Princess Peach is a princess, right? She’s not Queen Peach, after all. Which means, surely there must be some level
of monarchy above hers. A King and a Queen Peach of some kind. Well, this is the question I decided to answer,
so I’ve spent the last few days scouring the entire Mario franchise for any trace, any
mention of these missing parents. Spoiler alert, I found some pictures, you
guys! So together let’s answer the question of:
Who are Princess Peach’s parents? So, let’s start with the games. If you’ve played much Mario before, you’re
probably aware of the fact that Princess Peach’s parents aren’t exactly prominent characters. In fact, there’s actually only a SINGLE
reference to these parents across the entire series. And that reference comes in the very first
Super Mario game, Super Mario Bros for the NES. Now, this game doesn’t exactly have a lot
of text in it. There’s like 5 lines of dialogue max, and
uh, none of them mention the parents of Princess Peach, or as she was called back then, Princess
Toadstool. However, if we turn to the game’s manual,
then we’ll have some more luck. In amongst descriptions of the game’s enemies,
and explanation of the controls, there’s this HUGE paragraph of text explaining the
game’s story. Apparently, the evil Koopa invaded the Mushroom
Kingdom, turning its citizens into stone. And if we look here, *ahem* , "The only one
who can undo the magic spell on the Mushroom People and return them to their normal selves
is the Princess Toadstool, the daughter of the Mushroom King." And there it is. Definitive proof that Princess Peach's parents
do indeed exist. Or at least, her father. Except, this is only the English manual. It was translated from the original Japanese
manual. And a lot of artistic license was taken. A few years ago a game translator called Clyde
Mandelin went back to that original manual and translated it again using a more faithful
approach. Here is what he came up with. "The only one who can lift the spell on the
Mushroom People and bring them back to life is the Mushroom Kingdom’s Princess Peach. She is currently in the clutches of Great
Demon King Koopa." Now, there's one major difference there, which
I'm sure you noticed. The mention of the Mushroom King is completely
gone. In other words, King Peach, or King Toadstool,
was completely made up by the English translators. And that’s it. That’s the only mention from the game’s
themselves. And it’s a questionable mention, at that. However, thankfully we’ve got more than
just the games themselves to work from. At this point, I really need to thank Twitter
user Supper Mario Broth. Because at my request, he sent me scans of
a really old obscure videogame guidebook. And this, as far as we are aware, is the first
ever depiction of King and Queen Toadstool. Basically, there was a series of videogame
guidebooks from Japan which came out in the 1980s, called Certain Victory Technique, which
would I assume teach you the technique to achieve certain victory! And the first in this series was all about
Super Mario Bros. Now, I call it a guidebook, but this guide
actually takes the form of a comic book. Here’s Mario - I kinda like his design here. And then here’s the Princess. Very different from how she looks nowadays,
much more mushroom-y! Anyway, right near the end of the book, there's
an illustration that shows the entire Toadstool family. Just take a look! So here it is! This is the first ever illustration of the
ever mysterious King and Queen Peach. They’re very much leaning into the Toadstool
aspect of the design. So that book was obviously released in Japan,
but a few years later a fairly similar guide was released in the US, called How To Win
at Super Mario Bros. Heck, you might have even had the book when you were younger! Unfortunately compared to the Japanese guide,
this one is kinda boring - everything’s just explained with text and diagrams rather
than fun drawings. HOWEVER, at the very start of the book there
is a page which explains the game’s story, and this does feature illustrations. In fact, it's highly possible that some of
these illustrations were done by the same person who did the Japanese guidebook! And right in the corner, there’s this one
little illustration which shows the King and Queen Toadstool yet again! This time they’re in colour. Just get an eyeful of that yellow and blue
robe. Lovely colour combo! Now there's one last drawing of the King from
around this era, which was featured in an old official Mario colouring book which looks
just like this. Now the art style here is very different! In fact the Toads look strikingly similar
to how Shigeru Miyamoto himself draws them, although I highly doubt he was involved with
this book. However, there’s one big thing missing with
everything I’ve talked about so far - personality. Who is the King? Who is the Queen? What are they like as people? Up until 1990, there was no mention of any
of that. But then, one comic came out which changed
everything. So in 1990, the Nintendo Comics System began
publication. This was a long running series of comic books
published in America by a company called Valiant Comics, and it featured stories about Zelda
and Mario and various other Nintendo properties. And it’s in these Mario comics that the
Toadstool royal family FINALLY gets properly fleshed out. Well, half of it does. Throughout these books, the King is a really
important character, appearing in the MAJORITY of the Mario comics. However, bizarrely, Queen Toadstool is not
in the books. Not even a tiny cameo - she's just not here. However, there is just one mention of her
existence: one day Princess Peach starts saying the word “bummer” all the time for some
reason, and apparently she inherited it from her mother, who also said the word "bummer"
a lot. Um, okay. But other than that, the Queen is never mentioned
in any of these comics... But what about the King? Well, his main personality trait is stupidity. That's like all his personality is in these
books... He is shown to be constantly and always a
complete idiot. In just about every chapter he’s getting
kidnapped, or he accidentally gets someone else kidnapped - he’s always causing trouble. In fact - and this is funny - there’s a
chapter of these comics called Duh Stupid Bomb! All of Mario’s friends and family accidentally
get dowsed in stupid gas from a stupid bomb which turns them stupid. However, King Toadstool is unaffected, simply
because he is already so stupid in the first place that it has no effect. And that’s his entire personality. By the way, I’m sure you’ve noticed this
already, but his design is quite a bit different here too. He’s based on the kings from Super Mario
Bros 3. In fact, certain elements of the story are
directly lifted from that game. Like the kings from Mario 3, King Toadstool
is turned into an animal, it happens twice actually, he’s turned into a dog and then
a chameleon. And the only way to turn him back is to retrieve
a magic wand, just like in Mario 3 yet again. The similarity is pretty clear to see! There’s one final mystery, though. If King Toadstool is so incredibly stupid,
how does he manage to keep the Mushroom Kingdom running smoothly? The answer, his daughter Princess Toadstool. According to these comics, she’s the one
running the kingdom from behind the scenes. And so, if you take these comics to be canon
- which to be clear, they are DEFINITELY not - but if you do, then think next time you’re
playing Tennis with Peach, or she hits you with a shell in Mario Kart - after she’s
finished with that race, she’s likely got a stack of papers to sign and admin to complete. And that’s why we never see her parents
in the games. It’s because they’re not very good rulers
of the kingdom. Bummer. Oh and lastly, I couldn’t find a good place
to put this in the script, however we ARE introduced to Peach’s grandma in one of
the old “Super Mario Bros Super Show” cartoons! Here is what she looks like in that… She appears in only one episode, called “Little
Red Riding Princess” which is unsurprisingly based somewhat loosely on Little Red Riding
Hood. It’s never explained which side of the family
she is on, but judging by the fact she has a brain, and is not completely stupid, then
I’m willing to bet that she’s probably on the mother’s side. There is also a character called Grandma in
Super Mario RPG, but judging by just how different this Granma looks to Princess Peach, I think
it’s unlikely they’re blood related. But you never know - anything is possible
in the Mushroom Kingdom! Hey, thank you for watching this video until
the end! Again, thank you to Supper Mario Broth for
his help with this video. And if you enjoyed it then you can subscribe
for more videos like this every week. Um, I think that's everything, okay goodbye. Bye!
