Can I Refuse?" returns as he forces Queen Genevieve to marry him.
• Darkest Hour: It looks like Preminger is going to get away with everything; he's trapped Anneliese and Julian in the mines and left them to die, he's revealed Erika's deception and had her framed for his own crimes and arrested (with Dominick leaving the kingdom as a result), and he's convinced the queen to marry him to save her kingdom from debt. Thankfully, our heroes manage to escape their situations and stop him in the nick of time.
• Disappeared Dad: Both of our protagonists' fathers are deceased. This is especially relevant in Anneliese's case, as her mother being a widow makes it easy for Preminger to try and force her into marriage.
• Distant Duet: "Free", sung by Erika and Anneliese from far-off, different places within the kingdom.
• Distinguishing Mark: Anneliese has a crown-shaped birthmark on her shoulder that is used to distinguish her from Erika and prove that she is the real princess.
• A Dog Named "Cat": Erika's dog-like cat is named Wolfie.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • The queen protests "Do you think I don't know my own daughter?" while her daughter has been kidnapped and replaced with an Identical Stranger.
  • Also, King Dominick telling Erika that one of the things he likes about her is how she's "honest, no pretenses", while she's masquerading as Anneliese. This is especially amusing, given his own fondness for disguises.
  • Madame Carp scolds "Erika" for thinking she could really pass herself off as the princess just by changing her hair, declaring that the princess is a personal friend of hers. Anneliese is not impressed.
• Dumbass Has a Point: In the middle of his villain song, Preminger learns that the queen has engaged Anneliese to Dominick, disrupting his plan to leverage his new wealth and become king himself.
  Preminger: What?! Making a decision without me?! WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS?!
  Nick: Uhh...the queen?
  Preminger: You simpering simpleton!
  Nick: Well...she is the queen.
• The Dutiful Son: Dutiful daughter, in this case. Anneliese is far from thrilled about her Arranged Marriage to King Dominick, but resolves to go through with it (and all the other royal duties she's not exactly fond of) for the sake of the kingdom.
• Emergency Impersonation: Julian brought Erika in to pose as Anneliese to keep King Dominick's ambassador from calling off her Arranged Marriage and buy time for him to mount a proper search. Then he's captured by Preminger's henchmen, leaving Erika stuck in her role, and Erika falls hard for Dominick...
• Engineered Heroics: This is Preminger's Evil Plan in a nutshell; he has his henchmen kidnap Anneliese and hold her prisoner in a cabin in a forest so that her betrothed, King Dominick, will call off the engagement and move on, allowing Preminger to "rescue" Anneliese and be given her hand in marriage as a reward from her grateful mother. His plan goes off the rails when Julian has Erika impersonate Anneliese to keep the engagement on and Anneliese escapes captivity in the meantime.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • "Free", the opening song, revolves around Anneliese and Erika's shared dissatisfaction with their current lives. It also highlights the difference in their personalities; while Anneliese is resigned to marrying King Dominick for the good of the kingdom, Erika is determined to pay off her debts so she can get away from Madame Carp and pursue the career she's always dreamed of.
  • Nick and Nack make their first appearance when Nack—the smarter of the two—berates Nick for throwing a worthless rock into a minecart with the gold they're stealing from the royal mine while himself overlooking its hidden value, setting the pattern for almost all of their future appearances.
  • Preminger almost immediately launches into his Villain Song, a hammy, over-the-top piece that perfectly encapsulates his unjustified contempt for Anneliese, large ego, ambition, and skill at Xanatos Speed Chess.
• Evil Brunette Twin: Averted; Erika looks identical to Anneliese, save for her dark brown hair in contrast to Anneliese's blonde, but is a perfectly nice girl who becomes her best friend. However, the trope gets invoked by Preminger, who frames Erika for Anneliese's supposed death when exposing her for impersonating Anneliese.
• Evil Chancellor: Preminger is the Queen's most trusted advisor, which reflects pretty poorly on her. He has secretly caused the kingdom's financial collapse and plots to "return" to the kingdom with a massive fortune he "discovered", offering their own gold back to them in exchange for Princess Anneliese's hand in marriage. Of course, the princess and her working-class lookalike Erika repeatedly complicate his plan, and it takes on its most dastardly shape in the third act: he convinces the Queen that Anneliese is dead, frames Erika for the crime, and forces the grieving Queen to accept his marriage proposal to save the kingdom.
