I don't know why, but I've been thinking about it a lot recently and I want to find out which anime it was and whether it also had a manga associated with it, etc. I remember that I absolutely LOVED it at the time, and I'm hoping that I can get my hands on it again.
Please use the following clues to help me identify it!
1) REALLY old-style shoujo animation, like with the classic 70s-80s huge glittery shoujo eyes and dainty features. So if there was a manga associated with it, it was probably also a classic shoujo title.
2) The heroine was born to a king and a queen but was raised as a prince for some reason. I think there was some sort of curse and they were afraid to raise her as a girl? But I can't be sure of that. All I know is that she was definitely raised as a boy. In fact, I'm pretty sure the beginning of the anime was in a dark castle at night and the king and the queen were really frightened of this potential curse (or whatever it was). The baby prince(ss) had just been born or was about to be born.
3) The heroine was a young teenager. She had short, blond, wavy hair and wore aristocratic boys' clothes. I vaguely recall her having some fighting skills, too, and maybe a weapon like a sword or a dagger... (No, this is NOT the Rose of Versailles! Completely different plot.)
3) Somewhere along the line, she was kidnapped (or just picked up?) by a handsome pirate who probably had some sort of romantic interest in her, because he gave her this AMAZING ball-gown-style dress as a gift, white and gorgeous with lovely pink flowers on it, and she was stunned to discover her own femininity when she put it on... Oh, and yeah, all of this happened on the pirate's ship. I think she may have danced with the pirate while wearing that beautiful dress - it was all so sparkly and pretty and shoujo-ey! Lol, I remember it so well because that kind of thing really affected me as a little girl.
4) Then there was this horrible scene in a dark cave with geysers exploding, either volcanic geysers or steam geysers with a lot of choking air and high temperatures. The heroine was somehow stranded there and was either dying or nearly-dead, and her clothing was in tatters, and she actually WENT BLIND for a little while. (Or maybe a long time? Still, blindness. The blindness was caused by a sudden jet of high-pressure steam from one of the geysers, right into the poor heroine's eyes. I was like, OUCH.)
5) There was also this other girl character that was the heroine's arch-enemy or just a rival or snarky companion, but they ended up forming a truce or getting along around the time of the geyser incident... This other girl may or may not have died in the geysers, but I think that the heroine tried to save her, or called her name while blinded, or something. Or maybe this other girl betrayed the heroine and left her to die in the geysers? I HAVE NO IDEA, but: other girl + geysers. That definitely happened.
6) I have no clue how or why, but I recall this Trojan Horse type thing. o_0; Like, a huge wooden thing on wheels, that lots of slaves/soldiers were pushing along. I mean it was HUGE, like, gigantic. Some sort of war machine, run at least partly by magic (?). I think.
7) There was this evil witch with massive armies controlling these mechanized machines or catapults or Trojan Horses or whatever, and the heroine went to war against this witch and the witch's allies. One of these allies was a grey-bearded, slightly overweight old man. He betrayed the witch or just plain chickened out at some point near the end, leaving the witch to die. He may also have been someone who betrayed the heroine's parents at the beginning of the story, and sided with the witch instead. Can't be sure of that, though - except that the heroine sort of seemed to recognize him during the battle, so he probably did have some relation to her.
8) The witch was defeated in the end. There was chaos and floods (castle fountains overflowing?) and the witch's castle/fortress was either completely or partially destroyed. Yay, victory for the heroine! Uh. I think.
Gah, I dunno, this is all I can remember for now. I realize that it all sounds really weird and like some kind of acid trip... Lol! That's because I can't remember the connecting story or logic, just odd incidents from the story. I'm not even sure if I've gotten the order of the events right, or if all of them were from the same anime. Which doesn't make YOUR job any easier.
Sorry. I just hope that most of this information is correct enough to be recognizable for somebody out there...I'd really, REALLY appreciate it if someone could identify this for me. Either in anime or in manga form (if the manga exists).
Thank you so much, in advance!
