Regal Ringlets

Also known as drill hair, corkscrew curls, sausage curls, and tube curls, ringlets are a hairstyle which a woman creates by wrapping her hair tightly around a vertical curling iron or rollers.

Ringlets date to ancient Rome, where they were a popular hairstyle among the aristocracy. That regal feel is still retained today, and when chosen for a character, they indicate that she is upper class or an aristocrat, or at least sees herself that way.

The hairstyle is also time-consuming to create and difficult to maintain, indicating that the wearer is concerned with her appearance and is very feminine. It's also usually a youthful style, rarely appearing on women older than middle age.

A Sub-Trope of Expository Hairstyles.

A Super-Trope to Princess Curls.

Compare Mega Twintails (and can overlap), Girlish Pigtails.

Contrast Tomboyish Ponytail, Tomboyish Sidetails.

Examples of characters with Regal Ringlets include:

Anime and Manga

In Black Butler, Elizabeth is born of the Aristocracy and wears the anime equivalent of this.
Touko from Mariasama ga Miteru combines this with Girlish Pigtails.
Rosalie Claudel from Mai-Otome. Plucky Comic Relief character Shiho Huit has them in her twintails, too.
Rozen Maiden's Suiseiseki is the only female character with ringlets that doesn't have Ojou Ringlets.

Film

Child actress Shirley Temple was famous for this. She wore her hair in this style in almost all of her movies, where she was typecast as a sunshine and rainbows girly girl.
In the 2005 film of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Veruca Salt, the spoiled little rich girl, wears her hair this way.
In the movie Music From Another Room, Anna wears her hair like this. She is the love interest of Jude Law's character Danny, but sees herself and her family as above him since they are well educated and he works as a delivery boy.
In What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Jane has this hairstyle.

Literature

In Corsair, both Aura and Katarina Angraat have voluminous ringlet hairstyles.

Live-Action TV

Princess Violet from Legend of the Seeker sports these. As the name would suggest, she is very much an aristrocrat.
In Young Blades, Queen Anne wears her hair like this, since she's a young widow.

Newspaper Comics

Margaret from Dennis the Menace US wears her hair like this, both in the TV show and in the comics.

Video Games

The original incarnation of the Archer unit in Disgaea: Hour of Darkness and Phantom Brave sported these. She was later upgraded to Mega Twintails, more suiting of her combination of girliness and Action Girl.

Western Animation

Nanette Manoir of Angela Anaconda wears her long blond hair in this style, and speaks with a stereotypically "rich girl" Valley Girl accent and is a complete snob. She's very obsessed with her looks and considers herself extremely beautiful.

Real Life

Many depictions of Marie Antoinette (fictional likenesses and official portraits) show her with this hairstyle.