• Evil Is Hammy: Preminger can't seem to go for more than one scene without making the most dramatic gestures and mannerisms possible, complete with shrieks whenever he's shocked by something.
• Evil Laugh: Preminger cackles. His assistants guffaw stupidly.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The movie takes place almost entirely over a three-day period.
• Failed a Spot Check: An Establishing Character Moment for one of Preminger's henchmen is putting a big ugly rock in the mine cart when they're supposed to be collecting gold.
• Fairytale Wedding Dress: The heroines each wear one at the end.
• Fat Bitch: Madame Carp is a Bad Boss to Erika and her workers in her shop, and has a rather pudgy figure.
• Fauxshadowing: Early in the film, Anneliese is examining a piece of metal and identifies it as iron pyrite, or fool's gold. As a major plot point is Preminger's stockpile of stolen gold, you would expect this to be setting up a reveal that he's just mined a bunch of iron pyrite, but this never happens. However, Preminger is later shown stealing the pyrite from Anneliese's desk, possibly foreshadowing the fact that he overlooked the valuable geodes left behind in the mine due to their worthless appearances.
• Flower Motifs: Not as pronounced as the butterfly motifs, but Anneliese and Erika are also associated with pink and blue roses, respectively. They hold the respective flowers near the end of their Distant Duet, "Free", at the beginning, and in Erika's Falling-in-Love Montage with Dominick during her impersonation of Anneliese, he picks her a blue rose out of numerous pink ones.
• Foregone Conclusion: There is a royal. There is also a peasant. They are identical. They switch places. Most people know this much through Pop-Cultural Osmosis of the original story.
• Foreshadowing:
  • During Nick and Nack's Establishing Character Moment, Nack angrily throws away the worthless rock Nick put in their minecart and it cracks open on the floor, revealing something shiny inside. Later, Anneliese finds a similar rock and realizes the mine is full of geodes, which will give the kingdom an income again.
  • While trying to cheer Anneliese up by ensuring she'll know at least a little about her fiancé, Julian mentions that Dominick is very musically inclined and plays three instruments. Is it any wonder that Dominick eventually falls hard for the person with a gorgeous singing voice?
• Formal Full Array of Cutlery: Erika is being taught in a song that "To be a princess is to know which spoon to use."
• Furry Reminder: Serafina chases a mouse at one point, and both the cats look horrified when Julian and Anneliese let water into the cave to escape.
• Gemstone Motifs: Anneliese uses a purple geode crystal to represent what she sees in Julian when confessing her love to him in the mines. She shows him that while it looks ordinary on the surface, it's actually a treasure within just like he is.
• Girls Stare at Scenery, Boys Stare at Girls: At the end of their day together, Erika (disguised as Anneliese) and Dominick watch a sunset. Dominick calls it "breathtaking", but only while looking at her, and Erika plays along by calling it the "prettiest sunset [she's] ever seen".
• Good Parents: Erika's parents took on a crushing debt to ensure that they could take care of her. Anneliese's mother obviously sympathizes with her misgivings over her Arranged Marriage, and gladly lets her marry the man she really loves instead after Anneliese finds a solution to the problem that made the arrangement necessary in the first place.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Preminger indulges in both French and Spanish in his Villain Song, in the form of Poirot Speak.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Anneliese, a princess with blonde-gold hair and a very nice royal inside and out.
• Held Gaze: Between Dominick and Erika at the end of their Falling-in-Love Montage that uses the beautiful song "If You Love Me For Me."
• A Hero Is Born: The movie opens with a prologue that shows Anneliese and Erika as newborns, establishing that they were coincidentally born on the same day.
• Hilarious Outtakes: Some were written for the credits, featuring the Animated Actors rather than the people who voiced them.
• Holding Hands: Both the main couples (Julian and Anneliese, Dominick and Erika) do this.
• Horsing Around: When Preminger uses Hervé to escape justice after being exposed at his wedding and whips him with a switch to make him go faster, Hervé responds by turning around to run back to the palace and hurling him off his back to send him crashing into the banquet table.
• Hot for Teacher: Anneliese and Julian. Justified that he's her tutor rather than an actual teacher and appears to be pretty close to her age.
• Humiliation Conga: Preminger gets handed one at the end. He gets exposed for the treacherous schemer he really is when Anneliese shows up at his wedding to her mother and reveals his true colors, forcing him to flee. He doesn't get far when his own horse turns against him, throwing him headlong down a table of food and into the wedding cake, and he's arrested immediately afterwards.
