Princesses of Heart

The Seven Princesses of Heart (セブンプリンセス), also refered to as the "true lights", are maidens with hearts of pure light, devoid of darkness. Their hearts are seven out of twenty pieces of the χ-blade. They appear to be the only people in the universe whose hearts are born naturally free of darkness. As such, Princesses who lose their hearts do not become Heartless; however, it is possible for the Princesses to create Nobodies on special occasions, proven by the existence of Kairi's Nobody, Naminé.

Though not all are actual princesses, the Seven Princesses are referred by that name because the one who brings all of them together can open the Door to Darkness and gain the power to reign over the worlds. The original Seven Princesses are eventually succeeded by the New Seven Hearts.

Original Princesses of Heart

 * Kairi: Former resident of the Radiant Garden, adopted daughter of the mayor to Destiny Islands.
 * Alice: A girl who became lost in the world of Wonderland.
 * Snow White: Princess of Dwarf Woodlands.
 * Jasmine: Princess of Agrabah.
 * Belle: Princess consort of Beast's Castle.
 * Cinderella: Princess consort of Castle of Dreams.
 * Aurora: Princess of the Enchanted Dominion.

New Seven Hearts

 * Kairi: Former resident of the Radiant Garden, adopted daughter of the mayor to Destiny Islands.
 * Rapunzel: Princess of Kingdom of Corona.
 * Elsa: Queen of Arendelle.
 * Anna: Princess of Arendelle.

Before Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep
After the Keyblade War, the χ-blade shattered into twenty pieces: seven pieces of light and thirteen shards of darkness. These seven pieces became the hearts of seven pure maidens.

The pure lights would reincarnate into new maidens should their current vessels perish. Alternatively, should the vessels be aware that they hold a pure light, they can choose to release it, so it can be hidden again in a new maiden. The line of Keyblade Masters from Scala ad Caelum (and later the Land of Departure) were tasked with protecting the seven lights should a threat arise; Eraqus informed his students of such.

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep
Master Xehanort searches for the Princesses of Heart as part of his plan to find seven hearts of pure light for one of his schemes to reforge the χ-blade. To that end, Xehanort revealed the existence of the Princesses of Heart and the existence of other worlds to Maleficent. Having placed one of the princesses, Aurora in a cursed slumber within the highest tower of the Enchanted Dominion, Maleficent manipulates Terra into getting her Aurora's heart. Eventually, her heart is freed by Ventus and soon after the curse is lifted by Prince Phillip, allowing her to reunite with her family. However, with the information Xehanort gave her, Maleficent left her world to find the other six Princesses of Heart.

Cinderella meets a minimized Ventus when Jaq tells her of their new friend's appearance. While she goes to finish her chores, Ven and Jaq find materials needed to make a princess gown for Cinderella. Though her dress is finished, her stepsisters rip it apart to prevent her from attending the royal ball. While crying in the garden, the Fairy Godmother helps her make a new dress and a carriage to escort her to the ball, with Terra as her bodyguard. Though she meets Prince Charming, she is forced to leave the castle at midnight, by which the magic ends. When her stepmother finds out about her presence at the ball, she locks her in the tower before the Grand Duke arrives. But Jaq and Aqua come together to release her, eventually aiding her in trying the glass slipper that she'd lost when she left the ball. Lady Tremaine then summons a powerful Unversed to eliminate her, but Aqua manages to defeat it and bring the maiden to Prince Charming.

Snow White talks to Terra while picking flowers, but flees into the forest in fear when Terra summons his Keyblade by the appearance of the Unversed. While frightened in the woods, she meets Ventus who takes her to the Seven Dwarfs's cottage for safety. After she bit the poison apple given by the Queen, she is cursed into a deep slumber until the Prince kisses her on the lips and breaks the spell. Snow White then says her goodbyes to her friends and goes on a journey with her true love.

A four-year-old Kairi, who is still living in the Radiant Garden with her grandmother at the time, gets chased by a group of Unversed until King Mickey and Aqua come to her rescue. Kairi touches Aqua's Keyblade, unintentionally initiating the Bequeathing, allowing her to later wield a Keyblade. After Mickey's leave, Kairi gives her flowers to Aqua as a token of gratitude, and Aqua in return puts a protective charm on her necklace. When she returns to her grandma, she asks her to tell her the story about the light and the darkness.

The Seven Princesses of Heart make their first appearance, during Sora's Dive to the Heart. There are four stained glass windows representing the three princesses from Ventus's memory and a fourth princess, Belle. There is also a fifth window with three stylized princess silhouettes on it representing the three free princesses, Alice, Jasmine, and Kairi.

