Some Days You Wake Up and Are Gripped by the Need To Know Just How Old Princess Peach Is

We all have those days, right? Sometimes you just tumble our of bed and you stumble to the kitchen and then stop in your tracks because you’ve just asked yourself—I wonder how old Princess Peach, Mushroom Kingdom royalty, damsel in distress extraordinaire and overall iconic character in one of the most famous videogame franchises in the world is. So I had to do some research, which I will now proceed to share.

Of course, it’s easy to know how old the character of Princess Peach is outside of her fictional universe. She was first introduced in Super Mario Bros. in 1985, which would make her 37 today. Or 16, if you decide to start counting from her first solo game, 2006’s Super Princess Peach.

But when it comes to her intradiegetic, in-age game, the question gets a little more complicated. If she’s a Princess, does that mean she’s relatively young and there’s a King (or a Queen) ruling the Mushroom Kingdom? Or is it more like a principate despite being called “Kingdom”? Am I looking too much into fictional geopolitics? Maybe. What’s certain is that despite appearing in a lot of Super Mario titles, not much is known about her—she has evolved somehow from simply being Bowser’s hostage, but her potential within the games is still largely unexplored.

The Internet at large reports that Princess Peach was in fact a teenager during her first appearance in Super Mario Bros., where she was 15 years old. In more recent games, though, she’s a bit older and somewhere in her twenties, around the ages of 20 and 25. Something that would definitely make sense with my ramblings about there being an actual King or Queen of the Mushroom Kingdom and Peach being more like a member of the royal family—maybe the Crown Princess.

What’s certain is that no matter her position in the Mushroom line of succession, Princess Peach is loaded—she was actually featured in Forbes Magazine’s 2007 list of Wealthiest Fictional Characters. Her fortune apparently amounts to $1.3 billion between real estate properties like Mushroom Castle, high-fashion outfits like the more than 500 different versions of her signature pink dress, and of course, the coins that Mario gathers during his adventures around various worlds.

Could this be why Bowser is always trying to kidnap her? Does he want a ransom? He does own his own castle, but maybe he needs some of those coins to do some much-needed renovation works—those lava rivers have to be a terrible walking hazard.

(via: Facts.net; image: Nintendo)