• Identical Stranger: True to the original, Anneliese and Erika are girls of polar opposite social statuses who happen to resemble each other (and were born on the same day, to boot).
• Identical Twin ID Tag: The only ways to tell Anneliese and Erika apart are that the former is blonde while the latter is brunette, and Anneliese has a crown-shaped birthmark on her shoulder. Anneliese also has curlier hair with a side part, while Erika's is center-parted and less curly with waves. Erika's skin and lips are slightly paler than Anneliese's.
• If I Were a Rich Man: During his Villain Song, "How Can I Refuse?", Preminger has a fantasy about surfing down an enormous pile of gold and being crowned king by the Queen while Anneliese swoons over him.
• I Kiss Your Hand: Dominick does this to Erika (who's disguised as Anneliese) when they meet.
• Imagine Spot: We are witness to Preminger's plotting in the second song, first directly, and then through shadows on a wall.
• Impoverished Patrician: The royal mines run out, leaving the queen, and by extension her country, totally broke.
• Indentured Servitude: This is essentially Erika's situation, and she name-drops the trope to Anneliese during their first meeting. Erika's parents borrowed a large sum of money from Madame Carp when Erika was a baby, but died before they could pay it back. Erika has been working for Madame Carp ever since and can't leave until the debt is paid. Madame Carp is very much leveraging this to financially abuse Erika—in one conversation, she gloats about how long it will take Erika to pay off the accumulated interest, and in another, it's implied she's charging Erika for basic commodities like food. She also berates Anneliese for slacking off after mistaking her for Erika and then locks her in the shop.
• Innocently Insensitive: Anneliese has moments of this. First she asks Julian which house he used to live in before he moved to the castle, before he answers his family could only afford to rent one room (but he knows she didn't mean to be rude). Her part in the "Girl Like You" song also oozes of this: while Erika explains that she's an indentured slave, her only complaints are that she's marrying a stranger and would rather spend the day in her own private library rather than get a foot massage during her breakfast in bed. It helps that Anneliese herself clearly realizes how bad it sounds immediately after saying it.
• Interclass Friendship: The movie starts with Princess Anneliese befriending a pauper girl named Erika when they bond over their similar desires for freedom. Erika marries the even wealthier King Dominick in the end, though, which makes the two more equal in social standing.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Despite being in love with Anneliese himself, Julian realizes she's not going to shirk her duty and back out of her Arranged Marriage to King Dominick, so he does his best to play up Dominick's good points to Anneliese and help her look on the bright side of things so she'll at least be content with the guy she does marry.
• "I Want" Song: "Free" is this for both Anneliese and Erika, establishing their desires to be free from their current circumstances (Anneliese from her unwanted engagement and Erika from her debt to Madame Carp).
• Jerkass: Madame Carp, who stole the money Erika earned from singing in public and plans to keep Erika for the rest of her life even though she had already paid more than half of her parents' debt. Her business eventually goes bankrupt when the castle stops buying from her.
• King Incognito:
  • Dominick pulls two, the second to "sneak" Erika out of her confinement. Erika lampshades it.
  "You... do love disguises, don't you?"
  • This also happens to Anneliese, but sort of... against her will. She tries to convince people she's the princess more than once, but gets pooh-poohed.
• Large Ham: Preminger is very over the top, if his Villain Song is any indication.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Preminger, Nick, and Nack are all arrested for their scheme against the kingdom, and Madame Carp's dress emporium gets shut down after her mistreatment of her employees is discovered through her treatment of Anneliese, forcing her to move her business elsewhere.
• Leitmotif: Many of them:
  • Preminger's Villain Song is played in almost every scene he appears in.
  • Several notes from the last part of "Free" tend to play during sad moments or lines (specifically, around the "I close my eyes and feel myself fly" verse), most obviously during Erika's guilt after Dominick's Oblivious Guilt Slinging and very briefly when Preminger insists that the imposter escaped upon Anneliese's arrival at his wedding to her mother.
• Lessons in Sophistication: The song "To Be A Princess" is sung by Julian as he instructs Erika on how to conduct herself like a princess in Anneliese's place. Unlike many characters who have to go through such a thing, Erika does actually enjoy the perks of being royalty, though the shine wears off when she grows fond of Dominick and feels guilty about lying to him.
