Characters / The Little Crooked Tale

This is a list of characters in The Little Crooked Tale webcomic. NOTE: The following folders refer to Version 2, which is the continuing one.

Disney Princesses

Kingdom of Camelot

Queen Eilowny

Queen Eilowny

King Taran

Taran

Merlin

Merlin

Kingdom of Gutenberg

Queen Snow White

Queen Snow White

• Mage Species: In chapter 4, after Snow White discovers the Magic Mirror, its spirit mentions she has "witch blood", just like her mother.
• Primary-Color Champion: In Grimhilde's flashback chapter, Snow White wears her iconic red-blue-yellow dress, but a more extravagant version.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Snow White, of course.
• Related in the Adaptation: Grimhilde, the Evil Queen, is actually Gretel, and her brother is Hansel. Grimhilde is also Snow White's biological mother, and Rumpelstiltskin (not the small-sized imp he is traditionally known as) is the princess's father.
• Save This Person, Save the World: When the princesses arrive in Wendy's house in London, they learn they must protect Snow White from Dorian.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Snow White's eye colour are "hazelnut brown" in the original, but here their colour is highlighted to appear more golden-brown. This has in-story importance: she is in fact the daughter of Rumplestiltskin!

Princess Rose Red

Princess Rose Red

• Plot-Relevant Age-Up: Rose Red, Snow White's daughter, dies as a young girl, but Quetzal resurrects her soul into an older body (late teenager or young adult).

Queen Althea

Queen Althea

• Adaptational Villainy: While Althea has a tragic backstory, one that follows the Donkeyskin tale, the heroine is far more malevolent this time around: after the three dances with Gerald, Snow White's father, Althea prepares him a soup (which happens in the German variant by the Brothers Grimm), which she laces with a bit of poison. She later bakes him a cake with the antidote and puts her ring inside the cake (a sequence that follows Perrault's tale). Her plan works, and she marries Gerald.
• The Chosen One:
  • According to Althea's ghost's recollections, the spirit of the Magic Mirror informed her that Grimhilde would be mother to Snow White's next reincarnation. Althea tried to steal Grimhilde's daughter and raise her as her own. This failed.
  • After failing to properly secure Snow White to herself and being killed by Grimhilde, Althea returned as a neon blue butterfly that eventually guided Prince Frederick to Snow White's glass coffin, so that the Prince could rescue Snow and later they could conceive Rose Red. This worked.
• The Chosen Wannabe: After learning Grimhilde's destiny, Althea, still alive, was instructed by Magic Mirror to say a prayer to the Goddesses so that she would raise the next Snow White, in a way that would break the cycle of killing between both girls. This, of course, failed.

Kingdom of Ys

Princess Aurora

Princess Aurora

• Really Royalty Reveal: Also deconstructed. In the original movie, Aurora's royal background drops like a bomb on her idyllic peasant life. After marrying Phillip and enjoying their marriage, she does admit that she had difficulty adapting to courtly life and etiquette, its endless lessons, and even bemoans the heavy garments she has to wear at the castle. Thus, she decides to take a sabbatical back in the cottage where she grew up.

Prince Phillip

Prince Phillip

• Warrior Prince: Prince Phillip is called away for war and spends weeks on a battlefield. Aurora begins to miss him terribly, and this opens a window for the villains to strike.

Agrabah

Sultana Jasmine

Sultana Jasmine

• Beautiful Dreamer: In one sequence, Jasmine has a nightmare about Cinderella's glass sleeper and wakes up. Aladdin comments she looked beautiful in her sleep.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Princess Jasmine has a prophetic dream about walking in a desert, and a voice warning her about a future enemy: Azi Dahaka.
• Race Lift: During their sojourn in London, Cinderella uses her Fairy Godmother's magic wand to change Ariel's and Jasmine's appearances: Ariel's vibrant red hair is changed to blonde, and Jasmine, from an Arab/Middle Eastern woman, has her skintone and hair changed to white and blonde. She didn't like the change at all!

Sultan Aladdin

Sultan Aladdin

SPOILER CHARACTER

Amira, the djinn

• Animate Inanimate Object: The Magic Carpet, from Aladdin, of course. Turns out, it is actually a female djinn named Amira.

