A former graphic design intern who dreamed as a child of being a princess now spends every day dressed as a medieval Queen, swishing around town in one of her 25 stunning ballgowns and her choice of 250 tiaras.
Queen Astraea, 28 – who wishes to use only her regal title and will not reveal her commoner name – crowned herself in 2020, after being made redundant from her minimum wage job in the pandemic, and is now a royal on TikTok, dressed in frocks worth between £250 and £12,000.
Having first invented Princess Astraea as an imaginary friend who could share her tea parties when she was four years old, she spends between six to 12 hours a day, living as a fully-fledged Queen, making regal videos for her 1.7million followers.
And even when she is off duty, Astraea, who lives in an apartment in Manhattan, New York, USA, with her boyfriend Matthew, 33, an IT technology consultant, still teams her more toned down “peasant attire” with a corset – although she pops on a more comfortable one.
Delighted with her new life, Her Majesty said: “Now I get to be Queen Astraea every day.
“When I am Queen Astraea, I feel like me, exactly as I should be. She is me, but unhinged. Me without the filter and with all the audacity.”
Astraea, whose mother, Lisa, 63, was a ballerina and dad, Brian, 73, a guitarist, grew up as an only child in their apartment in the upper east side of Manhattan.
Her unlikely fascination with medieval princesses began when she was just four and her mother took her on her daily trips to New York’s Museum of Natural History, a stone’s throw from their family home.
“I was a very precocious child and very curious,” she said.
I felt really powerful - it was transformative.
Astraea added: “I remember visiting the museum and being mesmerised by the magnificent portraits of these beautiful, astounding and powerful women.
“I would ask my mom, ‘Who is she? What does she do? Why is she wearing that dress?'”
Deciding she needed a playmate, she invented her imaginary friend Princess Astraea, named after the ancient Greek goddess of justice, innocence and purity.
She recalled: “We would have tea parties together or go frolicking in Central Park to vanquish enemies and go on adventures.
“Even doing homework, I would ask questions like, ‘How are we going to rule a country, if we don’t understand mathematics?'”
Then, aged nine, she was taken by her mother to the New York Renaissance Faire, which runs each summer for nine weekends in Tuxedo, New York State, and was inspired to “become” the royal herself.
She said: “The first time I became Astraea was at my first Renaissance Faire, where you dress up and travel back in time to the Elizabethan period.
“It was incredible. I saw this beautiful, royal purple cotton dress with long pointed sleeves and I begged my mom to buy it for me.
“Of course, she caved in and bought me the dress and I felt like a million bucks.”
She added: “I felt really powerful – it was transformative. It felt so freeing, like I could be myself.
“For the next four years, I refused to take it off other than for school because I needed to wear smarter clothes.
“But my mom would always give me very elaborate, princess hairstyles to make up for it.”
Heading to secondary school, Astraea took a brief break away from dressing as a princess during her early teenage years.
“There was a lot of people saying, ‘You are weird,’ or asking what I was doing,” she said.
“I would still dress up at home but at school, I experimented with different styles – but they never felt quite like me.”
But even though she looked outwardly like an ordinary young woman, Princess Astraea was never vanquished.
“She was always someone I had in my head, I never lost her,” she said.
Studying art history alongside her degree in illustration at Columbia College Chicago, Astraea was still fascinated by portraits of powerful medieval females.
Then in 2019, post-university, she stumbled upon live-action role play (LARP) in New Jersey, where people dress and act as their characters in a real-world environment.
Dating Astraea to around 1450, she began to embody the princess every month, donning a white and blue renaissance dress and a tiara, for the weekend-long live action role play.
And when she dressed as the princess, Astraea found she had a different – and very confident – personality, that contrasted with her non-regal character, when she was more reserved and less battle-ready.
“It was amazing – I felt like me, just as I should be,” she said of her regal self.
“She is just what every woman wants to be – she doesn’t follow rules very easily.
“If she sees something is inherently wrong, she’s going to try to right it.”
She added: “She’s extremely just, bombastic, quirky, she’s very smart and witty. And she doesn’t take no for an answer.”
Astraea even found love as the Princess – meeting her boyfriend of three years, Matthew, at a LARP, when he was dressed as a Paladin, a fictional holy knight.
“He actually works as a team leader with LARP to help with the game play and make sure it runs to the best it can,” she said.