• Limited Wardrobe:
  • The movie can give the impression that the queen only has the one dress, seeing as she wears it in every appearance, including her wedding. Somewhat justified by the movie being set in a time period when even royalty would only own a handful of outfits at a time, but it still appears odd given every other major character is shown in at least two different outfits.
  • Erika mentions at one point that she only owns one dress (justified, seeing as she's very poor and up to her eyes in debt). This changes after she begins masquerading as Anneliese.
• Love at First Note:
  • Dominick overhears Erika singing in the bathroom, and that's it—his heart is gone.
  • A platonic version occurs between Anneliese and Erika, with the former being drawn to the latter because of her gorgeous voice.
• Love at First Sight: Dominick says he didn't want to marry a stranger, but when he sees "Anneliese" (the disguised Erika), he encourages his ambassador to agree to go forward with the wedding, although he's never spoken to her. She, for her part, is temporarily struck speechless when they are introduced.
• Love Confession: Anneliese gives one to Julian.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Preminger says as much during his Evil Gloating at Anneliese, telling her how sad her people will be to discover that she died in a "tragic accident", right before having Nick and Nack collapse the mines while she and Julian are still inside.
• Man Versus Career: Averted! The ending shows that Erika got to have both, first turning down Dominick's marriage proposal so she can fulfill her dream of becoming a singer. He's understandably sad, but agrees, and gives her a ring. After a while of touring, Erika comes back and marries him happily.
• Meaningful Name: Midas the dog cares a lot for his gold tooth, and Wolfie is a cat that acts and sounds like a dog.
• Missed Him by That Much: Julian rides up on horseback to the cabin Anneliese was imprisoned in mere minutes after Anneliese has already escaped.
• Mooks: Nick and Nack are Preminger's loyal minions, and are never seen without each other.
• The Musical: The first Barbie movie to be a full-on Animated Musical.
• Musicalis Interruptus: Erika's song "Written In Your Heart" is interrupted by an enraged Madame Carp.
• Nice Guy: Hervé the horse is quite friendly and helpful to the other animal characters (and, by extension, their human owners) throughout the movie. However, at the climax, Preminger learns the hard way not to push him too far; when Preminger keeps whipping him, Hervé throws him off and into the wedding banquet table.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Julian and Erika had good intentions when they had the latter pose as Anneliese to hide the real one's abduction, but it results in the real princess being denied entrance to the castle after escaping captivity and being mistaken for Erika at Madame Carp's emporium.
• Non-Human Sidekick: The girls' cats.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Erika and Anneliese get a whole song dedicated to them being the same sort of person, under their surface differences.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Dominick compliments Erika on being "honest, no pretenses" while she's posing as Anneliese.
• Oh, Crap!: Serafina substitutes "oh dear" when she realizes how bad Hervé's cat-bucking aim is in the bloopers.
• Opening Narration: "Long ago, and far away..."
• Out-of-Character Alert: Julian gets suspicious when he realizes that Anneliese's forged runaway letter is scented with lilac rather than rose.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Subverted. Queen Genevieve is led to believe that Anneliese is dead when Preminger gives her Anneliese's ring as "proof" that her daughter perished in the mines, but it's all a lie to convince her to marry him.
• Parental Abandonment: Erika's parents are long deceased, leaving her to work to pay off their debts to Madame Carp because of the loans they took to feed her.
• Parents as People: The Queen. She's pushing Anneliese into a marriage she doesn't want with a man she doesn't even know, but she doesn't seem to be a bad mother. She understands why Anneliese isn't wild about her engagement, even apologizing to her about it, and only insists that Anneliese go through with it because the kingdom is in debt. She's perfectly fine with Anneliese marrying a commoner after the problem of the kingdom's debt is solved, and is deeply worried rather than angry when she thinks Anneliese has run away to avoid having to marry Dominick.
• Patchwork Kids: Wolfie and Serafina's kittens all have either their mother or their father's pelt. Furthermore, we see one with white Serafina fur bark like his father, whereas one with Wolfie's coloration has Serafina's build.
• Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Dominick thinks his engagement to Anneliese is an example of this trope. In reality, she's been kidnapped and replaced with an Identical Stranger, who's disguised as her to keep the betrothal on, and the woman he's hitting it off with is Erika. In the end, everything works out when Anneliese returns, and Dominick and Erika marry.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Both Erika and Anneliese wear one.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Anneliese wears a pink gown for most of the movie, while Julian wears a light blue outfit. This is inverted with Erika and Dominick, who respectively wear blue and red.