Kingdom of Polais and Atlantica

Queen Ariel

Queen Ariel

• Our Mermaids Are Different: Everything about Ariel and her family's backstory: Triton and the royal family from Atlantica are sea merfolk, and can be identified by their normal-shaped ears; Harmonia (Ariel's mother), Ursula and Morgain (Ariel's aunts) and Galene are lake mermaids, and their ears are shaped like fins.

King Eric

King Eric

Princess Melody

Princess Melody

Kingdom of Lucet

Queen Cinderella

Queen Cinderella

• Meaningful Rename: In Chapter 10, after Cinderella remembers how she was saved from her stepmother's attack on her kingdom, she retakes her birth name: Elizabeth Alexandra Tremaine.

King Alphonse

King Alphonse

Fairy Godmother

Fairy Godmother

The Seven Sins

General tropes

• Reincarnation: A group of villainesses, some of which from Disney, are incarnations of the Seven Sins.
• Rule of Seven: Dorian enlisted incarnations of the Seven Sins, some indicated by their side-chapters (in Alice's Info Dump, the original seven sins were Always Female):
  • Queen Grimhilde (from Snow White) representing Vanitas (Vanity);
  • Lady Tremaine (from Cinderella) representing Invidia (Envy);
  • A conversation between Ursula and Althea in Chapter 11 makes a passing mention that each of the Seven Sins has a personal maidservant. Ursula comments about hers, which implies she is also one of them. In Chapter 8, Rumple/Dorian kisses Ursula's hand and refers to her as "Greed".
  • In chapter 8, Rumple/Dorian introduces himself to the council of villains, and Ursula mentions that Maleficent represents the sin of "Rage" (Wrath), while Quetzal is "Sloth".
  • Berthalda has her own maidservant, Goldilocks, and Dorian introduces Melody, Ariel's daughter, to his daughter Hilda as the latter's maidservant. With this in mind, and by process of elimination, Berthalda represents "Lust" and Hilda "Gluttony".
• Tragic Villain: Some of the Disney villains are reinterpreted to present a tragic backstory for them.

Dorian/Rumplestilstskin

Rumplestiltskin

• Color-Coded Characters: Dorian/Rumplestiltskin is associated with gold and yellow.
• Depraved Bisexual: Rumplestiltkstin has an affable nature, but seems to be gunning for his own interests. He has also had sexual/romantic relationships with women, e.g., Grimhilde, the Goddesses-created Snow White, Dutchess Rougelle, Queen Althea, and is seen on-panel with prostitutes of both sexes in an opium den/prostibule in London.
• Related in the Adaptation: Grimhilde, the Evil Queen, is actually Gretel, and her brother is Hansel. Grimhilde is also Snow White's biological mother, and Rumpelstiltskin (not the small-sized imp he is traditionally known as) is the princess's father.

Grimhilde, the Evil Queen

Grimhilde, the Evil Queen

• Animal Motifs: Grimhilde is associated with the peacock:
  • In the cover to her Septem Peccata Mortalia side-chapter, she is depicted next to a peacock.
  • In chapter 4, Snow White carries with herself the key to Grimhilde's studio, the key head in the shape of a peacock tail feather.
  • In chapter 7, she is wearing a purple dress with a peacock-feathered corset.
• Break the Cutie: Grimhilde's backstory is essentially this: her elder brother, Hansel, was killed in the gingerbread house by Hilda. She is saved by Rumplestiltskin, given a magical makeover and adopted by a lady of Gerald's court, and later becomes queen Althea's lady-in-waiting, enjoys her friendship and a good life in court, eventually meeting Rumplestiltskin again, to whom she professes her love. However, Rumple only has eyes for the Snow-White the goddesses created, Althea betrays her trust by sleeping with Rumple during a party and, when Grimhilde gives birth to her daughter, Althea apparently kills the baby.
• Finger-Licking Poison: In Grimhilde's backstory, after she kills Althea with a poisoned comb, she marries King Gerald (Snow White's father) and asks him to read her a book. Unbeknownst to him, its pages are laced with poison.
• Master Poisoner: Grimhilde, the Evil Queen, of course. She used the poisoned apple on Snow White, a poisoned comb on Althea, Snow White's mother, and laced poison on a book read by king Gerald, Snow White's father.
• Meaningful Rename: In the Evil Queen's flashback side-chapter, after Rumplestiltskin changes her into a raven-haired, white-skinned girl, she fashions a new name for herself: Grimhilde, a combination of "her past name" plus Hilda, the devil-child that killed her brother Hansel.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: The Evil Queen herself fits the bill. As per her flashback side chapter, she was Gretel, who appeared to have brown skin, much darker than her brother Hansel, who was pale with black hair. After she fled and was rescued by Rumplestiltskin, she was given a magical makeover to appear as a raven-haired, pale-skinned beauty, but with green eyes. It is later revealed that Rumplestiltskin modelled her after the Snow-White created by the twin sister goddesses.
• Related in the Adaptation: Grimhilde, the Evil Queen, is actually Gretel, and her brother is Hansel. Grimhilde is also Snow White's biological mother, and Rumpelstiltskin (not the small-sized imp he is traditionally known as) is the princess's father.
• The Reveal: In Grimhilde's side-chapter, she and her step-grandchildren Red Rose summon Althea's ghost. Under an oath to tell the absolute truth, Althea explicitly refuses to be addressed as Rose's grandmother and tells the girl Grimhilde is her biological grandmother.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: In Grimhilde's backstory chapter, after she becomes the Evil Queen, she is depicted with extravagant dresses in purple and green.
• Villainous BSoD: In Grimhilde's flashback chapter, after Althea's hurtful, yet true revelations, Grimhilde comes to the realization that she tried to kill her own daughter, Snow White.

