Polvina is the Octopus Princess. Her best friends are Ester and Tubarina, who always have great adventures with each other and often get themselves in trouble. She loves to read and draw and has a pet octopus named Tentie.
Polvina is a quiet and peaceful girl, shy as octopuses, but she is also very smart and fun, always having a solution when she or her friends are in trouble. When her friends get into arguments with each other, Polvina usually acts as a mediator, reminding them of the right way to solve their problems. She also admires her father, the Octopus King, and wishes to be a great ruler like him one day.
Depiction[]
Polvina's hair is styled in the shape of an octopus, which is actually a crown that represents her kingdom (or the tentacles of her octopus-shaped crown mingle with her hair).
Her attire differs between the books and the animated series. In the main series books, Polvina's hair and attire are red and she has red heart-shaped pasties on her chest. In the animated series and the literacy series books, Polvina's hair and attire are pink and she wears a pink tube top (bandeau). In both cases, she wears a matching skirt shaped like the tentacles of an octopus.
Character highlights[]
In The Diary, Polvina’s red diary is taken along with some other red things belonging to other students. After going on a chase around the library with her friends, Polvina learns that the red items were taken by a mimic octopus. It is revealed that Polvina’s diary did not contain any secrets, but rather ideas for school projects.
In The Toy, Polvina finds a box with a tiny octopus doll along with a card written in a mysterious language. After learning from her father that the card is written in the ancient language of the Abysmal Kingdom, she goes down there with her friends to find out what the card and toy are. It is there that they meet the Abysmal Princess Bia and learn that the card is a get-well card. Returning home, Polvina learns from her mother that the toy was a gift from the Abysmal King, who visited when Polvina was a toddler, but since she was sick at the time, he put it away in a safe place and presumably forgot to tell her where he put it.
When a mass of crabs on a migration swarm the Octopus Palace in Homeless, Polvina and her family are forced to move out. While her parents stay at her aunt’s place, Polvina switches between staying with Ester and Tubarina when the Crab Prince Sirilo is unable to move the crabs on. However, things did not go the way she expected because Ester wants to play with her while Tubarina constantly hums, talks and snores on top of Gummy getting territorial. Polvina eventually decides to get Sirilo again, but when he is still unable to get them to move on, she tricks the crabs into leaving. When Polvina tells Ester and Tubarina how it was hard to live with them, they point out that it was even harder to live with her because she sleepwalks and sleepeats.
During a rehearsal for the school concert in Stage Fright, Polvina becomes nervous and freezes up when it comes the girls’ turn to perform. When Ester and Tubarina know about this, they suggest to Polvina that she move around the stage, but it does not help. On the night of the concert, Ester and Tubarina initially mess up on purpose so nothing that Polvina does will be worse than what they did. Polvina seemingly overcomes her stage fright and their performance goes smoothly.
In Best Friends, Polvina finds a nautilus and makes a wish for her best friend. Ester and Tubarina attempt to find out who Polvina made the wish for because they want to know who her best friend is. Tubarina claims that she was Polvina’s best friend since their first day in preschool because she shared her lunch with her when she forgot, while Ester claims that she was because before that, Polvina hurt her knee and she helped her put a bandage on it. However, Polvina tells them that neither of them were her first friends; when she started preschool a few days after Ester and Tubarina and tried to play with them, they made such a fuss that she left them alone – it wasn’t until a few weeks later that they let her play with them. When Ester and Tubarina hear this, they ostracise Polvina, which leads her to find the nautilus again and make another wish. After Polvina saves them from moray eels, she tells them that she made the wish for Salacia, because she felt that their home is everyone’s best friend.
In The Carnival, the class asks Polvina to organise a float for the Salacian Carnival. Despite her asking everyone to help with the float, she eventually ends up designing, building and driving the float herself. When the float crashes and Polvina is tasked with cleaning the mess up, everyone feels guilty for not helping her work on the float and they decide to help her before parading her as the carnival queen.