• Plucky Girl: Despite being worked like a slave, Erika is cheerful and high-spirited.
• The Power of Acting: Julian and Erika's plan wouldn't have worked for a second if Erika wasn't so good at passing herself off as Anneliese.
• Pretty Butterflies: Pink and blue butterflies appear as motifs for Anneliese and Erika, respectively, in their duets ("Free" and "I Am a Girl Like You"). It doubles as Butterfly of Transformation symbolism, as the plot is about them temporarily ending up in each other's roles.
• Prince and Pauper: The plot is based on this premise, being about a princess named Anneliese and a commoner girl named Erika who coincidentally resemble each other.
• Princess Classic: Anneliese mostly fits the bill, being a kind-hearted and beautiful princess with Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold. She's smarter than the usual example, though, as she's also bookish and devoted to her scientific studies.
• Princesses Prefer Pink: Anneliese spends most of her screen time in a pink dress. Her main one, worn for the majority of the film, was made by Erika. Erika also wears a pale blue gown with a fair amount of pink on it while impersonating her.
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: Anneliese and Erika become very close, very fast, and Erika's willing to play a role in a potentially life-threatening scheme (of course, since this is a Barbie movie, she only gets thrown in the dungeon when she gets found out, but still) for Anneliese's sake after only one meeting, and Anneliese is particularly fixated on Erika's beautiful voice. The ending all but states that the two remain lifelong best friends.
• Psychotic Smirk: Preminger, when there are too many people around for a full-out psychotic grin.
• Purple Is Powerful: The queen wears a pinkish-purple dress. Preminger wears a lot of deep purples, indicative of his desire to take over.
• Rags to Royalty: Erika starts off as a commoner trapped in debt, and becomes a queen when she marries King Dominick.
• Rebellious Princess: Subverted Trope. Anneliese feels stifled by her royal lifestyle and is unhappy about being forced to marry Dominick because of her obligations as a princess, but pledges to "remain forever royal" despite her desire for freedom. It's partly because of this that Julian is immediately suspicious of the letter Preminger forged in her name, which claims she ran away to avoid her duty.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Erika and Anneliese, respectively (and ironically, as Erika wears blue and Anneliese wears pink, a shade of red). Erika is more headstrong and street-smart, while Anneliese is bookish and usually quite placid.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: Preminger and Nick have this type of exchange during the former's Villain Song.
  Preminger: What? Making a decision without me? Who does [the Queen] think she is?!
  Nick: Uh, the queen?
• Rich Bitch: Madame Carp, Erika's supervisor. She's wealthy and prominent enough to have the royal family as her dress shop's sponsor, but acts like a slavedriver to her employees and treats Erika in particular with contempt.
• Rich Suitor, Poor Suitor: Played with. Dominick and Julian are respectively this to Anneliese, as Dominick is the king she's betrothed to and Julian is her tutor. However, Dominick doesn't fit the usual stereotype; he's a kind man who sincerely wants a good relationship with his fiancée and, while Anneliese isn't interested in him, he turns out to be an ideal Love Interest for Erika, getting a happy ending with her instead.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Anneliese has an oppressively busy schedule filled with speeches, lessons, and events. At the end, she takes another step into this when she personally oversees the mining of geodes to revitalize her kingdom's economy.
• Schedule Fanatic: One of Anneliese's servants. But it makes sense, actually, because it's his job to obsess about being on schedule.
• Sissy Villain: Preminger is quite effeminate and has a propensity for theatrics and Camp. This also applies to his pet poodle Midas, who's extremely vain.
• Slapstick: Midas crashing around with a bucket on his head.
• Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: The climax hinges on Anneliese exposing Preminger's lies by interrupting his wedding to her mother at the end.
• Stealth Insult: From the narrative. Preminger at one point steals a gemstone he thinks is valuable, which Anneliese had in an earlier scene described as "fool's gold".
• Spot the Imposter: Erika is exposed as a fake when the queen sees she doesn't have a royal birthmark.
• Standard Female Grab Area: It gets employed against both of our leading ladies (against Erika when she's arrested by the guards for impersonating Anneliese, and against Anneliese when Preminger abducts her to the mines).