Lady Agatha Tremaine

Lady Agatha Tremaine

• The Minion Master: In Chapter 4, Cinderella's stepmother, Lady Tremaine, commands a murder of crows to attack the kingdom.
• Rage Against the Heavens: A moderate version: Cinderella, as dream/astral projection, spies on Lady Tremaine in a chapel ranting against God for blessing her step-daughter with a good match, while she herself wanes and her own daughters are "flawed and graceless cratures". Maleficent appears to Tremaine to make use of the latter's crisis of faith.

Maleficent

Maleficent

Ursula

Ursula

• Interspecies Romance: During her rant to Ariel, Ursula explains that lake mermaids inherit a magic voice called "Abyssal Voice/Gift" to charm males and stir passions in them. Ariel's mother used her gift to win Triton, a sea merman, and Ariel, their daughter, inherited her gift. Ursula also explains that lake merfolk don't have male of their species..
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Everything about Ariel and her family's backstory: Triton and the royal family from Atlantica are sea merfolk, and can be identified by their normal-shaped ears; Harmonia (Ariel's mother), Ursula and Morgain (Ariel's aunts) and Galene are lake mermaids, and their ears are shaped like fins.
• Related in the Adaptation: Pulling either a Fanon interpretation or the plot thread from the musical, Ursula and Ariel are related in both versions of the comic: the sea witch is Ariel's aunt, alright, but on her mother's side.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Ursula explains that Triton changed her into the caecilia shape she was in the original film and created the sea monster skeleton around her as her prison. Trapped there, she uses Flotsam and Jetsam as her eyes and ears in the wide ocean.
• Sibling Triangle: Under the guise of normal mermaid "Galene", Ursula finds Ariel on a beach drinking her sorrows over Eric's infidelity and explains her backstory: Ursula, Morgana and Harmonia were lake mermaids; Ursula fell in love with Triton, a sea merman; with her magical singing voice, Harmonia stole Triton for herself; Triton turned Morgana and Ursula into sea monsters and banished them.

Berthalda

Berthalda

• All Women Are Lustful:
• Lust:
• Slut-Shaming: During the gathering of the Seven Sins in chapter 8, they begin to trash talk one another and accuse Berthalda (who is Lust) of lying with every man she sees.
• Three-Way Sex: In chapter 8, Grimhilde pays a visit to Berthalda's chambers and finds her in bed with the Dark Phillip and Dark Gaston.

Hilda

Hilda

• Enfant Terrible: In Grimhilde's backstory, Hilda is the owner of the gingerbread house, lures Grimhilde/Gretel and her brother Hansel into the house and devours him. She later appears alongside the other incarnations of the Seven Sins gathered by Dorian.

Quetzal

Quetzal

• Back from the Dead: This is Quetzal's ability: she places souls inside large mannequin-like bodies, which, for all intents and purposes, seem to operate like normal bodies. On-panel, she has resurrected two people at least: Rose Red (Snow White's daughter) and queen Althea.

