If Dios was a prince then logically Anthy should've been a princess. I don't know if logic applies here though...
And after the revolution I like to think that she became Anthy. A person. She couldn't have become a princess since she let go of her past and all the fairytales. There was nothing left to make her be something she wasn't so I think she became more aware of herself (and others) which means she had evolved from a little (fake?) princess into a person who know what she is.

That's an interesting question so I have to think about it a bit more, if I get a better view at this I'll post more later.

Yay!  My little comment started a discussion!

I always saw Anthy as one of the most real charecters in the series.  Utena is somewhere between prince and princess, Nanami is the idea of the modern princess, Akio is the prince and the prince's counter part, ect, but there lies Anthy, symbolically the one that everyone's fighting for. 
Her last name, Hymenia, even sounds like hymen, making her seem even more the symbol of a female, a girl.

Soooo... here's my theory of what's at Anthy's core.
think who she is is a snake within it's eggshell, breaking through to the world, after a little help of Utena.  She was okay, she was conetent in the world that Akio offered her, it offered her lots of sex, and entertainment, and the possibility of the pains being taken away from her, so, why else but stay in her little snake's egg?
Throughout the series she delivers her little bits of poison, but always kept in check by those around her, and still would be if anyone but Utena had been the one to free her, (if they had, she would've stayed with Akio and not changed.)  Now she's one to live for herself, because that was Utena's desire of her.
At her core, she's damaged, she's hurt, she's got alot to be angry for, but she's still incredibly intellegent, has no qualms with manipulating,  She's different (unlike Wakaba or others,) knows it, and uses it.

Yay! Any chance to debate about Anthy is a good thing.

Whenever I think of Anthy, I think of a comment my friend made, who has not yet see SKU: "It seems like half the fandom thinks she an evil bitch, the other a pitiful victim." My only real experience with the fandom has been this forum, as so far I've gathered that most people think of her as either the first, or a bit of both. I see her as a bit of the two; yes, she is abused by her controlling brother and is in constant pain thanks to the swords of hate, but she's also takes deep joy in tormenting people, not just the duellists and Utena but also Akio. I do like the interpretation of Anthy being an earth goddess of some kind, due to her affinity with plants and her general representation of the feminine.

As to the ending of the series... I don't feel that Anthy has become a completely bubbly and happy-go-lucky girl. Sure, she has clearly undergone a huge positive change thanks to Utena, as she is finally able to leave Ohtori behind by herself. This aspect is one of the things that makes me love the series so much; the idea that you can save nobody, only show them the way and let them save themselves, as Utena did for Anthy and as Ruka failed to realise for Juri. I imagine it'll still take Anthy awhile to emotionally move on from Ohtori, even though she has physically let it.

Perhaps I'm being overly attached to Anthy, but I don't feel at the end that she is like a snake shedding her skin and continuing on as without changing. It would make Utena's revolution nonexistant. The student council members all seem to have been touched by the revolution, and from her words at the end of the series it does seem she has reached Anthy too.

The feeling I get at the end of the series is that Anthy is just... Anthy. I think that at the end, Anthy is no more a Witch than a Goddess or a Normal Girl, just as Utena really is neither a Prince nor a Princess. I think part of leaving Ohtori behind is leaving behind conforming to the roles of prince, rose bride and all the others and becoming, well, herself. It reminds me a bit of a line the shadow girls say at the end of the movie, granted it's not connected to the series at all, but it links in with it in my strange mind, heheh. It's something like:

"This world may not have any roads, but you can build new ones!"

That line to me means,  "in this world you can make your own way through life." Kinda optimistic, which is how I view Anthy's ending and the ending to the series. And I've been blabbering on for far too long now, and I'm sure I don't make much sense, so I'll stop.

Lightice wrote:

I believe that Anthy's original existance was as archetypical as Dios' - in other thread I speculated of her originally being the incarnation of feminine earth, as opposed to the masculine sky, which both Dios and Akio have some kind of connection to. That makes it difficult to speculate the reasons of their fall, though - they couldn't have had exactly those roles at the moment they fell.

See, that thought had crossed my mind too! I had considered that Akio/Dios and Anthy were some representation of the Sky God/Earth Goddess dynamic, but I could do little to really back it up. The concept has been around since at least Ancient Greece with Uranus and Gaea who, depending on which version you subscribe to, are brother/sister and husband/wife or son/mother and husband/wife. For the purposes of this discussion, we'll go with the first one. Also notice that this pattern continues with Kronos(Saturn) and Rhea(Ops), and then with Zeus and Hera. I'm trying not to get too far into this, because mythological and religious references could be its own thread.

Now, in reference to Anthy, let's recall Antheia, goddess of flowers. It's generally accepted that Antheia is a minor goddess, often known only as one of Aphrodite's entourage. In my mind, I see the Flower Goddess as really being the maiden aspect of the Earth Goddess. (And this is where we wander into wicca...) If you look at it that way, Anthy is stuck in this perpetual state of spring which could be connected to the reference in episode 33(I think) from the Shadow Girls about how the autumn constellations haven't appeared. Autumn is seen as the end of youth, adulthood. It marks that inevitable decline into winter, death. As long as autumn doesn't come, they'll always be at their prime.

Okay, I should stop now before I go too far off on this tangent. (I seem to be fond of those...)

Here's something else I thought of.
I think that after Anthy leaves Ohtori behind she's become a mortal (and that would make Akio mortal too). She is not bound to her eternal suffering anymore so there's no reason for her to keep on living without being able to die.