The Princess Diaries Trivia
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99 free The Princess Diaries trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
39 free The Princess Diaries trivia questions with answers. The Princess Diaries turned an unknown eighteen-year-old into a star and gave a generation a fictional European country to argue about. These 99 questions cover both films and the books behind them: the converted firehouse, the makeover scene every teen film copied, the car Mia drives, and the duke she gets engaged to in the sequel. There are questions on the people too — the director who created Happy Days, the granddaughters whose opinion helped cast the lead, the future Star Trek captain making his debut, and what it meant when Julie Andrews sang on screen again in 2004 after seven years of silence. Every answer was checked against a primary reference before publication, so the release dates, box-office figures and casting details are accurate rather than half-remembered from a rewatch. Play it solo or use it as a round for anyone who still says 'shut up' in a Genovian accent.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which year was The Princess Diaries released?
2001
Disney released it. Its sequel followed three years later.
Q 02Who directed the 2001 film?
Garry Marshall
He had created Happy Days and directed Pretty Woman. His sister Penny Marshall directed Big.
Q 03What is Mia terrified of doing at the start of The Princess Diaries?
Speaking in public
Speaking in public makes her so nervous she faints, runs away or is sick, as she admits at the ball, where, soaked from the rain, she finally gets through a speech.
Q 04Which fictional European country is Mia heir to in The Princess Diaries?
Genovia
Genovia's queen warns Mia's mother that if Mia refuses the throne, the country 'will cease to exist as we know it', which is why a schoolgirl ends up in princess lessons.
Q 05In which city does Mia live at the start of The Princess Diaries?
San Francisco
San Francisco replaced the New York of the novels, and the film uses its hills: on a drive with her grandmother, Mia's car ends up colliding with a cable car.
Q 06In The Princess Diaries, what kind of building do Mia and her mother call home?
A converted firehouse
A converted firehouse, and a real one: a former city fire station supplied the exterior, while the studio-built rooms were dressed with Anne Hathaway's own family belongings to put her at ease.
Q 07The Princess Diaries is based on a novel by which author?
Meg Cabot
Meg Cabot says her first cheque from Disney was just $4,000, for a novel she wrote in her free time while working in a New York University dormitory; the film went on to gross $165 million.
Q 08Julie Andrews plays which queen in The Princess Diaries?
Queen Clarisse Renaldi
Queen Clarisse Renaldi was built up for her: the producers wanted Andrews from the start and enlarged the grandmother's part, and she says she drew on how Britain's royals wave and carry themselves.
Q 09In The Princess Diaries, Joe tells Mia no one can make her feel inferior without her consent, quoting which First Lady?
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt is the name Mia supplies at once, and her driver replies that she was 'another special lady, like yourself'.
Q 10Roughly how much did the first film gross worldwide?
$165.3 million
That was on a modest budget for a Disney comedy. The sequel took slightly less.
Q 11Which actor plays Joe, the queen's head of security and Mia's driver, in The Princess Diaries?
Héctor Elizondo
Héctor Elizondo appeared in all 18 films Garry Marshall directed, a streak the director insisted on keeping even when a script had no obvious part for him.
Q 12Which pop singer plays the mean cheerleader Lana Thomas in The Princess Diaries?
Mandy Moore
Mandy Moore's Lana exposes Mia to the paparazzi in nothing but a towel at the beach party, and the photo is in the newspapers the next day.
Q 13Which Welcome to the Dollhouse star plays Mia's best friend Lilly Moscovitz in The Princess Diaries?
Heather Matarazzo
Q 21In which New York borough was the film's young star born?
Brooklyn
She was born in November 1982. She was still a teenager when the first film was made.
Q 22Where was Anne Hathaway when she auditioned for the role of Mia in The Princess Diaries?
On a flight layover
On a flight layover of 26 hours in Los Angeles, on her way to shoot a film in New Zealand, she got so nervous that she fell off her chair, and she thinks that is what won over the director.
