So over a hundred people saw my first chapter. Let's see what's next. And btw, I'll be making references to the "Twisted Tales" series by Liz Braswell (Disney's What If books) and to the sequels of the movies (a "not saying it completely happened but came close to" scenarios) to fit the villains who were still alive and purpose for being on the Isle of the Lost..

ENJOY!

In Auroria...

The Honeymoon Cottage...

3rd POV

"THE MALEFICIENT(S) CRASH THE COURT!"

"KING BEN UNDER SCRUTINY!"

"IS KING BEN FIT FOR THE THRONE!?"

"LOVE SPELL MISHAP!? A PLAN TO TAKEOVER THE THROWN!"

"VILLIAN TEENS, RIGHT OFF THE ISLE!"

"ROYAL SCANDAL! IS BEN THE KING WE NEED!?"

THWACK!

Former Queen Leah, Queen Aurora, and King Philip looked up from their seats to see Audrey had thrown newspapers onto the table. One look at them said it all.

It had been a quiet morning in the 40-roomed castle and the cooks and fixed a delicious breakfast for the royal family for the family to enjoy. All but one, that is.

"Don't they have anything better to do than harass Ben!" she hissed. "It's bad enough that the coronation was ruined and postponed, but now they're making it seem like it's all his fault!"

Sighing, Queen Leah took a sip of her morning tea before explaining, "And they have that freedom to do so."

"What?" Audrey asked incredulously.

Her grandmother nodded. "When Ben was elected to be King, he knew what was expected of him by looking towards his father's rule. Now, changes can be expected, but when you have a spectacle as big as his coronation, it is no surprise it won't be taken lightly. In this case, some could believe this was all in his making."

"Huh? So they think he, what, planned on ruining his ascension to the throne to get more popular?" Audrey snorted.

Queen Leah sent her a fixed glare. "Watch your tone, young lady. It is not becoming of a princess. And to answer that question, no. Ben knew there was a risk by taking in those children of the Isle, and to let his guard down long enough for Maleficient's daughter was able to slip him a love spell is quite the scandal. Not to mention how the Fairy Godmother's daughter practically disgraced herself with that foolish display of hers."

"Yes," Audrey shrugged. She had heard that Jane had got the equivalent of a verbal thrashing and that her mother was going to keep her on a tight leash from now on.

"The fact of the matter is: Ben was, or still is, the representation of his people, and royalty alike. His actions reflect on his person, and those actions have made certain people believe that he isn't ready for the throne," Queen Leah stated.

"But he's a King!" Audrey exclaimed. "Or a Prince, at the very least! He grew up with royalty, he studied his butt off to know all there is to know about Auradon before it was even a founded country! His mother is the most down-to-Earth woman that has ever lived and he knows from his dad's past to not act like a spoiled brat. And he is so, so mature... He's ready for the mantle, Grandmother. This was just a...a hiccup."

Audrey inwardly winced at the sound her grandmother's hand hitting the redwood table.

"Just a hiccup!? Audria, please remove your personal feelings from the situation and regard it like a princess," Queen Leah admonished. "Just because he is a prince, doesn't mean that he has the maturity of one. If you may want an example, think of Queen Cinderella's son, that for his childish action in which would make any royal monarchy disown him, was simply sent away for the remainder of the year. From the way rumors have it, especially considering how with his mother's background of being a servant in her own home, it would do him some good to learn some humility before embarrassing his family's name in ignorance. Ben is young, yes, but a ruler should know when to make certain risks and when to ensure his people's safety. And while yes, his family background has given him a sense of modesty, being smart isn't always enough. A king must be prepared to give himself, all of himself, to his people. Especially as he gets older, he will realize that he has no time for fun and games."

"So what happens? Because he's not fully instated as of the coronation, the council can just what? Abdicate his right to the throne? Pick someone else?" Audrey asked.

"Well, I wouldn't use that exact wording, but most likely, yes," Queen Leah stated indifferently.

"But that's not fair!"

"Life isn't fair, Audria, and you would do well to remember that!" her grandmother snapped. Audrey jumped back at the steel in her voice.

"Mother!" Aurora exclaimed. King Philip was just about to join in when Queen Leah raised her hand, taking a breath.

"I apologies, Audrey," she started, "and I can see why you'd feel this way. But you must know that actions must have consequences. Just look at what Maleficient's daughter had planned. She had waved that wand at us, at you, and then read all about her plans for Auradon if she had succeeded in controlling Ben! I am under a good authority that for her plans to had become fruition, it would have been years. And if she was well-liked and silver-tongued enough, maybe sooner. It's bad enough what her mother had done, but now her child had been this close to Auradon's ruin...It's all out in the air now and if he wants to reclaim any doubt that he could still make a good king, how he handles it will determine so. And with that, comes with an eventual press conference if he wants to start."