When Ester and Tubarina see that Marcello and Hugo have taken advantage of Polvina by having her do their homework for them in The Bad Princess, they decide to teach them a lesson by having her play a trick on them, despite her saying that it would not be nice to do so. Marcello and Hugo are blamed for the mess that ensued, which leads Polvina to feel bad about playing the trick. She tells the Shark King that she, Ester and Tubarina were responsible for what happened. While they are cleaning up the garden, Ester and Tubarina tell Polvina that she could never be a bad princess, to which Polvina somewhat proves herself by accidentally causing some parrotfish to poke at them.
While helping Ester gather gemstones from a crumbling cave in The Accident, Polvina hurts her leg and Ester, feeling bad for what happened, decides to take care of her. Eventually, Polvina’s leg gets better after a week, but she still wants Ester to keep helping her. Ester discovers this and breaks off her friendship with Polvina. After three days without Ester talking to her, Polvina decides to go back to the cave and get the gemstone that Ester wanted. Tubarina tells this to Ester and they get Polvina out of the cave just as it collapses.
In The Birds, Polvina frequently goes up a mountain called The Thumb to study a family of albatross in the hope that she can fly. With help from Ester and Tubarina, Polvina makes a big sky kite and tests it. When it fails, Polvina goes to look at a Drylander aeroplane to see how it flies, but it takes off with Polvina on it. One of the albatross goes out and saves Polvina, at which point she decides to give up on her flying experiments.
In The Bite, Polvina gets too close to a turtle laying eggs on a remote Dryland island and gets bitten. From that point on, she becomes paranoid of every creature she sees, including Gummy and Tentie. Over the next few weeks, Ester and Tubarina help Polvina overcome her paranoia, but it seemingly does not work. When the girls go back to see the baby turtles hatching, they encounter a boar and Polvina gets chased when she seemingly provokes it. After Polvina somehow ends up on top of the boar, they somehow get tied up in some vines, allowing the baby turtles to go into the sea safely. With this, Polvina is no longer afraid of turtles after having confronted something much scarier.
In the books[]
Before the events of The World of Salacia, Polvina was attacked by a school of hungry sharks who had mistaken her crown for a real octopus, which resulted in her father having to come to her rescue. Following this encounter, Polvina became afraid of leaving the Octopus Palace because of the sharks. She became a shy and closed girl spending afternoons locked in her room, making her parents very worried.
When the first day of school comes, Polvina is initially nervous about the prospect, but she reluctantly goes to school, knowing that Ester would be going with her as well. Upon arriving at school, she offends Tubarina, the Shark Princess, after mistaking her carriage for an actual shark, resulting in the two becoming rivals. At recess, Polvina and Tubarina are sent to the teacher's office after crashing into the cafeteria cook while racing to get to the last empty table.
After school, Polvina goes with Ester as she swims to the limits of Salacia to see what Dryland is like, passing over an agreement to play hide and seek with Mr Mollusc. Upon reaching the surface, they see a group of Drylander hunters attempting to capture a shark named Mr Dennis. Polvina swims back to get Mr Mollusc and together with Ester, they prevent the Drylanders from capturing Mr Dennis until Tubarina arrives with a group of sharks, who break Mr Dennis free and scare off the Drylanders.
Upon returning home, Polvina and Tubarina reconcile and become friends alongside Ester. Their adventure convinced the Octopus and Shark Kings that they could work together to maintain the balance of Salacia. Though Polvina was punished by having her allowance suspended for two months, the story of their adventure spread through all the kingdoms, leading to them being featured on the cover of Scales magazine.
In A Shadow in the Water, Polvina is initially uninterested in going to Sea Park upon hearing an excited Ester talk about it to her, but she gradually becomes interested the more she hears about it. When Ester and Tubarina, alongside Maurico, are grounded from going to Sea Park with the rest of the class, Polvina offers to stay with them at school instead of going. She is the first to notice that Mr Lorenzo is blind, a fact she points out when she breaks up an argument between Ester, Tubarina and Maurico.