Since leaving her home world, Maleficent used her allies and the Heartless to ravage the worlds and gathered four of the princesses prior to Sora's adventure beginning. At that time, Sora arrived to Wonderland where he met Alice who was abducted. Promising to help Riku on the premise that she would restore Kairi's heart, unaware that she is a Princess, Maleficent used him to capture Jasmine. Though reaching a dead end with Wendy, a false lead, Maleficent later learned of Kairi's identity. However, because Kairi had given her heart to Sora in the chaos of Destiny Island's destruction, access to the Final Keyhole within Hollow Bastion was impossible. Having overseen Maleficent's activities and taking Riku's body for his own, Xehanort's Heartless Ansem used the hearts of the remaining six princesses to create the Keyblade of heart to release Kairi's heart from inside Sora. When Sora realized the truth after driving off his attacker, he stabbed himself with the Keyblade to free Kairi's heart, an action that also revived the other six princesses and subsequently opened the Final Keyhole and enabled Ansem to proceed to the End of the World, where Kingdom Hearts was situated. Sora, now a Heartless because of his sacrifice, is eventually returned to human form by the light of Kairi's heart. While Kairi was brought to Traverse Town afterward, the other princesses remained in Hollow Bastion to stop the flow of darkness that had begun to seep from the still-open Keyhole until Sora could return. Once the Keyhole was sealed, the princesses patiently awaited his victory against Ansem so that they could return home, which finally happened when Kingdom Hearts was sealed and the worlds restored.

Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories
Alice, Jasmine, Belle and Kairi all appear as figments of Sora's memories during his adventure in Castle Oblivion.

Alice is once again captured by the Queen of Hearts, accused of memory theft, but Sora manages to exonerate her.

Belle reappears in Hollow Bastion, where the witch Maleficent attempts to force her to turn the Beast into a Heartless, but Belle refuses and eventually sacrifices herself to protect the Beast. She is later restored after Maleficent's defeat.

Jasmine is once again captured by the evil vizier Jafar, but Aladdin and Sora come to her rescue in time. Aladdin hopes to become a prince to become her equal, but later decides to be himself as to let Jasmine appreciate him for who he really is.

As Sora, Donald Duck, Goofy and Jiminy Cricket journey through Castle Oblivion, Sora's memories of Kairi begin to alter and eventually replaced by her Nobody, Naminé. However, by remembering Kairi again, Sora started regaining his lost memories that had been torn away by Naminé. In Riku's story, Naminé appears as Kairi to tell Riku not to hide from the darkness in his heart.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
Jasmine and Belle both appears in their home worlds. Kairi is mentioned various times by Xion and Naminé, as well as reflected in Xion's appearance to Roxas.

Kingdom Hearts II
Belle and Jasmine once again make an appearance in their respective worlds, but not as Princesses of Heart. They are both worried about their loved ones.

Belle is locked in the east wing by the Beast, who is affected by Xaldin's influence. She meets Sora and co. when they arrive and asks them to free the Beast's servants, who are all locked in the castle dungeon and later goes off to follow Xaldin, only to be chased by a gigantic Heartless into the ballroom. The restored Beast runs into the rescue and manages to defeat the monster with Sora, Donald and Goofy. Sometime later, Belle and the Beast open a party, only to be interrupted by Xaldin once more, who steals the Beast's precious rose, thus depressing him to the point that he decides to push Belle and Sora out of the castle. Belle manages to take back the rose when she gets captured by Xaldin and runs to safety, allowing Sora and the Beast to defeat him. The Beast then asks Belle to stay with him, to which she happily agrees.

Jasmine greets Sora, Donald, and Goofy when they first arrive at Agrabah and tells them of her worry for Aladdin, who has been going to town to look for action. She asks them to find him and ask him what the problem is. Jasmine is one of the first to be persuaded by Iago's worth to join them. Sometime later, Jafar is released from his lamp and Agrabah is once again in chaos. While Iago leads Sora and the others to a trap, Jafar captures Jasmine and prepares to reign over the kingdom. The four warriors, however, escape his trap and manage to return on time to stop Jafar's malice one last time.

In Tron's world, Space Paranoids, the password to access the DTD in the dataspace, was the names of the seven princesses. However, once the MCP attempts to hack into it, Tron changes the password to the names Sora, Donald, and Goofy.

