"The princess shall indeed grow in grace and beauty, beloved by all who know her. But... before the sun sets on her 16th birthday, she shall prick her finger — on the spindle of a spinning wheel — and DIE!"
— Maleficent, Sleeping Beauty
Brought on from the Fairy Godmother from Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother (and fairies as a whole) is pictured as a kind, selfless and synonymous with that of hope, light and Happily Ever After.
The Fairy Devilmother, on the other hand, does not give blessings. In fact, if you see the Fairy Devilmother, bow down and hope that she is feeling merciful that evening. There is no running from her. You will get hurt somehow, but maybe things won't turn out as bad if you cooperate. Instead of dealing in blessings, dreams, and wishes your heart makes, this Fairy dabbles in creating doom, using dark, unholy powers to curse their wards.
Their motivations vary. Maybe they're just evil by nature, or are a cruel trickster. Maybe you gave them great disrespect in some way and so decide to "bless" you or your newborn baby with a cruel and unusual fate. Maybe they think they're helping but have unconventional ideas on what that means. While the fairies themselves won't always be in literal black, they are almost always dark, dealing in dark magic in contrast to their more sugary sisters.
Sub-Trope of The Fair Folk and Fairy Godmother.
See also Evil Wears Black, Grimmification and Jackass Genie.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Osananajimi wa Onnanoko ni Naare:
- Sylphie is a sort of Fairy Godmother-wannabe trying to repay Shuichi for saving her life by granting his wish to be Childhood Friends with a cute girl. The problem is, she can only do that by turning his guy friend Iori into a girl, and Sylphie is hellbent on making him stay that way, regardless of how much he dislikes it. She's also shown to be driven by an all-encompassing obsession with granting the wish and offense that her spells are being undone. Despite all this, since Iori can change himself back, Selphie's just treated as a nuisance.
- Her mother Seraphie fits the image of a fairy queen, but goes to even more extreme measures to fulfill the wish in her daughter's place. Her first idea involves a curse to make Iori perpetually naked. After that, Seraphie alters everyone else's memories of Iori and then traumatically tries to override his entire personality. All this while insisting she's doing them all a favor.
Comic Books
- One 24-Hour Comic (the comic version of NaNoWriMo) involved one unfortunate soul who went through trauma after trauma, starting from the moment of his birth, but somehow always survived the ordeal (usually down a few body parts each time). In the end, it turned out to be because his Guardian Angel had gone bad and found the whole thing hilarious.
- Edge of Spider-Verse (2022): Norma the Fairy-Gobmother has shades of this. True, she doesn't do anything actually evil, in fact she allows Princess Petra to get superpowers and stop the villains, but with a contract that stipulates harsh terms in exchange. There's also the fact she's visually based on the Green Goblin and Maleficent, so she certainly looks damn shady. Then Edge of Spider-Verse (2023) reveals she was in fact Evil All Along.
- Fables: Hadeon the Destroyer was a fairy who crashed Briar Rose's christening uninvited, wanting to bestow her own "gift" upon the newborn child. Because she was uninvited to the calling unlike her sisters (and For the Evulz), her gift was for the child to prick her finger and die.
Fairy Tales
- "Sleeping Beauty": In the original fairy tale, the King and Queen invite all of the fairies in the land sans one (or her actual godmothers, depending on what version you're reading). Carabosse, the one who was left out, felt spited and decided to curse the princess with death.
- In the original telling of "Beauty and the Beast" by Gabrielle Suzanne Barbot deVilleneuve, the prince's mother leaves a fairy advisor to watch after her son while she goes to fight in a war. When the prince is older the fairy tries to seduce him; he refuses her, resulting in his transformation.
- Played With in "The Blue Bird": the evil stepsister has a fairy godmother named Soussio, who curses the prince for refusing to go along with the Bride and Switch.