When a cloud of black goop covers Salacia and the Shark King has the camouflage activated, the group and Mr Lorenzo find themselves locked within the school as a Drylander diver appears to close in them. Tubarina breaks a window and heads out to rescue Felipe, a baby shark, from whom they learn that the Drylander was actually trying to help him, not hunt him.
As Mr Lorenzo offers to take Felipe up to Dryland, Polvina and the others go to warn the Shark King before he sends the sharks to attack the Drylanders. After gluing sand on some cut-up rugs to conceal themselves from the Drylanders, Polvina and Maurico go to find Miss Marla, who had stopped on the way to Sea Park with the class. They convince the Shark King to cancel the attack just as Ester and Tubarina arrive, having commandeered some sharks stationed in the Shark Kingdom. They allow the animals affected by the black goop to be taken up to the Drylanders, knowing that there are not enough resources in Salacia available to help everyone.
Over the next few weeks, life gradually returns to normal in Salacia. A helpless Polvina becomes less enthusiastic about going to Sea Park given the tragedy of the preceding events, but when Felipe returns and tells the girls and Maurico that Mr Lorenzo had "pardoned" them of their punishment, Polvina becomes excited about going to Sea Park again.
In The Windy Letters, the girls and Tata head to an antiques fair, where they buy from an old man named Weasel a letter in a bottle that came from Dryland. Upon having the letter translated by Miss Marla, they learn about a poor Drylander girl named Windy who is wondering about what is under the sea.
Polvina is the first to object to Ester's suggestion to find the old man again to buy more letters, but she eventually agrees to it. After agreeing to meet Weasel again with his partner, Mr Chain, the girls find themselves kidnapped and taken off-road. Polvina gets the idea to use an oxygen tank to blow themselves out of the carriage, causing Tubarina to be knocked unconscious in the process. Following this incident, Polvina becomes guilt-ridden over almost killing Tubarina.
When the second letter they salvaged leaves them with more questions than answers, Polvina reluctantly goes with Ester and Tata into the Abysmal Kingdom in an attempt to salvage the third letter. After being forced to separate when a school of abysmal fish close in on them, Polvina encounters Bia, the Abysmal Princess, and upon being rejoined by Ester and Tubarina, learns that Mr Chain and Weasel had taken Tata hostage. Bia instructs Polvina to keep Mr Chain talking on the phone while Mr Gilson leads them to their hiding place.
After having dinner with Bia in the Abysmal Palace, the girls learn that Bia had managed to salvage the third letter and pass it on to Miss Marla for them. The revelation of Windy's father being a turtle hunter leads to Polvina and Ester comforting a distraught Tata.
Later, Polvina and Ester are with Tata in the Turtle Palace upon learning about Tubarina's disappearance after school that day. Tubarina is brought in by a turtle named Mrs Constanza, who had attacked her after smelling on her the scents of Mr Chain and Weasel, who had been robbed of the three letters she had in her collection weeks earlier. Tubarina had managed to take the fourth letter and Miss Marla translates it to them, but not before having the girls promise not to look for any more letters.
Near the end of the school year as shown in The Ballad of the Forgotten Princess, Polvina began waking up with a strange feeling of something missing. She finds an envelope in her backpack with a ballad written in her handwriting, but does not remember writing it. She tries to work out which of the students in class is the "Forgotten Princess" in her ballad, but to no avail. Late that night, Polvina is visited by a civilian girl named Maya, who warns her to be careful of spies. She shows Maya the ballad, but she is unable to provide any answers.
The next day, Polvina tells Ester and Tubarina about Maya's visit and the holiday trip her parents are planning for them. That night, Polvina is visited by Maya again and gives her a pink blouse after seeing the state of her hooded top.
