Maleficent and the Broken Princess

Maleficent observed the weeping princess from the fireplace as the flames died from her presence.

She reached out with her powers and entered the totally defenseless and undefended mind. Now she laughed her cold cruel laugh in that mind.

"Your friends have destroyed you more thoroughly then I could ever possibly had hoped to. Princess Aurora," Maleficent said with an ironic twist to her voice.

"Even calling you by your real name hurts you. Oh, this is just too easy. "

"Without prompting you'd throw yourself from your own balcony, but that just won't do, I cursed you and I intent to keep to that. You were gifted with beauty and music, I even gave you more beauty and grace, is there anything that is actually yours inside that body."

"Look at what your beloved aunts have done to you:

You had a cottage that you so lovingly painted and they took it away.

You had a forest to play in and they took it away.

You had made friends with the animals of the forest and they took them away.

You thought they loved you and they took that away.

You have tasted true love and they took it away.

You had a name and they took it away."

She laughs in her cruelty, but pauses.

"I wanted to take your life, but even now the spell they wove to protect you, just makes it worse for you. Your suffering is so delicious, so exquisite, the very finest quality I have ever tasted. If this is what they do to you out of love, what could they do to you from hate."

"Sadly, there doesn't seem to be anything left for me to take from you, your friends have taken everything from you. Not even that dress you wear is really yours either."

She considers.

"Oh, wait there is something I can take from you. Rise. You won't need that cloak, or the rest of those clothes. You can keep the crown on, because that hurts you more then everything else, since it reminds you of all you have had taken from you."

"Come, Princess Aurora." Maleficent sneers, "You have a date to keep with a spinning wheel."

And the fireplace dissolves in the green glow of magic.

Author's Note: I was watching Sleeping Beauty after reading how some people think Aurora is rather shallow and weak. So I was watching for what she is like, with growing horror I finally noticed what they did to her. They completely destroyed her, they took everything from her, mainly her trust in her "aunts" who had admitted they lied to her for 16 years and weren't even human. They even took her name.

She's 16 years old and her entire reality was smashed and scattered to the winds. This is Book of Job level suffering.

Then in her darkest hour she faced Maleficent, the greatest of all Disney villains, utterly and completely alone, believing that no one at all was on her side, not even a firefly.

None of the other princesses had taken on anything even close to this level. Rapunzel gets closest, with her true love dying in her arms in human form, but she was on her home turf of the tower and still had Pascal.

Yet after all that she still tried to resist. Anyone else would run to touch the spindle of the spinning wheel just to take the pain away.

Briar Rose may just be the strongest princess in the lineup, and like me, you probably never really thought about her and just what she went through. She truly earned her happy ending, getting her true love back was what she needed most, everything else was gravy.

PS. This time when Maleficent makes Aurora's cloak fall away, I got a total chill up my spine. What if that was an allegory (this is a G rated Disney film, after all) Maleficent taking away the only thing Aurora had left, her very clothes and dignity?