Previous cut in the Prince's hand
- Why doesn't the Prince have a cut on his hand? I suppose they could've used a different hand the night before but then what would they do for the third ceremony? Are the glow worms known outside the cave?
- One answer is that they are, in fact, known outside the cave (they seem to useful to go unnoticed.) A fresh scar on the prince's hand would be a dead giveaway that the ritual had been performed previously, after all.
- Another possibility might be that on the third night they obtain the blood in some other way (eg. from the mother); the girls wouldn't know how it is "supposed" to go, after all. There's still a risk that the third girl would notice the scars on both the prince's hands and put two and two together when the blood ritual is performed, but honestly (and here's the third answer)...
- By the time they have the girl on the bridge, her cooperation isn't really necessary, so it's possible they're less subtle the third time and just do it by force with minimal attempts to convince her that she'll be fine. Every single person present except the girl knows what is going to happen and is onboard with it, so the ritual stuff is optional (as we saw with Elodie's sister, who very much knew what was going to happen and was forced into it anyway.) The significance of the scars won't be obvious until the girl is on the bridge and the ritual is already in progress, and at that point it's too late for her to do anything to stop it.
The dragon's food source
- What in the world does the dragon eat? At no point in the film is it indicated that the dragon eats anything. Seeing as there are still several skeletons around, she doesn't even eat the sacrifices! And we never hear about cattle or sheep gone missing. This is a pretty important thing to know if you're going to bring a dragon to your home. My husband joked that she eats rocks.
- It is a centuries-old creature that breathes fire. It is entirely likely that the dragon is magical in nature and doesn't need to eat.
- When Elodie starts to slip while climbing the shaft with crystal spikes, the dragon opens her mouth in anticipation of her falling into it. Just because we're not shown the dragon eating the sacrifices doesn't mean that she doesn't—the Queen does say the first king's daughters met their end in the dragon's stomach, after all.
- She was also living in the kingdom before humans arrived and is shown leaving the mountain in the beginning, so she probably eats the wildlife or fish. The sacrifices are less a source of food and more part of her revenge.
- Also, I think because of the relationship the kingdom has with the dragon, livestock wouldn't go "missing". It's probably a normal cost of living there. I mean, who is going to stop the dragon? If they could have, they would have.
- It wouldn't be unusual for part of the commoner and lesser lords of Aurea to have to tithe food to the royal family or, for the politicking, the king to feasts (which in real life would often be at the expense of the of the nobles not the king). The dragon may also have a good metabolism and not require a ton of food (a creature that size would also uh... have leftovers that size too). So between the dragon hunting on her own, the royals providing food in some fashion, and good biology, it might not be too much of a stretch to accept that she'd be perfectly well fed. Or, given her grief, at least eating enough to survive versus staying healthy. Plus, given the time span of the movie, we don't really see much opportunity for her home 'life' or much of her living situation.
- On a similar track, it seems like the dragon is returning home with Elodie at the end of the film. If Elodie's people are truly starving (the whole reason she agreed to marry the prince of Aurea in the first place) they've probably eaten all their livestock and hunted the lands around their homes barren. So what on earth is the dragon going to eat when it gets to Elodie's kingdom?
The dragon's ability to smell royal blood
- It's made clear that the dragon thinks she's killing off the descendants of the king who killed her hatchlings because she can smell "royal blood" in the girls. The royal family of Aurea accomplish this deception by performing a quick blood mingling ceremony (placing their slashed palm against the intended sacrifice's slashed palm) before tossing the sacrificial princesses into the dragon's lair. But if the dragon's sense of smell is so acute that she can smell a few drops of Aurean royal blood in Elodie's veins, wouldn't she be able sniff out the lie once Elodie's father shows up?
- There is probably something more elaborate than just adding a few drips of blood to the girls. It’s probably a magical ritual of some sort to make their blood "royal".
- She could simply have assumed that Elodie was descended from the royal family via her mother.
The logistics of procuring the sacrifices
- Why is the royal family of Aurea going to all the trouble of seeking out princesses to sacrifice to the dragon? If they can trick the old lizard into thinking any random girl with a bit of royal blood smeared on her hand is a direct descendant of the king who made the bargain, they could have been sacrificing servant girls and peasants this entire time. Instead they're sailing far and wide to find random nobles (who presumably haven't heard of royal brides who are summoned to Aurea and then disappear off the face of the planet), offering up wagonloads of gold as a bride price, and then going through the elaborate deception or marrying these girls to the prince of Aurea (in front of their entire families!) before tossing them into the dragon's lair.
- This is addressed in the Fridge page, as an example of the Royal Family’s Pragmatic Villainy. Sacrificing local peasant girls might save them a ton of gold and effort, but it also means that every single one of the sacrifices will have family, friends and lovers living on the island. It would only be a matter of time before one of them went to the mountain and told the dragon what was really going on as revenge on the Royals. And as demonstrated by the fact that it took Lord Bayford less than day to find a local guide to take him into the dragon's lair, the Aurean commoners do possess the means to do it, if properly motivated.
- But the deaths of patricians (even impoverished ones) are much more likely to be noticed. They tend to have family and relatives who can't be easily made to disappear; all it takes is one distant relative looking into things or one person like Elodie's father blabbing (possibly decades later) for rumors to start to spread through high-class society. After that, the whole thing will rapidly fall apart.
