Princess Bubblegum

## Bubblegum

233

Princess Bubblegum is the beloved ruler of the Candy Kingdom. Though not much is said about her past, there are some allusions to her relatives (e.g. Uncle Gumbald, mentioned in "Susan Strong"). It is implied that Finn has saved Princess Bubblegum many many times, though she winds up saving him in the episodes "Dungeon" and "Lady & Peebles." It also seems that she has had previous run-ins with Marceline The Vampire Queen (who is the only known character who calls her by her real name Bonnibel or just Bonnie). In the past she created Lemongrab (her first experiment to go wrong), then sent him away to live a sheltered life inside his own castle. Princess Bubblegum also performs other science experiments which vary from very successful to catastrophic.

In the second season's two-part finale, "Mortal Folly" and "Mortal Recoil," she sends Finn and Jake on a quest to stop the Lich from killing everyone in the Land of Ooo. She gives Finn the Gauntlet of the Hero Billy, as it is the only known weapon that can harm the Lich, and a sweater she made herself. The Ice King captures Princess Bubblegum and chases after Finn and Jake to get their blessing to marry her, but he accidentally drops the princess into a pit of green liquid. She is soon melted into a pile of pink-brown candy goo, and is rushed to the hospital.

It is soon revealed that the spirit of the Lich has possessed the princess and eventually warps her into a giant monster that nearly tears apart the Candy Kingdom. Finn enlists the power of Ice King to immobilize her with a very freezing ice. Unfortunately, the frozen princess topples over and shatters to pieces. The doctors reassemble her but lack all the necessary pieces to put her back together, reducing her age to 13 (the same age as Finn at the time). According to Adam Muto, her body was composed of only enough reclaimed biomass to be an adolescent, and therefore she turned into one.

As a 13-year-old, Princess Bubblegum is technically younger than the Earl of Lemongrab and he claims his right to the throne until she turns 18 again. After failed attempts of pranking the Earl until he leaves, Princess Bubblegum is forced to restore herself to her 18-year-old form with the contribution of biomass (candy) from the Candy People and a hug (and kiss) from Finn. After reverting to her proper age and size in "Too Young," she jokingly acts as if the events that happened earlier that same day (while she was 13) actually happened five years ago.

In "Burning Low," Princess Bubblegum reveals that Flame Princess is physically unstable, and she prevents Flame Princess's Elemental Matrix from causing the end of the world: she guides Jake to block the hole resulting from the kiss between Finn and Flame Princess, thus cutting off Flame Princess's oxygen supply and stopping the reaction (and nearly suffocating her along with Finn, who had jumped down after her).

During the events of "Lady & Peebles," Princess Bubblegum and Lady Rainicorn track the missing Finn and Jake into an uncharted ice cave, with the belief that Ice King has captured them. After surviving dangerous encounters within the dungeon's environment, it is revealed that Ricardio set up the situation to lure Bubblegum into the cave and force her to marry him, tying Lady Rainicorn into a knot and having already poisoned Finn and Jake with Zanoits. Princess Bubblegum challenges him to a fist fight and defeats him by ripping his newly attached limbs away at their exposed sinews. She then drags Finn, Jake and Ice King back to the Candy Kingdom on Lady's back, creating a new heart for Ice King out of "Ricardio's sinews, toffee and maracas." She is also the first person to learn of Lady Rainicorn's pregnancy.

Princess Bubblegum patches up her rocky relationship with Lemongrab in "You Made Me" by making him a Lemongrab 2, so he will have a friend who truly understands him. At the end of the episode, the princess bids them a fond farewell and they both invite her to visit anytime, indicating that the three of them are on good terms. In "All Your Fault" however, she sends Finn and Jake on a mission because the Lemongrab clones have run out of food. Finn and Jake, upon arriving, find out that the Lemongrabs have been using food to create candy people, because Princess Bubblegum accidently left the recipe for making candy people there. Luckily, after the monsterous lemon person they created turned himself into food after almost destroying the Candy Kingdom, Princess Bubblegum erased the candy person recipe from their minds.

In the Season 4 finale, she is the first person to realize that Billy is possessed by The Lich, and tries to warn Finn and Jake, yet it is too late.