Taking in a deep breath and reigning in her frustrations, she sat down beside her grandmother and placed her head down.

"I don't think that's even going to come close once school starts again," Audrey groaned inwardly.

Officially, because of the incident and in concern for the safety of the students and their, Auradon Prep had been closed for an unscheduled break and be re-open in two weeks. Audrey and everyone else, including Ben, would be returning the week after this one.

Unofficially, the scandal has put AP under lockdown for a high-profile investigation regarding the VKs whereabouts, classes and extracurricular activities. They were looking for anything that was a dead giveaway to their plans and had slipped under their noses.

And Fairy Godmother was leading the charge.

Queen Aurora and King Philip reached out and grabbed both of her hands softly, to comfort her as she let out what was practically screaming in her chest.

"I told them," she started, feeling her eyes moisten. "I told everyone that Mal and her friends couldn't be trusted. I told Ben repeatedly that, as your stories said, the evil fairy is still the evil fairy. That doesn't change just because she had a child. And what do I get: I get humiliated in front of everybody as he...as he declared his love for Mal. Of all people, and I had to suddenly grab and get with Chad to because-"

"Shhh," Aurora soothes, bring another hand to caress her daughter's head and wipe her tears. "You don't have to explain. It over now."

King Philip growled and did his best to make it as inconspicuous as he could. He had heard rumors about that game and got mixed stories. Future king or not, Audrey was his only daughter, his only child, and for Ben to hurt her like that? Under a love spell or not, he would have killed him. It would have made fighting Maleficent look like a walk in the park!

He knows his daughter was proud, and unlike her mother in many ways, but at that moment when she called crying, all he could do is comfort her over the phone alongside her mother and tell her it would pass.

"I was the bitter ex-girlfriend as she got popular. Cheerleading was only bearable since I was the captain, but most of my friends avoided me in favor of her. Using magic to help the girls grow longer hair. Yeah, so what if I was mean to her on Family Day, Jane was just as well! She took it farther than me almost. And then my reputation when down the hill too. Reduced to a bitter, jealous, vengeful princess now...I don't think I can trust anyone at that school anymore. Maybe I should transfer to Arcadia or maybe Sherwood Academy is better. Ha, maybe that might stick it to 'em!" she laughed bitterly.

"You're not going anywhere because you're staying at Auradon," Queen Leah said finality.

Audrey whipped her head to her in shock. "What?"

"Audi, you can't just hide from your problems. Trust me, I was raised by fairies for 16 years to escape a 100-year sleeping curse and it still happened!" Aurora stated irritatedly.

Shaking his head at his wife, King Philip took over. "Look, Audrey, sometimes in life you've got to pick your battles and to know when it's time to surrender. You sensed something in your gut that told you something was off right?"

She only nodded.

"Good," he continued. "You knew something was off, you tried to warn people, and sometimes, the best and only thing you can do is let the chips lie where they fall. It may not feel right or make you feel better, but that's how it can be sometimes. You tried, you fought, probably longer than you should, but you eventually had to move aside. You said your piece and that's all you had to do. Everyone else? They have to live with the fact that they chose not to heed your warning and that's on them. But not you. And that's why you're staying at Auradon. Because as King and Queen, and your parents, you don't get to give up so easily."

"And what if they try to apologize?" Audrey asked. She only thought about it once and decided she didn't want their apologies and excuses.

"Then, you straighten your back, keep your head up, look them in the eyes, grace them with a small smile, and simply say '"Thank You"' and '"I accept your apology"'. Granted, you may not feel like it, but a princess must always carry herself with strength and dignity as well as grace and respect. You may have been born with that title, but the only person who can take that away from you is yourself and by running away, that is exactly what your doing," Queen Leah told, keeping her granddaughter's eyes on her.

The power Audrey felt perforating into her made get into a proper position to raise her head high. While it did do some good for her, part of her knew her family's advice could only do so much.

At Beast Castle...

Ben was just about ready to collapse onto his bed when Mrs. Potts came in with a tea tray in hand as well as lunch. He had been holding meeting all day, and the young king-, no prince - didn't even want to think about the inevitable council meeting regarding his status as the future king!

With all the stress from the press, cost of his failed coronation (along with the far off chance of redoing it), letters from various diplomats, as well as notifications and updates on a few certain prisoners being held in the Enchanted Woods, Ben was starting to question how his father did it all.

And that maybe, just maybe, I'm a little in over my head.

"I made you a couple of turkey sandwiches, grapes, and a fizzy soda to keep up your energy for the rest of the day," she said as she set the tray beside him, before chuckling. "Don't worry, I didn't it laced with a love potion!"

Ben groaned and covered his face. Glad to know someone was enjoying his misery.

