Line #17 Fridge/SleepingBeauty


1	!!FridgeBrilliance
2	* Early on, Merryweather expresses the desire to turn Maleficent into "a fat old hop toad". The others chide her, saying that it's impossible because their magic can only be used to bring joy and happiness. Merryweather gripes "Well, that would make ''me'' happy". During the climax, the fairies never attack Maleficent directly, instead essentially buffing Phillip and his gear. Presumably, it's because of this happiness thing, which makes their magic useless for ''direct'' offense. Yet Merryweather can turn Diablo to stone. Why? Because doing so certainly made ''her'' happy (and arguably, keeping Diablo from alerting Maleficent was protecting Philip and thus making ''him'' happy too).
3	* Aurora and Phillip's love at first sight moment makes a lot more sense when you remember that part of the curse Maleficent placed on Aurora as a baby was that she would be "beloved by all who know her" and that Merryweather's gift requires true love's kiss, therefore there needed to be true love in place.
4	* The story takes place in the mid to late 14th century in France near Germany. Now what happened in the 100 yrs Aurora was asleep? ''The Plague''. Merryweather ''saved Aurora from the plague.''
5	** Only in the original Tales and Ballet, in the Disney version, it could be no more than a couple of days, so yeah...
6	** This is a land with magic fairies that can put a whole kingdom to sleep and gift a baby with beauty. A plague may not be a big issue for them.
7	* The fairies constantly tell Aurora/Briar Rose to not speak to strangers. Although she hits it off with Phillip in the forest, note what she does next. She leaves and makes arrangements to get to know Phillip better - not in the forest but in the safety of her home where her 'aunts' would be present. Quite a clever girl.
8	* Maleficent, in the beginning, is rather attractive for an evil fairy, satisfied with cursing the baby and getting her revenge. When she starts getting more and more desperate as the years go by, she starts looking uglier and more haggard. Losing sleep over it?
9	--> '''Maleficent''': For the first time in sixteen years, I shall sleep well.
10	* Maleficent's outrage at being snubbed makes more sense when you realize that Aurora's christening was a public event open to all, not invitation only. Being kicked out of a public place is SeriousBusiness even today and was much more so for medieval christenings. King Stefan was essentially declaring Maleficent a public menace and siding with the good faeries against her. Understandable stance to take against a CardCarryingVillain but unfortunately, it seems it was NotQuiteTheRightThing.
11	** Especially so considering the other faeries were spared the humiliation. As explained by a certain Tumblr post, it would only have been acceptable action against Maleficent if the other faeries were attacked as well. By only excluding Maleficent, the king was taking sides in a war that was not his own and so it's not quite so socially terrible for Maleficent to be angry.
12	** Said war was likely between Unseelie and Seelie fairies. Yes, Maleficent is a woman of rank but her court is incredibly notorious in human mythology.
13	** Maleficent isn't even outraged. Watch her face and body language, she knows exactly what's going on the whole time and is barely hiding her glee because she was always going to curse Aurora. It's not about her being outraged or offended it's about her being an evil and cruel being of pure evil. She just pretends it was because she wasn't invited so that the parents will blame themselves and suffer more. It's the same reason she sends frosts to kill Flora's flowers: pure cruelty and sadism.
14	* King Stefan decreed all sewing spindles in the kingdom to be destroyed, which they were. It's the 14th Century. How are they going to make new clothes?
15	* Of the three fairies, Fauna is the one most enthusiastic over raising a baby, and it is she who carries Aurora as they sneak her out of the palace. Given that her providence is over animals, it's natural that she'd be most in touch with the importance of nurturing young over her sisters, whose specialties are plants and the weather. And given her nature as a supernatural being, this was her only opportunity to experience parenthood first-hand.
16	* Maleficent begins her curse by saying "The princess shall indeed grow in grace and beauty, beloved by all who know her." While "grace and beauty" reflects Flora's gift, neither she nor Fauna had included other people's love in their gifts to Aurora. So the gift of being "beloved by all who know her" comes from Maleficent. Maybe Maleficent included this as part of her curse, to make it all the more sadistic – if everyone who knows Aurora loves her, then it's assured that they'll all be devastated by her death.
17	* It seems strange that Aurora immediately falls into a deep [[HypnotizeThePrincess trance the moment she's left alone]] (and many have used this as an example of why Aurora is the weakest Disney Princess). However...considering what she went through (having her entire life turned upside down, leaving everything she's ever known behind, including the nice young man she just met for the first time, and being told she'll be married to a stranger she's never met...all of this happening in the span of mere HOURS if we're being generous here) she's emotionally vulnerable...
18
19	!!FridgeHorror
20	* In the original story, Sleeping Beauty is asleep for a hundred years and her entire castle and servants were put to sleep too. How would that feel for the servants to wake up in a new century with nothing left of their old lives anymore, just because a magical curse wanted the princess to have some hired help when she woke up? Think about it, they wake up and find that everyone they know outside of work is dead, the world is now foreign to them, and they lost everything solely because the fairies wanted them to continue working for this one princess.
21	** In that era, odds are that their entire lives ''were'' in the castle or at least the town that was most likely within its outer walls.
22	*** That was the case and was lampshaded in the TwiceToldTale book ''Literature/AKissInTime2009''. After the curse is broken, most of the people in the castle think that a month has gone by at the latest, when ''centuries'' have passed. Towards the end of the book, when the protagonist (a boy from modern times) interrogates a lot of the peasants living in the town, most of them ''still'' had no idea that any time at all had passed.
23	* The [[WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty movie]] Maleficent planned this as an ultimate punishment for Aurora and Phillip as she planned to keep the latter in her castle for a hundred years, letting him go to the princess causing her to GoMadFromTheRevelation once she realizes that she hasn't aged a day.
24	** It's more likely that Maleficent was speaking euphemistically, planning to keep Phillip in her dungeon until he died of old age - the animation that accompanies Maleficent's speech shows both Phillip and his horse as transparent, as though to indicate that they will only be leaving as ghosts, and it's highly unlikely that Phillip would still be alive after one hundred years. (His horse certainly wouldn't be; they do well to live as long as thirty years, never mind a hundred.)
25	** It's easily within her power to keep both of them alive indefinitely, even if she does mean a literal century. And Maleficent's curse would be broken ''eventually'', so why wouldn't she make her triumph complete by reuniting the two lovers in such a way that they could never be happy?
26	* Try not to think about what happened to the inhabitants of the houses [[LeaveNoWitnesses after the goblins searched them]].
27	** Considering they didn't comprehend that babies ''age'', would they have the competence to do such a thing?
28	** Who's to say they didn't just go into the house, ask "is that baby Princess Aurora?" and when they got "no" for an answer, they just walked out. They don't seem smart enough to comprehend that
29	* Maleficent, in addition to casting the curse, sent her men out to find Aurora and said she couldn't sleep until she knew where the princess was. As the fairies put it, there is no way to stop the curse, only soften it, and do their best to thwart it. What was Maleficent planning to do if she had found Aurora so much earlier? Bring out the spindle? Kidnap her and keep her hostage until her sixteenth birthday? Or did she have something worse planned?
30	** Given Maleficent's general traits, she would have done whatever would hurt Aurora's parents (and the good fairies) most. Holding Aurora hostage, constantly promising her release upon certain conditions, and then letting them finally 'ransom' a dead princess seems most likely.

Context Fridge / SleepingBeauty