- "Heart of Ice (Andrew Lang)", features good, neutral and evil fairies. Nonetheless, they have a hot temper and a different moral framework, so even benevolent fairies may decide to mess up with humans for their own good. Case in point, Genesta, the good-natured protector of Prince Mannikin's kingdom, took him away from his parents because she couldn't trust them to raise him properly. Likewise, King Bayard and all his subjects were transformed into sapient dogs because Bayard turned Fairy Marsontine's love overtures down.
Films — Animation
- Shrek 2: Fairy Godmother is only interested in providing happily ever afters that are to her own benefit, and even threatens to take away happily ever afters from those who refuse to do as she says (such as Fiona's father). She doesn't provide a good work environment, believes ogres don't deserve happily ever afters, and expresses her son's anger for him. She also attempts to force Fiona into falling in love with her son instead of Shrek.
- Sleeping Beauty: While Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather collectively act as the typical "Fairy Godmother" to Aurora, Maleficent represents this trope. Flora and Fauna place blessings on the infant princess, but Maleficent, both to spite the king and queen for not inviting her and For the Evulz, curses the princess with a magical death. Because she is so powerful, Merryweather has to waste her blessing simply dulling the curse to a magical sleep.
Films — Live-Action
- Ella Enchanted: Lucinda not only "blesses" Ella with the "gift of obedience", but when Ella pleads and begs for her to remove the "gift", Lucinda is offended and refuses, declaring arrogantly "everybody loves my gifts." She not only shows no interest in why Ella would want it removed, but while Ella chains herself to a tree to try and avoid obeying Edgar's order to kill Char, Lucinda frees her and orders her to go to the ball. This is in contrast to her original novel counterpart, who designs her gifts to help children develop into proper adults, only to realize the error of her ways when she experiences her gifts first-hand.
- Maleficent: Maleficent fits this trope just like her animated counterpart. As revenge for betraying her and amputating her wings just to become king, Maleficent interrupts his daughter Aurora's christening and curses her with a fate where she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into an eternal sleep. Deconstructed, as she eventually grows to love Aurora like a daughter, and the princess even calls her her "fairy godmother."
Literature
- The Dresden Files has two separate-but-related cases:
- Harry Dresden himself has an actual fairy godmother named Leanansidhe, who wants the best for him - in her own, very special way. As in, Dresden spends the first three and a half books terrified of entering the Nevernever over justified fears that she'll turn him into one of her dogs for breaking his promise to go with her. This was actually her trying to be nice, and she points out in one of the later books that he'd actually have been very happy as one of her hounds - certainly happier than he is most of the time. Considering that his suffering rivals Batman's, she might just have been right. Nevertheless, most reasonable humans would consider her way dangerously insane at best...and Lawful Evil at worst.
- Actually crowding Lea out in terms of both reputation and active involvement in the books over the course of the series, though, is her immediate superior Queen Mab, to the point where Dresden at one point observes that she could set up a certification system for all the mythical examples of this trope and related ones to make sure they're up to spec. It's basically understood everywhere in the supernatural community that one simply does not cross the Queen of Air and Darkness lightly - or if possible, at all. This is because, aside from being fully as powerful as being one of only two known primary acting rulers of Faerienote in the setting would imply, her retribution can also be spectacularly cruel and creative even by the standards of her notional peers — and that fearful respect is, all by itself, a good part of what lends weight to for example the Unseelie Accords (which are her creation). Breaching the Accords means crossing Mab, and Skin Game is one very thorough demonstration of just why that is a bad idea, with Nicodemus, who has a very well-earned reputation as The Dreaded of his own.
- Enchanted Forest Chronicles: Subverted in Dealing with Dragons when Princess Alianora does not receive a christening curse from a wicked fairy as is tradition, starting a whole series of failed attempts to invoke various fairy tale tropes on Princess Alianora's behalf.
Cimorene: She put a curse on you?
