"What's a prologue?"
"It's a thing you do when you don't want the story to start at the beginning."
"That's pretty lame."
"I know."
"So, like, what do I put in it?"
"Well, usually it has things that tell you about what you're about to see. It helps readers know some of the rules of the place they're visiting and how things work. You can put history in it if you don't want your character to tell the reader that stuff."
"I don't."
"Well, now you know where to start."
"Okay. I think I'm ready. Just… let me know if I need to go back and fix anything."
"I will. Now, begin."
"Once upon a time, long, long ago…. Well, not that long ago, but – we were living in dark times. A new government was trying to emerge, with a ruling monarch at its center. The fighters at the front were the heroes, the people whose stories were those of being wronged and shunned, only to emerge victoriously and live a 'happily ever after', and the villains, who'd almost ruined that ending. And the heroes were fighting against the villains to lock them up.
"It was a bit ironic in hindsight. New villains emerged while fighting them off and horrible atrocities were committed in the name of trying to make the world good once and for all. Even after the war was over, twenty-two crimes that would be known as the Unspeakable Acts of Injustice were committed by the government against the villains. One of the villain's eyes was even poked out and dried to sit in a museum after the war, just so everyone could look at it and say: 'what a great thing this person did.' Or 'how wonderful is it that villains don't live among us anymore?'
"After all the fighting and gore was over, the heroes won. Which ones, no one was sure. But Side A was the victor, and so they rounded up all of Side B and booted them off to a remote, rugged island that later became known as the Isle of the Lost.
"One of the villains who was treated more roughly than the rest was a vile fae enchantress named Maleficent. Maleficent had been battered to and fro, stomped on quite literally, and had been ridiculed by the entire kingdom when Stephan, a former lover and the king of a higher nation in the land, burned off her wings for the second time in front of a crowd of people gathered at his castle. Not that anyone knew it was the second time.
"Her mistreatment was a symbol of a new age. There was to be a King and a throne to be passed down, and laws to keep the ruling family from having too much power. A good system, everyone thought. And somewhere along this line of thought, someone had the brilliant idea to keep sending people to the Isle of the Lost. The murderers and arsonists and thieves and the whole lot. Just… shut them out of society.
"That detail is important for later, but not right now."
"It's not good to address the readers."
"Yeah, but… It's my prologue, right?"
"Correct. Please proceed."
"Okay, so, Maleficent was filled with wrath. She vowed to one day have her revenge, even if she had to wait years for it. And she began to plot. The heroes were surprisingly forthcoming in information. They believed they had exploited every loophole in both banning the villains and restraining their magic, among other technical details. Maleficent managed to figure out a singular, very specific brand of blood magic that she knew would be able to bypass all their restrictions.
"The plot revolved around Brandwit's 117th law of magical genealogy, which states that curses can be inherited if unfulfilled, and Elvon's 12th theory of forced soulmates. So, here's the long and short of Maleficent's plot:
"She would be doomed to stay on the island unless she had a blood anchor. All other anchors would be rendered useless. The strongest form of an anchor out there was a soulmate, but these had ceased to exist several centuries ago with the extinction of dodo birds. Who knew those birds had actually been important? So, Maleficent needed to tie herself manually to someone in Auradon. Except Maleficent couldn't tie herself to Auradon since her heart had long ago been stolen and no one had ever bothered to give it back. (Cough, cough, Stephan.) Therefore, Maleficent created half of the curse based on the idea that she could have a child. The other half of the curse was placed upon the crown of the ruling queen of Auradon. The two halves correlated to each other and, done properly, would result in a near-unbreakable bond between the future heir of the throne and her own future heir.
"Phew. I know it's a lot, so here's what you need to know. Two halves of a curse. One on Maleficent, which her future son or daughter would automatically inherit and be forced to carry out in her place. The other half on the crown of Auradon's future queen, whomever she would become. This would bleed into the queen herself due to the rule of enchanted objects and would eventually be passed down onto the firstborn child, who, by the way, was a boy. The curse was spelled on a timer of thirty years before excruciating pain set in, and a whole list of 'if-thens'. One of the biggest conditions was that the magic of the crown would not hold unless Maleficent's daughter gained a certain amount of power over Auradon, specifically the Isle of the Lost. Basically, the young prince would never be able to be king unless he married Maleficent Jr to give her power over the barrier and its prisoners.
"Maleficent and the rest of the villains were forced onto the Isle and most magicks were cut off. Auradon elected King Adam and Queen Belle as the first rulers and after two years they welcomed a chubby boy with brazened skin and a growl when he snored. They named him Benjamin Florian Benson. Maleficent heard the news right away and began looking for the perfect throw-away to father a child to pass her part of the curse onto. She took her time, and it was another five years before she delivered a beauty of curious workmanship. A purple-haired, fair-skinned, almost-princess upon whom she conferred her name, Mal."
"And that's you?"
"Hush. I'm telling a story."
"When does it start?"
"Right now. Our story begins twenty-five years after Maleficent was first imprisoned. Right in the middle of the start."
For Archive of Our Own, I will tag as I go. For Fanfiction Network, no settings will change.
I do not own Descendants, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, or Disney as an extension.