At breakfast the next morning, Polvina hears about Thorn, the Shadow King, and realises that he is connected to the ballad she wrote. The girls head to the library in an effort to check the royal family records, only for the librarian, Mr Lombada, to bar them from doing so as they did not have authorisation. However, their trip was not all for naught as Polvina discovered a book Miss Marla wrote about the famous objects of Salacia. From that book, the girls learn about the Staff of Oblivion, which was used to make people forgotten by others, and conclude that someone must have used it to make them forget about the Forgotten Princess.
That night, Ester and Tubarina offer to sleep over with Polvina. Maya returns again and offends them with her attitude, which leads her to leave. The next morning, the girls learn that the library was robbed just as they were planning to go there after getting the authorisation to browse the royal family records. Realising that the Forgotten Princess couldn't be someone in their class, the girls go to see Miss Marla, only to find that some sharks had broken in and taken her class diaries. However, for some reason, Miss Marla had separated the student reports and put them somewhere else. From the reports, they discover that the Forgotten Princess is actually Maya, or rather, Bia, the Abysmal Princess.
Just as the girls are preparing to take action, Miss Marla prevents them from leaving, not wanting them to get involved. However, Tubarina tricks Miss Marla into letting her outside, at which point she calls for Gummy and goes to find Bia, leaving Polvina, Ester and Miss Marla to alert the Shark King. Upon doing so, Polvina and Ester are warned to stay behind, but an overenthusiastic Ester finds a great white shark, intending to follow the Shark King and Miss Marla into the Abysmal Kingdom.
Amidst the standoff between the Shark King and Thorn, Polvina and Ester rush in and knock Thorn down, taking the Staff of Oblivion away from him, only to be thwarted by a giant octopus. The octopus squeezes Polvina, Ester and the shark, only to let go when he is scolded by Polvina. Thorn uses the Staff to make everyone recognise him as the true King of Salacia, but is thwarted when the Staff destroyed his mind due to him not being the guardian of the staff, which Bia was.
It is revealed that when then-minister Thorn overthrew Bia's parents, forged their disappearance and took power as the new Abysmal King, Bia found herself in danger and went to find Polvina for help. Together with Miss Marla, they made a plan for Bia to use the Staff of Oblivion to make herself forgotten by everyone before going undercover as Maya to gain Thorn's trust. Polvina had written the ballad with the necessary clues to find Bia in case something went wrong. Thorn was arrested, Bia's parents were found and at the end of the year, the girls and Bia went on a holiday trip to the Abysmal Kingdom, visiting children like Maya and having more risky adventures.
In Mystery at the Sea School, Polvina becomes intrigued when she hears about Maurico and Tubarina's homework being eaten by a lionfish and a solefish. As she investigates, she catches a sea snake taking Tata's homework red-handed and orders it to reveal its true form, which is revealed to be a mimic octopus.
In Turtles in Danger, Polvina and her octopus friends work with Ester and her starfish friends to gather up the plastic bags floating around in the sea.
In The Little Hero, Polvina is witness to an argument between Ester and Tubarina over Spikey not being big enough to play with them and their pets. When Leia asks them for help freeing a whale from a Drylander net, Polvina tries to get Tentie to untie it, only to end up being tangled himself. After Ester uses Spikey to free Tentie, Gummy and the whale, they proceed to ride the whale together.
In The Monster from the Bottom of the Sea, Polvina gets lost in the Abysmal Kingdom on her way to see Bia. Losing her backpack in the process, Polvina is left with only her torch, leading to Draco and the abysmal fish mistaking her for a monster. Bia eventually finds Polvina and they head to the Abysmal Palace with Draco.
Notes[]
Polvina's prototype design
- The character of Polvina originated from a rejected mascot idea for Sabesp, a water and waste management company in the state of São Paulo. The intended use for this mascot was to educate people on how to save water.
- In A Shadow in the Water, Polvina is revealed to have a cousin, Luisa, who lives in the Squid Kingdom.
- The first edition of Mystery at the Sea School shows Polvina in her book series design before it was changed to her animated series design in subsequent editions.