In "The Suitor," Peppermint Butler tried to find her a suitor which was later chosen to be Braco. Despite of all of Braco's attempts to win her heart, she doesn't seem to have developed any emotions for him and she claims that Braco will never be happy with her. However, she created a robotic clone of herself to be Braco's partner. PB later admitted that she loved Braco in the same ways she loves all candy people.

### PersonalityEdit

Princess Bubblegum loves (most of) her subjects and has been known to defend them tirelessly when trouble brews. In "Princess Cookie," her dedication to her Kingdom is shown when she visits a Candy Orphanage and spends some time cheering up the children.

Princess Bubblegum has a strong sense of morality and participates in politics outside the Candy Kingdom. She is very noble and intelligent, perhaps the most intelligent person in the Land of Ooo.

Princess Bubblegum is a highly cultured and educated ruler with an undying passion for science. In "Slumber Party Panic," she attempts to revive the dead Candy People, accidentally creating a horde of zombie Candy People instead. In her dedication, she sometimes drives herself to exhaustion with her experiments such as the perfect sandwich in "Five Short Graybles" and the eponymous character in "Goliad."

Though ordinarily sweet and good-natured, Princess Bubblegum shows a malicious aspect of her personality whenever she is crossed, as toward the Duke of Nuts for eating all of the royal pudding and supposedly ruining her appearance. Even with her kind disposition, her moral code is not as strict as Finn's. She sometimes says morbid or inappropriate things, such as when Finn picks up a paralysis poison in "The Other Tarts," she says, "That's paralyzing potion, Finn! Don't touch it, or it'll paralyze you forever!" and then giggles. Many darker things are briefly shown in several episodes such as skeletons cuffed to the walls in hidden chambers as shown in "Ricardio the Heart Guy."

Also, in "What Have You Done?," she displays a non-hesitant willingness to torture Ice King after he infects the Candy Kingdom with a Freezer Burn flu (in an attempt to woo the Princess) and refuses to assist her in curing them by screaming voluntarily. However, in this case, she does understand what she was attempting to do was wrong, and cries in stress and guilt when Finn exposes this. In "The Lich ," she is shown randomly cutting the limbs off of tiny round creatures with scissors and reattaching them in different places when Finn sneaks in, although the creatures show no pain and seem perfectly happy to be reconfigured.

When she is 13 years old in "Too Young," she exhibits a playful attitude and a willingness to perform pranks with Finn. Just before Princess Bubblegum is returned to her normal age she mentions that she enjoyed temporarily being 13 because she was free from the responsibilities that came with being ruler of the Candy Kingdom and that she could act like a kid again. In Princess Bubblegum's own words, being thirteen was "bloobalooby," while being 18 was "plop-dumps and waggle-sags."

Princess Bubblegum acts noticeably more childlike when she is not in her role as the princess. She dresses and talks more casually when she isn't busy with her work, as seen in "Video Makers" and "What Was Missing." As a princess, she is prim, poised, and straight-laced, but is quite capable of loosening up and dressing/acting like a regular teenager with her friends. In the episode, "Wizard Battle", Princess Bubblegum's kiss (on the mouth) is the prize of winning the Wizard Battle. When she is being displayed on a blimp as a prize, she appears to be rather cooperative with the idea and even shows off a bit.

She regularly organizes and attends events and showpieces such as scientific conferences, parties, and talent shows.

After the events in "Mortal Recoil," Princess Bubblegum is afraid of her own mortality, and since then, she has been more of a "mysterious" character. She worries what would become of the Candy Kingdom should she die, as pointed out in the episode "Goliad." She considers the possibility of living forever is not scientifically possible yet so she creates an heir in the form of Goliad.

Princess Bubblegum is also very confident in herself and science, as shown in the episode "Lady & Peebles" when Lady Rainicorn is discussing the dangers. Princess Bubblegum believes that she cannot lose as long as she has science on her side which leads her to express an open disdain for magic, labeling it as "Science presented like mystical hoodoo;" despite frequent instances of magic actually existing in the land of Ooo and her own use of it; causing her to openly mock and belittle those who believe and practice it.

She is shown to be a rational thinker in Burning Low where it is revealed she had Flame King lock Flame Princess away so her elemental matrix wouldn't cause the world to be destroyed.

***The Non Disney Princess Wiki*** has a collection of images and media related to ***Princess Bubblegum***.