Princess Langwidere

Princess Langwidere is a fictional character created by L. Frank Baum, who appears in "Ozma of Oz", the third book in the Oz series. Her name is a pun on the words "languid" and "dear". As depicted in an illustration by John R. Neill, Langwidere's looks are styled on the Gibson girl standard of beauty which was popular at the time of this novel's publication.

Dorothy encounters the Princess in the land of Ev, which itself is separated from Oz by the Deadly Desert. After becoming stranded in Ev, Dorothy encounters Tik-Tok the machine man, who informs her that they must go to the royal palace of Ev to gain assistance in finding her way back home.

Along the way they have a run-in with a Wheeler, who informs them that the King of Ev recently committed suicide and the rest of the entire Royal Family of Ev is being held captive by the mysterious Nome King. The Wheeler explains that Princess Langwidere, the late king's niece, was the only living relative of the Royal Family "qualified" enough to assume rule of the kingdom — although this is highly debatable because, as the Princess herself later admits, she only spends 10 minutes of every day actually governing and tending to matters of state, and she would rather spend those 10 minutes admiring her beauty.

Princess Langwidere's most unusual feature is that she has 30 heads that are interchangeable on her neck — instead of changing her clothes every day, she simply changes her head. The heads, which inexplicably keep alive even when not being "worn," are kept in a bejeweled boudoir, and are described as all being very beautiful, running through all combinations of hair and eye colors (except for gray hair and red, tired eyes of course), skin tones, and even noses of different shapes to represent different ethnicities. Langwidere generally spends every waking moment of her life admiring whichever head she's currently wearing in a large mirrored hall, and "changing" heads whenever she wants to adopt a new look.

When Dorothy and Langwidere meet face to face, the Princess curtly tells Dorothy that she is boring and stupid, and dismisses her; then, after closely inspecting Dorothy's face, she changes her mind and says that Dorothy should stay — so that Langwidere can take her head and add it to her collection. (In fairness, Langwidere does offer to give Dorothy one of her own, least attractive heads in exchange.) Dorothy is understandably indignant at this and refuses; she is then imprisoned by the Princess's guards until she consents to Langwidere's demands.

The next day, Dorothy is more or less coincidentally rescued by Princess Ozma of Oz, who along with the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and other Oz creatures, was passing through Ev on a mission to rescue the Royal Family from the Nome King. At first, Langwidere is furious that Ozma and her assembly have stormed her palace, but when the Oz party explains the nature of their mission, Langwidere completely calms down and says she supports them — because, of course, if the Royal Family was restored to rule the kingdom, she could finally devote those aforementioned 10 minutes toward admiring herself in the mirror. Langwidere then frees Dorothy, provides room and board for Ozma's people, and tells them where to find the Nome King's kingdom.

The theme of interchangeable or detachable heads appears to have been a recurring motif at this point in Baum's writing career. In his fifth Oz book, "The Road to Oz", Dorothy and some companions encounter the weird bi-colored creatures called the Scoodlers, each of whom possesses a body with two fronts and no back: each Scoodler's head therefore has two faces, and their heads are detachable. Elsewhere in the same novel, two of Dorothy's companions separately become the victims of similar transformations: first Button-Bright's head is transformed into a fox's head, and then the Shaggy Man's head is transformed into a donkey's head. The latter image was presumably inspired by Nick Bottom in "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

In the 1985 movie "Return to Oz", the character of Princess Mombi is largely based on Princess Langwidere. Langwidere is the principal villain of the stage play, "Enchanted" (2006) [http://www.francescabrown.co.uk/index.asp?bodyheader=Reviews] .