Danielle de Barbarac a Mary Sue?

This has disturbed me since I read this essay on Mary Sues, which fleetingly mentions Danielle de Barbarac as a Sue. Although I could see that Danielle's character matches the qualities of a Mary Sue, I keep finding myself trying to make excuses that she's not.

When I watched Ever After in full for the first time last year, I was absolutely awed at Danielle de Barbarac’s display of wit and intellect. As a girl, Danielle grew up listening to her father as he read to her books on philosophy and science. Such subjects captured her heart; in the years to come, after her father’s sudden death, she treasures these ideals she learned in these books, especially in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. In effect, Danielle grows to care so much for the peasants and outcasts, especially when she becomes one herself when her stepmother turns her into a servant.

Ten years after her father’s death, she carries with her these passions; this is perhaps what keeps her strong in life and work. In an effort to keep Maurice, her family’s oldest servant, she disguises herself as a “courtier” and impresses Prince Henry and his men by reciting: “A servant is not a thief, and those who are can’t help themselves. If you suffer your people to be ill-educated and punish them for that educated disposed of them, what else is to be concluded, sir, but that you make thieves and then punish them?”

I was impressed myself and after other similar quotes, Danielle gradually stole my heart.

For the rest of the movie, she keeps charming the Prince and also Signore Leonardo da Vinci with her witty and feisty attitude. Danielle might be unusually free-spirited for a 16th-century French woman, but at least it makes sense: her father was a healthy man who gave her access to heavy books. Besides, it is from lack of maternal guidance that Danielle’s best ladylike ways do not come naturally and have to be observed from wealthier women. This is perhaps reason enough for her not to be uptight or squeamish unlike her stepsisters Marguerite and Jacqueline. Danielle is fun-loving and adventurous like the present-day woman. She even befriended a gang of gypsies, who are considered outsiders who don’t deserve anyone’s sympathy.

Another realistic touch to Danielle is that, with her powerful ideals, it would have been more sensible for her to run away from the manor and make a life for herself. But she doesn’t for the sake of self-preservation (at least she gets fed and sleeps with a roof over her head) and to keep an eye on her parents’ valuable properties and the servants she considers her only family.

Danielle is undoubtedly a good character, but a Mary Sue?

According to TV Tropes, a character with Sue-ish qualities can get away with it if written well. Danielle may be incredibly smart and witty and “beautiful all along” but by the way she’s written out, it works.

Perhaps what ruins her is the climax, when Monsieur Pierre Le Pieu was held at swordpoint—his life in exchange for her freedom. “My father was an excellent swordsman; he taught me well,” Danielle warns the lustful merchant. Meanwhile, her designated love interest, Prince Henry, is racing to rescue her, but by the time he arrived, Danielle is walking out of the mansion completely unharmed, as a display of her independence. It would have worked if it didn’t involve a sword, because that seemed to have come out of nowhere. Danielle was supposedly eight years old when her father died; what self-respecting father would teach a little girl to do combat? He might as well have handed her a gun.