Q 23Why did Garry Marshall's granddaughters urge him to cast Anne Hathaway as Mia?
She had the best princess hair
Heather Matarazzo improvised her 'Not you, I don't even know you!', snapped at two strangers who stop when she shouts 'Wait for me!'; a producer had suggested she ad-lib.
Q 14When was the sequel, Royal Engagement, released?
2004
Garry Marshall returned to direct it. Whitney Houston was among its producers.
Q 15In The Princess Diaries 2, what must Mia do within 30 days to keep her claim to the throne?
Marry
Marry within 30 days is what an old royal law demands of an unwed heiress, so Mia gets engaged to a duke she barely knows, then stops the wedding and talks Parliament into scrapping the law.
Q 16Which actor made his feature film debut as Lord Nicholas Devereaux in The Princess Diaries 2?
Chris Pine
Chris Pine plays the rival heir sent to sabotage Mia's claim, who falls for her instead and turns the crown down; five years later he was Star Trek's Captain Kirk.
Q 17Why was Julie Andrews's 'Your Crowning Glory' in The Princess Diaries 2 a milestone?
Her first film song since surgery
Her first film song since surgery in 1997 cost her a four-octave voice: the composer kept it within one octave, and the music supervisor says she nailed it on the first take, leaving crew in tears.
Q 18Which singer and actress duets with Julie Andrews on 'Your Crowning Glory' in The Princess Diaries 2?
Raven-Symoné
Raven-Symoné plays Princess Asana, a guest at Mia's slumber party: the queen starts the song alone, and Asana jumps in when a remixed second verse kicks off.
Q 19In The Princess Diaries 2, what do Mia and her slumber-party guests go 'surfing' on inside the palace?
Mattresses
Mattresses were the director's idea: he told the screenwriter to add a slumber party with mattress surfing, and she later said it taught her that a detour from the plot can be the best bit.
Q 20Which singer co-produced both Princess Diaries films, having co-produced a 1997 TV Cinderella?
Whitney Houston
Whitney Houston produced them with her business partner Debra Martin Chase, who had read the novel, loved it and sold the idea to Disney.
She had the best princess hair, his twin granddaughters decided after watching the audition tapes, and he listened; the pair turn up in the film asking Mia for her autograph.
Q 24For which 2012 musical did Princess Diaries star Anne Hathaway win an Academy Award?
Les Misérables
Les Misérables won her Best Supporting Actress as Fantine, the role she had watched her own mother play on tour as a child, the experience that first drew her to acting.
Q 25Who does Mia kiss at the ball that ends The Princess Diaries?
Michael
Michael, Lilly's older brother, accepts Mia's apology for cancelling on him to go to the beach party, and she tells him why she chose him: he saw her when she was invisible.
Q 26In the Princess Diaries novels, what does Mia call her formidable grandmother?
Grandmère
Grandmère is far sharper on the page than Julie Andrews's queen: a Sidecar-drinking dowager princess, critical of everyone, who barely gets along with Mia for most of the first book.
Q 27At the start of The Princess Diaries 2, Mia has just graduated from which university?
Princeton
Princeton is where the sequel opens, with Mia collecting a degree from its Woodrow Wilson School of public affairs, apt training for a queen-in-waiting, before she flies off to claim her throne.
Q 28How does Mia's father differ in the Princess Diaries novels?
He is alive in the books
He is alive in the books, a prince left unable to have more children by cancer, which is why Mia is his heir; the film dropped him so that his lines could go to Julie Andrews's queen.
Q 29How old is Mia in the film version?
15
She drives a 1965 Mustang and lives in California. The novels place her a little differently.
Q 30What car is Mia fixing up for her sixteenth birthday in The Princess Diaries?
A Ford Mustang
A Ford Mustang, a battered blue 1966 convertible, is the car she is desperate to restore; the production used two matching cars, and it returns gleaming in the sequel.