Ella, who is sometimes teased as "Cinders" or "Cinderella", is a lonely and misunderstood young woman who lives in a European duchy. An orphan who has become an almost-servant to her stepmother the Widow Sonder and stepsisters Birdina and Serafina, she is shunned by the townspeople because of her anti-social behavior and constant boasting that she will live in the palace one day (as a gypsy told her late mother three years prior to Ella's birth).