• Standard Hero Reward: Preminger's plan hinges on invoking this. By kidnapping Anneliese and "rescuing" her, he expects the Queen to be so thankful that she'll reward him with Anneliese's hand in marriage and thus make him king.
• Stiff Upper Lip: This exact phrase is sung by Julian while teaching Erika how to act like a princess. It is later echoed by Erika after she has been arrested for impersonating the princess, and combined with Trying Not to Cry.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Preminger constantly derides his own henchmen as simpletons. He should probably just find new help, but then again, the ones he has are pretty loyal to him...
• Symbolism:
  • The iron pyrite Anneliese classifies near the beginning of the movie and the geode she finds in the mine near the end. The pyrite symbolizes King Dominick and Preminger—both attractive marriage prospects from a political standpoint due to their wealth, but neither of whom Anneliese is interested in. The geode represents Julian, as she herself lampshades—"unassuming on the outside, but a treasure within."
  • Queen Genevieve's spectacles. Julian "misplaces" them when he introduces Erika as Anneliese, presumably to make it harder for her to see through the deception. The queen spends Erika's entire stay at the palace without them, representing her inability to see through Erika's disguise. She doesn't get them back until Preminger exposes Erika as an impostor. Then she wears them during the scene where Preminger essentially extorts her into marrying him in exchange for using his fortune to rebuild the kingdom's economy, when she finally sees the greed and ambition beneath his pretense of being a loyal adviser.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Anneliese and Julian, respectively a princess and her tutor, are in love despite Anneliese's betrothal to King Dominick. The power dynamic factor is somewhat mitigated by the fact they're both young and seem close in age, and they clearly have a close personal friendship outside of being student and teacher.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: Played with. Erika is a skilled seamstress and makes many beautiful gowns at Madame Carp's Dress Emporium, even being the one who made Anneliese's dress. Anneliese's own efforts at sewing are pretty poor when she tries to help Bertie (the dress she makes has one sleeve drastically shorter than the other), but it's justified by the fact that, being a royal, she's never had to sew anything before.
• Theme Naming: Nick and Nack. Their names come from the phrase, "Knick Knack", and they're rather pathetic in their attempts to aid Preminger's plans.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Though neither of them are particularly frail or boyish, Erika is a bit more street-smart than Anneliese (what with being a commoner and all).
• True Blue Femininity: Erika's main outfit is a blue dress, and she wears a light blue ball gown when posing as Anneliese.
• Uptown Girl: This dynamic is present in all of the main couples.
  • Anneliese is a princess (though her kingdom is impoverished), while Julian is her tutor and comes from a humble background.
  • Erika and Dominick are a gender-inverted example. She's a pauper who works at a dress shop, and he's the king of Dulcinea.
  • Serafina is Anneliese's pampered cat, whereas Wolfie is Erika's street-smart and dog-like cat.
• Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey: Downplayed. The Evil Chancellor Preminger is the main villain with two goofily inept minions in Nick and Nack, but he's a dramatic Large Ham and Sissy Villain who also has comedic moments.
• Villain Recruitment Song: The "How Can I Refuse?" reprise has Preminger convincing Queen Genevieve to marry him to save the kingdom from financial ruin.
• Villain Song: Preminger gets a gloriously over-the-top number called "How Can I Refuse?", complete with a Dark Reprise later.
• Wakeup Makeup: Erika wakes up wearing a wig that is in perfect condition.
• Wedding Deadline: Anneliese stops a wedding as her mother is halfway through the word "do".
• Wedding Finale: The episode ends with a double wedding, with Anneliese marrying Julian and Erika marrying Dominick.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: Julian sings about Anneliese's in "To Be a Princess", namedropping the trope in the process.
  Julian: And... she has beautiful eyes
  Your spirits rise
  When she walks in the room
  Erika: I see.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Julian's horse, which he rides while searching for Anneliese in the forest, vanishes completely after he finds the cabin she was being held in and is subsequently captured by Preminger's goons. Preminger's dog, Midas, also goes unseen and unmentioned in the epilogue after his master's arrest.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The last minute or two of the film show the royal double wedding. Enough time has passed that Erika went on and returned from her desired singing tour.
• Whole-Plot Reference: This movie could have just as easily been called Barbie and The Prisoner of Zenda. The first half of the movie matches the beginning of the book almost beat for beat, with a member of the royal family happening to befriend an Identical Stranger, then being kidnapped right before an important event, with their allies having the look-alike perform an Emergency Impersonation to avoid a scandal. While trying to figure out how to rescue the real royal, the impostor falls in love with their double's betrothed and starts to become the mask...