- Rumors spread far more slowly in a medieval-level setting, and the Aureans by all appearances procure their sacrifices from countries that are as distant from each other as they are from Aurea, cutting down on the risk of exposure. And it they have any sense, they probably avoid procuring in the same region for several generations just to be safe.
- But the deaths of patricians (even impoverished ones) are much more likely to be noticed. They tend to have family and relatives who can't be easily made to disappear; all it takes is one distant relative looking into things or one person like Elodie's father blabbing (possibly decades later) for rumors to start to spread through high-class society. After that, the whole thing will rapidly fall apart.
- If concern about reprisals from their subjects prevents the Aurean royal family from sacrificing their own peasants (never mind that in a pseudo-Medieval society there are surely drifters, criminals, and orphans that no-one would miss), they're still throwing away insane amounts on resources obtaining Princesses and other noble girls. Even if we pretend there's no such thing as pirates or slavers willing to bring the royals a few random girls for considerably less money than a bride-price, the Aureans could have taken that money and hired dozens of women from poverty-stricken fiefdoms (like Elodie's homeland) on the pretext of needing more hands during the harvest... and then made a few of their guest workers disappear. Concoct a story about illness, accident, or even fake elopement to explain their disappearance. What are the families of those poor women going to do, sail for Aurea and demand answers?
- Having established why it would be highly risky to sacrifice any girl native to the island (no matter how much of an outcast someone might appear to be, there’s no guarantee she will not have a friend or loved one who will resent her murder), there’s also the class issue to consider. The sacrifices must be able to pass as true-born daughters of the Royal Family. The Royals have no way of knowing how long the dragon keeps the sacrifices alive before killing them, how closely she inspects them or if the creature is knowledgeable enough about human society to tell the difference between the behavior and physical condition of an aristocrat and that of a commoner. The closer the sacrifices are to the genuine article, the less of a chance that the dragon will discover the subterfuge. Granted, this problem could be overcome by procuring cheap lowborn girls from abroad and raising them in luxury on Aurea, but this would create the same problem as sacrificing native born Aureans, i.e. someone on the island might develop enough of an emotional attachment to them to seek revenge for their murder. At the end of the day, what the Royal Family needs is women who look, act, feel and taste like princesses and have absolutely no personal connection to anyone on the island, and for that, foreign noble (but not royal) girls fit the bill the best.
- This is addressed in the Fridge page, as an example of the Royal Family’s Pragmatic Villainy. Sacrificing local peasant girls might save them a ton of gold and effort, but it also means that every single one of the sacrifices will have family, friends and lovers living on the island. It would only be a matter of time before one of them went to the mountain and told the dragon what was really going on as revenge on the Royals. And as demonstrated by the fact that it took Lord Bayford less than day to find a local guide to take him into the dragon's lair, the Aurean commoners do possess the means to do it, if properly motivated.
Availabilty of brides as sacrifices
- How many kingdoms are in this world? It seem that they almost sacrifice one princess per day (the protagonist is sacrifice, next day her sister and she interrupts right when another wedding is taking place only a few days after her own). That means around 365 princess per year since centuries ago. Even if is not daily it seems to be within very few days of difference which still would be hundreds per yer (at least one per yer would make more sense). Where do they find so many princesses and so many kingdoms willing to give them? and does the dragon knows nothing of human reproduction? Doesn't she understands that the king can't have 300 offsprings -and all female- a year?
- It's explicitly 3 princesses per generation. So roughly 1-2 per decade.
- In addition, the sacrifices are only princesses by marriage. Elodie's father is just a Lord. Impoverished fiefdoms can be a dime a dozen.
The total lack of any sort of security at the third royal wedding
- At the end of the movie, Elodie just walks straight into the third marriage (while wearing the ruined remains of her underclothes, no less.) How on earth is this possible? Does the castle have no guards at all? At this point the royal family knows Elodie escaped, has discarded all pretense of caution, and has seized her sister by force, so even if the guards recognized her, and even if they somehow didn't realize she was supposed to be sacrificed already, and even if they hadn't heard she escaped, they still would never have considered allowing her into the presence of the royal family half-naked and wearing a sword!
- For that matter, why did the queen waste her time talking to her or staring at her rather than immediately shouting "SEIZE HER?" Even with no knowledge of what's going on, it's obvious Elodie would want revenge and allowing her to speak could only disrupt the current wedding further. For that matter, why would the guards even need to be told to seize her? Someone who is at this point obviously an enemy of the royal family has somehow wandered into the royal wedding while wearing a sword. They should have instantly been dogpiling her while others grabbed the royal family and rushed straight to a saferoom.
- Related to this, how on earth did the dragon arrive unnoticed? The royal family knows, at this point, that Elodie escaped. They know the dragon was furious (it was flying around breathing fire, that's how they knew what happened.) Unless they're absolute idiots, they would have the mountain watched incredibly closely and even the smallest motion by the dragon reported on. The moment it was clear it was headed for the castle, there should have been a massive alarm with, again, the royal family rushed to the saferoom. Have they never even considered what they would do if the dragon broke the agreement for whatever reason and attacked? Do they have no contingency plans at all?
