The Swan Princess: A Royal MyZtery is the eighth movie in The Swan Princess film series. It will be released on DVD and Digital HD in the US March 27th 2018.
Plot
Your favorite characters are back in an all-new royal adventure! It seems that a mysterious “Z” is appearing as a mark on the palace residents. Who is behind the mark and what does it mean? Princess Odette, Derek, Scully and all the Swan Princess friends work as a team to uncover the secret.
Story
Queen Uberta has written a book called “Queen U to the Rescue!” Where she details a (fictional) account of how she saved the kingdom from Count Antonio, and saw through his fake proposal for marriage. In the morning, she wakes up to find a “Z” slashed into the cover of her book, and Lord Rogers thinks she did it by accident with her long, sharp fingernails.
Alise and Lucas are staying in Borromeo, where Lucas and his family plant tulips for King Sebastian. Lord Rogers kept Antonio’s submarine so he can make a blueprint of how it works and use it for good, but someone slashes a “Z” into the blueprint. Similar marks are made on Speed and Jean-Bob, and rats are believed to be making the marks. Prince Derek and Princess Odette learn that they have both been marked also, and they go to the kingdom of Borromeo to make sure the children are all right. Puffin flies over the kingdom and sees another “Z” slashed in the tulip garden, and Scully’s ghost reappears and reveals he saw a Man in Black on a rooftop spying on them, and whistle to command the rats. The rats chew through a chandelier that falls and almost hits Prince Derek, but Scully pushes him out of the way.
The kings guards tell Prince Derek that Niccolo, imprisoned, wishes to speak to him to reveal information about the Man in Black. Niccolo is revealed to have gone mad in his cell, developing a split personality, and obsessing over Queen Uberta’s book. He warns Prince Derek that Count Antonio survived, and is back for revenge. Derek brushes this off, as Antonio sailed into a hurricane and no one could have survived.
Scully tried tracking down the Man in Black, but is being chased by a Bogg ghost named Hunch, who wishes to capture Scully for helping the “pink bellies” escape the island while they were shipwrecked. Scully distracts the Boggs with a trial, and manages to escape and tell Puffin to get Rogers' help. Lord Rogers has a glass jar used for holding a ghost, as glass is the only thing that can hold a ghost, as well as a ghost rope.
Odette decides to track the Man in Black by following the rats, with the help of Number 9 at the King’s Assistance. She’s almost lead into a trap, but realizes the trap was meant for Derek, and that all of this has been about Derek. When Derek falls into the same trap, he escapes when the King’s guards chase off the Man in Black. Derek learns that Antonio’s last name was Zambrano, and that he really is back and is indeed the Man in Black, as Niccolo said. Derek warns King Sebastian.
Lord Rogers learns that putting something in his ghost trapping jar temporarily makes it transparent like a ghost, and puts gloves and trackers in it so he can track Scully and Hunch. With the help of Lucas and Alise, they get the tracker on him and are able to track him so Scully can find the Man in Black.
Derek and Odette visit Niccolo again, who warns them that Antonio is after the children, and they learn that the children are in fact missing. They go back to Niccolo's cell and find a hidden passage, that leads them to where Lucas and Alise are being held captive. Derek frees them but is soon captured himself, and Odette gets the children out before Niccolo reveals himself. He reveals to Derek that Antonio isn’t really alive, he himself was the Man in Black all along, and the rats helped him mark Derek and his friends for revenge. He says Queen Uberta’s book helped him learn who all was responsible for his imprisonment. Derek asks him about the Z’s, and Niccolo reveals they were actually N’s.
Hunch manages to capture Scully, but Scully pleads with him to free him long enough to help his friends, with the promise that he’ll return to face his punishment. Hunch agrees, and Scully returns to find Niccolo holding Prince Derek on the dock. Princess Odette and everyone race to the dock, but are too late to stop Niccolo from trapping Prince Derek in a prototype for the submarine and dropping it into the sea.
Scully goes down into the submarine with Prince Derek, so Lord Rogers can give Derek instructions on how to make the submarine work. One of Niccolo's rats frees Derek from his binds so he can work the controls, and Rogers instructs him to use a flat wrench as a make-shift lever to replace the one Niccolo broke off so Derek couldn’t free himself. Derek stars losing air, and isn’t strong enough to pull the lever. Hunch returns, and scares the rat so it jumps on the lever, and the submarine floats up to the surface, freeing Derek.
Scully asks Hunch for a chance to say goodbye, but Hunch tells him he’s free to go. Derek and Odette tell Queen Uberta that her book gave Niccolo the motivation for revenge, and she sees this as an opportunity to write a sequel.
Trivia
- This is the first movie in the series that didn't get the proper DVD release and was primary digital; however, a limited number of DVDs are to be available on Swan Princess website. The Limited DVDs will be released in mid April along with the digital release in most other countries.
- This movie marks the 2nd time Alise gets kidnapped .... the first time being in A Royal Family Tale
- This movie marks the 4th time Derek almost gets killed.... the last times was from quicksand (Secret Of The Castle), during the rematch with Rothbart (Swan Princess Christmas) and a poison dart (A Royal Family Tale)
- Starting from this movie Nina Herzog is now both talking and singing voice of Odette.
- Odette regains her main role in this movie after being demoted to extra in the previous two.
- This movie features the largest number of sidekicks used in any movie from the series, with five appearing in total: Jean-Bob, Speed, Puffin, Scully and Number 9.
- Out of main six animal sidekicks used in the series, only Whizzer doesn't appear.
- The movie continues the mystery theme of The Swan Princess: Royally Undercover and uses the same characters and locations.
- About this movie, the director Rick Rich said:
We have had a lot of remarks from fans saying they want to see more of Odette and Derek and more of a fairy tale feeling. So in Swan 8 we have done a new story built around Derek and Odette, to capture the loving feelings that they had in the first film. Swan Princess 8 worked really well to give us a dramatic and rejuvenated love interest.