• Wig, Dress, Accent:
  • The henchmen try this in an attempt to stop Preminger from finding out that Anneliese has escaped. They do a pathetic job of it.
  • Madame Carp believes Anneliese is Erika attempting to pull this trope.
  • King Dominick also hides his identity via disguise, more than once.
• Work Off the Debt: Erika worked for Madame Carp because her parents borrowed money from Carp to support her.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Preminger is very good at revising his plans as the need arises. He initially plots to marry the princess and show off his "wealth" to get the crown he desires, but upon learning of her engagement to someone else, he adjusts it to kidnapping her until the engagement is called off and he "finds" her instead and gets the same reward for it. A couple of bumps later on, such as Erika disguising herself as Anneliese and Anneliese herself escaping, and he quickly changes to putting them into precarious situations they can't get out of, and extorting the Queen into marrying him in exchange for restoring the kingdom's economy.
• Your Costume Needs Work: After being turned away from the palace by a guard, Anneliese encounters Madam Carp, the Bad Boss of her Identical Stranger Erika. Carp, believing that she's Erika, drags her back to the dress shop she runs. When Anneliese tries to assert her true identity, Carp sneers at her and mockingly asks if she thinks just changing her hair will make her look like the princess.

Tropes applying to the games:

• Adaptation Dye-Job: In the GBC game, Midas is white instead of black.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: The PC game ends with Erika's coronation, as she is finally crowned queen.
• Birthday Episode: Part of the PC game involves Erika baking a birthday cake for the miner and delivering it to him.
• Bookends:
  • Both the first and last tasks in the PC game start in the throne room.
  • The first and last regular levels in the GBC game feature Anneliese and Erika as the playable characters.
  • In the PC game, the first task at the crossroads has every road except the flower garden blocked by sheep, which won't leave until more tasks are completed. The final task has the pathway to the mine be blocked, but now Erika has to get some treats from the bakery to give to the man at the crossroads to bribe the sheep into leaving.
• Canon Foreigner: Besides Anneliese, Erika, the cats, and Preminger, both games feature various villagers who play big parts, such as the woodsman and his wife, the baker, the fabric maker, the stained glass artist, the fruit seller and his brother the miner, the blacksmith, and the castle guard.
• Chain of Deals: In the task where Erika has to bake a birthday cake for the miner, she has to complete a brief trading sequence to obtain a new apron for the baker should she wish to grant access:
  • First she receives some of the fruit seller's apples which she trades with the blacksmith for horseshoes.
  • She then trades the horseshoes with the man in the red coat for a button.
  • Finally, she trades the button with the fabric maker for the apron which she gives to the baker.
• Demoted to Extra: Because Erika is the main character of the PC game, Anneliese is reduced to a supporting role where she only hosts the tutorial and the decorating games.
• Final-Exam Boss: The final battle with Preminger utilizes all four characters' major abilities throughout the game — the cats' paw swipe, Erika's singing, and Anneliese's shield.
• Hollywood Tone-Deaf: The second-to-last task in the game has Erika find three people to sing in the town concert, and the player has to help her sing one of the three melodies to see if they sing the same one back to her. If a wrong person is sung to, their attempt to sing is nowhere near good.
• Magic Music: In the GBC game, Erika can sing to get rid of obstacles, shake level items loose, activate levers that are out of reach, and more.
• NPC Roadblock: A few in the PC game:
  • At the start of the game, sheep will be blocking areas at the crossroads and do not leave until Erika reaches specific tasks further in.
  • The guard will sometimes block Erika back to the castle for certain tasks that require her to be in the village.
  • For the task involving making the miner's birthday cake, the baker won't let Erika into the bakery until she gives her the apron she retrieves from the fabric maker in the Chain of Deals.
  • The final task in the game has the path to the mine be blocked by sheep, and Erika has to get some treats from the baker to lure them away.
• Password Save: The GBC game uses a 4-picture password showing the faces of various characters from the movie.
• Sequel Goes Foreign: While the movie is set in Anneliese's kingdom, the PC game takes place in Erika and Dominic's kingdom, shortly after their marriage and just three days prior to Erika's coronation as queen.
• Turn the Other Cheek: At the end of the PC game, Erika forgives Preminger for stealing the crown and invites him to the coronation in return.