5. Merida in Brave
Brave concerns itself with Merida, a feisty young Scottish princess of marriageable age who chooses to rebel against the system, embodied by her mother. She runs off into the forest, tracks down a witch with an odd penchant for wood-carving and inadvertently turns her mother into a bear. This would all be well and good but apparently everyone in Scotland just hates bears, not least Meridas father, who lost his leg to one. What follows is an absolutely gorgeous if slightly thematically undercooked story about a mother and her daughter learning to get on, and the film ends with them having kissed and made up. All well and good, you think? Wrong. Granted, Merida gave a good speech about everyone being able to marry when they choose, and the Lords agreed with her. But she isnt everyone shes a princess, and the lot of princesses in the time represented wasnt a good one. She may have the most supportive parents in the world, but if the situation were to ever become completely urgent as in, the clans could be wiped out by a foreign force she will probably be used as a bargaining chip in the peace negotiations, and this was what princesses were expected to do. So really, Meridas ending isnt a happy one, its just a stopgap one until the next crisis presents itself.