Kairi indirectly connects with Roxas and in turn remembers Sora, whom she almost completely forgot about due to Naminé's magic. She later gets captured by Organization XIII in their attempt to raise Sora's anger, causing him to defeat more Heartless and release more hearts to fuel the construction of Kingdom Hearts. In The World That Never Was, she is rescued by her Nobody, Naminé, and meets up with Riku, and later Sora. Kairi was given a Keyblade from Riku. As they no longer have any place to go back to, they head toward the tower of the Castle That Never Was together to confront Xemnas and end the war once and for all. Once the war is over, she returns home with her friends; with Naminé and Roxas joined with her and Sora, respectively.

Kingdom Hearts coded
The data versions of Alice and Jasmine appear in their respective worlds, also data created from Jiminy's Journal. In this story, Alice has lost her memory and needs to remember her name; while Jasmine is simply captured by Data Jafar, waiting to be rescued.

A data-based Kairi was shown in Neverland on the Clock Tower with Riku in a lost memory flashback. Later on, the real Kairi appears alongside the real Sora and Riku.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance
Upon his return, Master Xehanort reveals that the hearts of the Seven Princesses are actually fragments of pure light that was divided from the χ-blade during the Keyblade War. As a result, Xehanort intended to have his Organization XIII, composed of those who possess his fragments of his heart, to "thirteen darknesses" with the "seven lights" to recreate the χ-blade. Knowing this threat, Yen Sid has Riku bring Kairi to him, in order to train her to use her newly acquired Keyblade for self-defense. Prior to his return, Maleficent reveals Master Xehanort being the one who got her to invade the worlds. However, seeing that using the princesses is too complex, Maleficent refocuses her means of universal domination elsewhere.

Kingdom Hearts III
According to Yen Sid, the pure lights in the princesses' hearts have moved on to new hosts, known as the New Seven Hearts, with the exception of Kairi who did not pass on her power. As Yen Sid further explains, this happened shortly after they were used to reveal the Final Keyhole, to hide the pure lights again. The real Organization XIII planned to use the New Seven Hearts as a backup, and would attack them in case the guardians of light could not find all seven of their members. Sora and the Organization both identify Rapunzel, Elsa, and Anna as additional princesses.

Initially, Marluxia viewed Mother Gothel as a crucial guardian of Rapunzel, one of the New Seven Hearts. After Rapunzel ran away from home, Marluxia conspired with Mother Gothel to persuade her to come back to her tower, where she would be locked away until the Organization found use for her. Eventually, Mother Gothel's abusive and manipulative personality posed a threat to Marluxia's ideal to protecting Rapunzel, prompting him to turn her into the Grim Guardianess Heartless before her lingering darkness could threaten Rapunzel further.

After Elsa's ice palace was constructed, Larxene expressed an interest in Elsa being one of the New Seven Hearts. Larxene later questions if Elsa might possibly rely on darkness as well.

After saving Elsa from being killed by Hans, Anna was frozen to solid ice due to Elsa's ice magic earlier. Because the sacrifice was an act of "true love", Anna recovered from the frozen curse and was able to reconcile with Elsa. Larxene considers this sacrificial act to be a discovery of two of the New Seven Hearts within the same world, as Elsa and Anna brim with sisterly love.

Joint powers
The seven Princesses possess only light within their hearts. These hearts of pure light allow them to open the Final Keyhole in Hollow Bastion, which is supposed to hold absolute power over the universe. However, it can only be opened when they are all gathered, and their hearts are used in some form of ritual. Once the Keyhole is opened, the hearts return to the Princesses' bodies.

The purity of their hearts also grants them abilities to keep darkness away or hold it back temporarily, an effect that occurs naturally from the Princesses' presence. The greater the number of Princesses gathered, the more effective this skill is. In addition, they can sense darkness, as shown when five of the princesses tell Sora of a great darkness nearby.

They have also shown to have an ability to manipulate other people's powers; for instance, five of the Princesses grant Sora the power of fire, upgrading his Fire magic.

According to the manga, the Princesses of Heart are able to travel through the Corridors of Darkness without any negative effects, as without darkness in their hearts, they cannot be corrupted. Also, in Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, Maleficent explains that she cannot obtain Aurora's heart, because it is of pure light.

As demonstrated by Kairi, their pure hearts can hide themselves within the heart of someone they trust, should they be threatened by darkness. However, a Keyblade is required to remove the heart and return it to the Princess.

D-Links
Cinderella and Snow White become D-Links for Terra, Ventus, and Aqua in Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep after the events of their respective worlds transpire. As D-Links, they can project their powers to the three Keyblade wielders while remaining in their home worlds.

Trivia

 * The Bradygames official strategy guide for Kingdom Hearts II mistakenly lists Jasmine as a "Princess of Light", rather than a "Princess of Heart".

Notes and references
Princesses de cœur Prinzessinnen der Herzen