Princess "Toadstool" Peach

Princess Peach is a character in Nintendo's Mario franchise. Originally created by Shigeru Miyamoto, Peach is the princess of the fictional Mushroom Kingdom, which is constantly under attack by Bowser.

Why She's An Awesome Princess

 * 1) Princess Peach is classy, kind, sweet, clever, sociable, and adventurous. She has a warm heart and often acts unselfishly, putting her friends, loved ones, and citizens ahead of herself, and apologizes excessively for getting into trouble and requiring Mario to rescue her.
 * 2) She even shows concern and compassion towards her enemies, such as saving Mimi in Super Paper Mario, despite the girl's constant antagonism toward the princess.
 * 3) Some of Princess Peach's power comes simply from her sheer pure and noble characteristics, which allows her to be the only person who can activate certain powerful objects (including, but not limited to the Beanstar and Dark Star) to land in the Overthere, the Mario equivalent of Heaven (after Dimentio knocks her out).
 * 4) She often acts as a peacemaker, such as in Super Smash Bros. Brawl 's story mode, where she offers tea to Fox and Sheik in order to calm them down, and later converts Mr. Game & Watch to their cause.
 * 5) While gentle by nature, Princess Peach is also strong-willed and can hold her own in sports competitions and battle, provided she is not already being held captive. But while Peach is often considered the archetypal damsel in distress when it comes to video games, she is often shown to be actively working against her captors, such as sneaking around searching for power-ups and/or information to send to Mario in games such as Super Mario Galaxy and the Paper Mario series.
 * 6) While she occasionally seems naive, she is generally level-headed and expresses more common sense than those around her, such as noticing a doppelganger in the Isle Delfino vacation guide video's background in Super Mario Sunshine, insisting that an emergency meeting continues even after it is briefly interrupted by Bowser in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, and talking a stubborn Bowser into joining her and Mario in Super Paper Mario.
 * 7) Unlike most damsels in distress, she actually has a feistier side, which shines through particularly well in her comic appearances.
 * 8) *In both shows, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World and The Super Mario Bros Movie, she is actually an active character who actually fights back and shows a sign of independence instead of being a "damsel in distress who has to be to saved all the time". She still gets kidnapped from time to time, but she still does manage to fight back sometimes.
 * 9) Although most games emphasize her innocent nature, the Super Smash Bros. series tended to depict her as having a slightly more flirty, mischievous, and confident attitude, including having one of her taunts depicting her as making a flirtatious wink, as well as making some victory remarks that at times directly taunt the player.
 * 10) She is very gorgeous looking along with many other princesses (Princess Daisy, Rosalina, etc), especially in The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
 * 11) In her own game, mh:awesomegames:Super Princess Peach, where she is the playable titular main protagonist, she saved the Mario brothers and most of the Toads from Bowser.
 * 12) Her voice actresses do great jobs voicing her, like Jen Taylor, Samantha Kelly and of course, Anya Taylor-Joy.
 * 13) She is at her absolute best in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, reimagined herself to a heroic, tough, and more badass.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) She gets kidnapped in almost all of the main games including the ports by Bowser (at most 81 times in her entire life), instead of fighting him and his army, which can get quite repetitive and formulaic. Yes, she does fight back occasionally, but still.
 * 2) Although Peach, of course, appreciates Mario rescuing her, she does not show her appreciation as well as she could most of the time. The best Mario usually would get is a nose kiss and a cake.
 * 3) Mario Strikers Charged does show her slightly more arrogant and petulant side, including her pitching a fit to one of her teammates and eventually jumping up and down in an apparent tantrum if the opposing team scores, which shows her flanderization.
 * 4) *She was redeemed in Mario Strikers: Battle League where she calms down her anger due to the events of Charged.
 * 5) *A similar temperamental nature can be observed if the player fails to flip food in time and have it land on the floor in the Modern versions of Chef, where Peach will either stamp her foot in anger (Game & Watch Gallery 2) or otherwise putting her hand over her head and scream repeatedly in frustration before proceeding to wince (Game & Watch Gallery 4), in either case causing Yoshi to crouch down in fear.

Legacy
On August 6, 2014, Nintendo declared August as National Peach Month. A parody sculpture of the music video of "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus including Chain Chomp and Princess Peach has been made by custom figurine artist Kodykoala.

She is considered as an LGBT icon by several journalists. The A.V. Club stated that "she became a perhaps unlikely but nevertheless important queer icon". John Walker of Splinter described Peach as a "queer icon", saying "If you polled a room full of non-straight men about the women they consider to be 'queer icons' you'd probably hear a lot of Beyoncé, Dolly Parton, and Grace Jones. But there's one name you might not hear that totally deserves a spot on that list: Princess Peach". Gay Times listed Super Princess Peach in its top "9 video games queer people love, from Tomb Raider to Animal Crossing". On March 11, 2010, Brightest Young Things named her "Gay icon of the week", saying that "For many, she was your first girlfriend ... and just pretend you were the hottest, baddest bombshell who could float, dig down 300 feet of desert sand, and beat mice with sunglasses".

The release of Peachette in New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe led to fan speculation and theories as to how the new Super Crown power-up works within the Super Mario universe. In 2018, a short comic "The Super Crown's some spicy new Mario lore" on DeviantArt and Twitter transforms Bowser into a monstrously sinister female resembling Peach, which fans named Bowsette. The character subsequently went viral, with Ars Technica writing that Bowsette's popularity was partly due to her contrast with Princess Peach.