“He has been larping since 16 – he loves it,” she added.
“He thinks it is the coolest thing and is a maniac on the battlefield!
“Our characters date in that world too so it isn’t weird when we meet there.”
She added: “He finds it amazing that I have come this far with Astraea.
“He loves the character I have created and what she represents.”
After university, Astraea was in and out of jobs in retail and waitressing before landing a job as a graphic design intern – only for the pandemic to hit just months later.
Once the crown is on, I'm completely her. It's like a switch.
“I was on minimum wage as an intern and I was just hoping to work hard enough so that maybe, I could get junior designer and jumpstart my career but the pandemic hit,” she said.
“I downloaded TikTok and it was like falling down the rabbit hole because for three months, I was addicted to watching these videos.
“Then one day, my friends at LARP said they were going to try do some TikToks and I thought, ‘Why not, what’s the worst that can happen?'”
Astraea added: “I decided to make this video of me miming to Ab Fab, in my dress and tiara, and uploaded it – thinking only my friends could see it.
“When I woke up in the morning, I screamed at the top of my lungs.
“My video had gone viral and had 250,000 views overnight, before jumping to 700k in the day. Somehow, this is now my full time job.”
Living off brand deals and some creator income from TikTok, as @queen_astraea she now earns around $1,700 (£1,350) in total a month.
Explaining why she became a Queen instead of a princess, she said: “I decided to become a Queen in lockdown because I’m an adult and I realised there was no reason why she couldn’t ascend the throne.
“You never get to see the Disney princesses become queens, so I decided to.”
She added: “When I decided to stage my coronation, I asked my two best friends to help me and they were all in.
“I picked this church I had grown up at – this lovely, beautiful church – as the location and asked the director if we could film there and explained the plan and he said yes.
“My mom helped us too. It was my mom who actually crowned me in the video. It felt very majestic.”
My character is all about rebellion and being whatever you want to be.
Now the distinction between Astraea and Queen Astraea is barely there.
“As weird as it sounds, she is just me now,” she said.
“Once the crown is on, I’m completely her. It’s like a switch.”
Astraea is normally a Queen during the work hours of nine to five, wearing her full royal regalia to make her TikTok videos.
She said: “I go to the grocery store in my dresses when I run out of milk and I have run through the street as a medieval princess.
“Most of the time, people gawk at me, saying, ‘Oh my God’ and ‘Whoa’ and then there’s always a lot of pointing. Kids come up to me immediately and I always say, ‘Hello, it is I, your Queen’ and they love that.”
As a joke, sometimes she turns up as the Queen at parties with her friends.
She said: “They play up to and say, ‘Your Majesty, what are you doing here?’ and I tell them I have escaped to party with the peasants.”
And occasionally, her two lives get accidentally tangled.
She said: “The funniest thing that happened to me was when I screwed up an appointment with my doctor in the middle of filming.
“I just grabbed my phone and left, in a red Italian Renaissance ball gown and neo-classical gold tiara with white diamonds, for the subway to meet the doctor.
“The doctor said, ‘I was not expecting to meet Your Majesty’.”
If I'm making people smile, then what I am doing is worth it.
Astraea has pretty much done with ‘normal’ clothes too now – even when she is not being the Queen.
“I am either in full-blown gear or I am just a toned down version of the Queen, wearing my ‘peasant attire’,” she said.
“My friends joke that it is the Queen incognito. I still wear the corsets but they are more comfortable ones and I go for my ‘peasant’ sun dresses instead of the big dresses.”
Most of her 25 regal dresses cost between £250 to £550, but Queen Astraea’s most expensive was gifted to her by a friend. Made entirely from crystal and glass beads, it cost £12,000.
She is also eagerly awaiting an elaborate rapier sword that is being custom-made for her. A gift from a company, it will be created from fibreglass and moulded foam.
Meanwhile, the response to the Queen’s videos continues to amaze her.
“My character is all about rebellion and being whatever you want to be,” she said.
“In my videos, I show people that she can be just as powerful in a pretty pink ball gown as she is with a sword.
“I get messages from young girls or guys or people transitioning on Instagram who say that it has inspired them to buy a crown or make themselves feel special for the day and represent themselves as they are.
“If I’m making people smile, then what I am doing is worth it.”
Find Queen Astraea here on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@queen_astraea?lang=en
