Ideas generated from the story of Aladdin. http://www.existentialcomics.com/comic/277 I'm not familiar with the Disney movie in question, or the stage musical based on it, so I'll focus on the philosophy. What does it mean to say that someone is a Prince? Not as a metaphorical turn of phrase/praise ("oh, you're such a prince.") But in earnest. "The Queen's son Charles is a Prince." What does THAT mean? The comic to which I linked you above offers three answers: 1. From Aristotle, there is essentialism. There is some essence of princehood which princes possess, and a non-prince could be made a prince, by a hypothetical lamp-captive genie, if that essence could be infused into him. 2. From Kripke, there is a causal theory of reference. There must have been some event by virtue of which a Prince became a Prince, ie a coronation, or birth to a Queen, or some such, just as he becomes a husband by virtue of a wedding, etc. All essentialist ...