Fisherman – A father figure that is not present in the film per se, but is located outside of its scope, above the protagonist. It is a patron figure, and a religious parallel with God is implied. The father is a complex and ambiguous figure for anyone, and probably more so in the post–Soviet territories. It is a historically detached image, located beyond the scope of life.
Polina Schukina – The heroine. She is an archetype of eternal suffering, a pity orphan that comes into the world to face a set of trials and find happiness, or meet her tzarevich. In modern reality: she is a personality with no defined paradigm of life. Self-seeking they are looking for a mission and potentially an easy, simplified actualisation. They are character that must accept herself in order to obtain a higher-level recognition of her mission.
Seraphima – An archetype of an assistant, an angel, a person in peace with oneself. She charges the heroine with a sign and gives her a talisman (in traditional tales, it often would be a spool) that guides the protagonist in and out of the netherworld. In the film, they are earrings shaped as fish that Seraphima passes to Polina as a symbol and an amulet. When the heroine is transformed into a Tzarevna, she loses them, but a seraphim, a six-winged angel, is present on the back of her kokoshnik as a symbol of her protection.
Baboushka – A character that embodies a dichotomy of primitive and superlative, and the guide into the netherworld of folk tales. They are an example of wisdom obtained from experience that the heroine has yet to gain, and a character that unites the traits of Baba-Yaga and a kindly old woman, the teller. The connection of the character with the World of Tzareven is traced upon her image, from a kokoshnik to overshoes, and she wears a bathrobe signifying that she, too, was once seeking tzarevenness from point A to point B.
Adygea – A composite image of the charming but evil tzareven. The Snake Tzarevna, a werewoman, is a beauty who does not have power, but seeks it. She does not allow anyone near her position. This is popular folk tale character.
Three Tzareven in Administration – A trinity of three young women of Russian folk tales, also the three-headed serpent Zmey-Gorynych. Ageless, they constitute a single mechanism of absolute power. In modern reality it is a upper-tier manager high on his powers, using them to manipulate and exploit.
Yeanlings – A pluralised image of Brother Ivanushka. In a folk tale, he takes no heed of his sister’s warning and drinks from a pond, thus turning into a yeanling. A multitude of „sisters” passing through the scene seeking a „brother” is implied. The heroine cannot get through to her brother in her real life and in World of Tzareven she encounters his „avatar” and a gang of its flawed copies that symbolise the errors of young age. In modern reality: a young man succumbed to illusions but was entirely lost, with a chance of salvation.
Swan Tzarevna – An archetype of absolute beauty, undisputed and singular. The battle in the film shows that there is only one Swan Tzarevna and false contender has no chance of winning. The true one has an actual moon in her hair (following the version of the tale by Alexander Pushkin).
Phoenix – The symbol of rebirth. A hero is reborn from ashes. It appears when the heroine is given a chance to reinvent herself into a new figure, a Tzarevna. A woman with a house on her head is a reference to the folk tale film-making of Soviet era, where every fairy tale was started by a grandmother opening the shutters of the Russian hut.
Fish – A symbol of Christianity. In TZAREVNA SCALING, it specifically is a pike. A pike is a common character in Slavic folk tales, often granting wishes in exchange for life and freedom, sometimes as an antagonist predator that swallows the protagonist. Fish is always associated with the underworld, the world of the dead: for rebirth, a journey through that world is required. Jesus went down to the world we know, as some of his disciples were fishermen; he fed 5000 people with two fishes and later experienced a temporary death. The two fishes are on the heroine as she enters the World of Tzareven, and the pike she brings with her is the main dish at the feast upon Polina’s temporary death.
The colour green – Symbolises victory of life over death, and is also the colour of bureaucratic hallways of Soviet era, the colour of the underworld, the colour associated with rebirth and renaissance.
Tzarevenness – A non–existent word, a neologism, a new word for the new generation that means „individuality, peculiarity, the definite power of personality and a measure of this power”. No gender qualification implied.