The Dreamers

Alice Darling

Alice Darling

• Related in the Adaptation: Alice is Wendy's niece, and John Darling's daughter.

Quetzal

See "The Seven Sins" section.

The Citadel

General tropes

• Legion of Doom: According to Quetzal, Rumplestiltskin assembled incarnations of the Seven Deadly Sins, as well as "a group of witches and mages". The magic users are also living the Citadel with the female Seven Sins.
• Supervillain Lair: The Citadel houses Rumplestiltskin/Dorian and his Seven Sins, the Seven Sins' maidservants, lady Carmilla, a revived Rose Red and other unnamed villains.

Carmilla

Carmilla

• Affably Evil: Carmilla.
• Does Not Like Men: In Chapter 11, Althea and Ursula talk about how Carmilla brought in poor girls to act as personal maidservants to the Seven Sins, since Carmilla does not like men.
• Identical Stranger: As of Chapter 9, Carmilla joins the Disney Princess in London by the same pantry they got out of. Ariel and Belle address her as "Dutchess Rougelle", but she introduces herself as "Princess Snow White". Belle, Carmilla and our Snow White notice the strong resemblance between them.
• I Have Many Names: Carmilla, Dutchess Rougelle, "Princess Snow White" (not the original one), Mircalla (used by Rumplestilstkin in chapter 7).
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Countess Carmilla, who joins the princesses' group during their London sojourn, almost fits, but her hair has some deep crimson undertones.

Bellenuit/Odile

Odile

• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: In chapter 3, after mocking Ariel (Melody's mother) and failing to seduce Eric (despite their sexual encounter), Bellenuit (Odile) has a secret meeting with her father, and changes her hair colour from flaxen to raven-black. Combined with her black dress, red eyes and pale white skin, this highlights her otherworldly nature.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Red-eyed Odile, the black swan, assumes the identity of Bellenuit, a false friend to a teenaged Melody, on her father's orders to seduce Eric.
• Shout-Out: In an Extra, Odile (as Bellenuit) is seen wearing a black ball gown and red ballet shoes (her ensemble to Melody's party), as a possible nod to the The Red Shoes, another tale by Hans Christian Andersen.

Other characters

Argus

Argus

Nightmare Phillip

Nightmare Phillip

Mulan

Mulan

• Face–Heel Turn: After losing her husband and her father, Mulan is working for the villains.
• One-Winged Angel: At the end of Chapter 10, Lady Tremaine uses her magic to distort Mulan into a large human-crow hybrid.
• Take That!: In Mulan's introduction, she kills the father-son duo of her sequel.

Anya

Anya

• Face–Heel Turn: Anya, from Fox Anastasia (1997), taken in by Cinderella in Victorian London, is working for Jaffar.

The Three Snow Queens

The Three Snow Queens

• Ice Palace: The three Snow Queens and Kai are holding a meeting in a room of an ice palace. Chapter 4 reveals Rapunzel was also a prisoner in the same palace.
• Literal Split Personality: In Chapter 4, the raven-haired Snow Queen, named Marshmallow, tries to help Rapunzel escape and meet Alice, but the blue-skinned Snow Queen freezes the girl. Then, she declares Marshmallow to be "one of her best parts", implying they are separate parts of the same person.

Kai

Kai

• Enfant Terrible: In Chapter 4, after Rapunzel's failed escape attempt, two of the Snow Queens, the blue-skinned one and the raven-haired one, discuss that Kai would have chased and killed Rapunzel, implying him to be this after becoming infected with the mirror's shard.
• Entitled to Have You: In a scene with a gathering of Snow Queens in their ice palace, Kai (who, by this time, is affected by the Devil's Mirror from the original tale) comments that Snow White belongs to him, and him alone.

Rapunzel

Rapunzel

• Composite Character: Rapunzel's design seems to draw from a concept art for Disney's Tangled, while her backstory seems to mirror the original Grimm's fairy tale.
• Human Popsicle: In Chapter 4, after escaping her room with her dolls, the blue-skinned Snow Queen intercepts her and turns her into a beautiful ice statue.

Dracula

Dracula

Deities

The Twin Goddesses

The Third One