Alianora: No. She ate cake and ice cream until she nearly burst and danced with Uncle Arthur until two in the morning and had a wonderful time. So she went home without cursing me, and Aunt Ermintrude says that that's where the whole problem started. - Grandmother Willow from The Last Adventure of Constance Verity meant well when she blesses her godchildren with "a life of adventure," but considering the World of Weirdness they all live in, Constance is the only godchild who managed to live to adulthood. In her defense, she was just the delivery person in an Ancient Conspiracy that spans galaxies.
- Witches Abroad: Lilith Weatherwax is an evil fairy godmother who is convinced that she's 'The Good One', a good fairy godmother specifically, because she gives people fairy-tale lives, whether they want them or not. As it turns out, she was meant to be a good fairy godmother, while her younger sister, Esmeralda Weatherwax, was meant to be the Wicked Witch, and thanks to the Theory of Narrative Causality, had to become Good Is Not Nice instead. This, along with Granny's hatred for people being treated as things, is why she's downright furious. She, at least, would have had the decency to enjoy being evil, rather than acting like it's for everyone else's own good.
Live-Action TV
- Once Upon a Time: Whereas most fairies bless select children and distribute light magic across the realms, the Black Fairy kidnaps children so that she can turn them into her slaves in the dark realm, uses dark magic to an extent that she was able to single-handedly threaten all of the realms, and created the Dark Curse that caused the series' premise.
- Legends of Tomorrow Season 4 had the Legends dealing with dangerous magical creatures. The most threatening of them all is the Fairy Godmother, a Jackass Genie and one of the season's Big Bad Duumvirate.
Theater
- In the Disney Cruise Line Cinderella show Twice Charmed, there is Franco DiFortunato, Lady Tremaine's Wicked Fairy Godfather, who turns back time to help the stepfamily ruin Cinderella's happy ending. They fail, however, and the Tremaines become his servants. He may also be the Evil Queen's Godfather too, as he mentions helping her against the 7 Dwarfs.
Video Games
- EverQuest and Everquest II both feature Brownies, which can best be described as mischievous fairies or pixies without the wings that let them fly around. In both games, most of them attack player characters on sight. EQ2 also features the Arasai, an evil version of the Fae, a playable race of fairies. The Arasai were created by corrupting the flowers that the Fae themselves bloom from upon birth, and are quite malicious.
- Grimms Notes has the Fairy Godmother of Cinderella fame become the Monster of the Week after The Big Bad echoes her worries. She explains to Ex and the others that each time the story plays out she always helps whoever is fulfilling the role of Cinderella but that after watching thousands of successive ones, she came to realize that not all of them found eternal happiness after wedding their prince. She wants to give the current one a happily ever after that lasts forever by trapping her in a dream. and desperately tries to kill all of them for standing in her way.
- In Kingdom Hearts, Maleficent takes Riku under her wing under the guise of a protecting, more traditional Fairy Godmother. She finds him and gives him a place to live when Destiny Islands falls and helps guide him to Kairi. This is all one big ruse, of course, using Riku as a pawn in her machinations and poisoning him against Sora in the process.
Web Animation
- RWBY: Following Cinder's fairy tale allusion to Cinderella, Salem plays the role of her Fairy Godmother; being a magical woman who comes in and turns her from an abused slave-girl to a force to be reckoned with. Though while Cinder denies it, her life-situation hasn't actually changed much under Salem; she's nothing but a game-piece to Salem, who is perfectly willing to discard her just like anyone else should she prove herself useless. The only real difference is that Cinder swapped a Shock Collar for an Evil Hand and she gives Cinder free-reign to ruin as many lives as she wants as long as she isn't in the way.
Web Original
- The New Hansel And Gretel: Mathair gave Jack and Jamie exactly what they wanted — a house where they can spend the rest of their lives together — but they are both at the whims of her mercy as her babies.
Western Animation
- Later seasons of The Fairly OddParents! reveal that every fairy has an Evil Counterpart called an anti-fairy. They fight for the right to have godchildren but are usually stopped by fairies. Their main interaction with humans is causing bad luck on Friday the 13th.