Mrs. Potts just so happened to had been in the room with him when Fairy Godmother came to interrogate him for her investigation. She had practically lost her mind when he told her that he was already cured of the spell (via the Enchanted Lake), she heavily advised Ben to get a lawyer soon as possible as he would need one when he had to go up against the council. After all, Ben may have been elected, but in a situation like this, he's supposed to be judged amongst my peers.

And by peers, he meant the royal families, or their representatives included.

"So have you seen the tabloids?" she asked him.

"Unfortunately, yes," Ben answered before sighing. "2 months after I win the election, and I'm already facing dismission."

"Now stop, Ben!" Mrs. Potts smacked him on his side. "There was no way you could have known what was going to happen that day!"

"Yeah, but I did!" he exclaimed. "I knew Mal put a love spell on me, and even after it wore off, I still fell in love with her. And I know she loved me back. She had to..."

Mrs. Potts frowned at the dishearted young man and sat down beside him to pull him into her arms. She had it under great authority that her master's son hadn't really fully processed everything around him and that he was just focusing on different thing to refuse to see the bigger picture:

The boy just got his first broken heart.

It was a sorry sight to see, now especially since like his father, the woman had practically raised him alongside Belle. He may have gotten his temper, but his kind and accepting heart as all his mother's in the end.

The irony of him being spelled and loving a powerful fairy's daughter wasn't lost on her. At least, not with the history his parents share.

"Ben, Ben, look at me," she called, pulling his face up to her and looked him in the eye. "What Mal did was... Not...Your... Fault! That girl and her friends may have only been innocent from the second they were born, but growing up on the Isle, living with the parents they had...sometimes a chance is not enough. Look, I was never on board with your father when he resurrected the dead and plot them far from civilization. And not when it was learned that children were born there and he didn't try to help them. And in some ways more than itself, it's amazing Belle even lifted his curse because those actions clearly should have left him as a Beast for it. And don't you dare tell him I said that!"

Ben nodded his head instantly. He knew his dad was cursed because of his selfish ways before the Enchantress cursed him, and that he stayed that way a long time, growing up to become a bitter shell of himself before his mother came and changed him.

But now Ben was learning you can't change everyone.

"But you did a good thing," Mrs. Potts explained. "You loved her. Before you knew about the spell and long after, you loved her. But for two people in love to be together? For her to walk away from all that she's been raised to know? Honey, that takes so much more than magic. That...That takes the willingness to change, to accept what you can and can't have and the determination to do so. You saw what no one else saw, was willing to see, and you probably wanted to give her all you had because you felt that she deserved it. That she deserved to be more than Maleficient's daughter. Now that's love. I don't know what Mal had going on in her head all this time, but you gave her a chance, more chances than she'd been allowed to have, which wasn't much, to begin with. And at the end of the day, it was her choice to forsake that. Well, that, and the fact that Fairy Godmother put that spell on her wand in the first place."

Ah yes, Fairy Godmother did explain what had happened that had caused Mal and the other villains' kids to spill their hidden agendas. Way back during pre-Auradon's "Dark Ages", her wand had gone missing and ended up in the hands of Lady Tremaine and her stepdaughters, who went back in time and nearly completely undid Cinderella's fairytale with Anastasia in her place! Thankfully it had been averted before it could go too far, but Fairy Godmother decided that her wand itself could easily fall into the wrong hands and it tended to have a mind of its own, hence how she lost it in the first place. So, with the help of Queen Aurora's fairy godmothers, she put a spell on it to ensure anyone who touches it with malicious intents would speak their minds AKA tell the truth upon what they plan once it's in their grasp.

Of course, no one (except the Kings and Queens high up the chain, including Ben) was to know about it. Her logic: "If more people knew about that particular spell on the wand, many would try, and perhaps successfully, create counterspells to bypass it."

So it could be argued that since Jane didn't have any mal intentions once she grabbed the wand, it was the wand itself misbehaving before Mal took it. But when asked why the others - who weren't touching it - affected alongside her, Fairy Godmother theorized that because they were all in it together, and Mal is the leader, the wand felt like it had to overreach work on all of them as a whole in spite of that technicality.

The more Ben thought about it now, he could see how beneficial and prospective such a foolproof enchantment could come in handy, especially if it was the only thing to stand between Auradon's safety and it's fall. That evil would never touch something that would cause them to outright expose themselves was almost a brilliant plan.

Too bad no one expected the wand's enchantment to exceed far too well with its purpose on the day of his coronation, and especially have it expose the most nefarious conspiracy from the ones he least expected the most, the ones he was more than devoted to helping.

"I can't keep the word of my decree," he mumbled into Ms. Pott's arm.

She looked down at him. "I beg your pardon?"

Ben removed himself from her grasp and stood up. He rubbed his hand through his hair as he worked up the courage to get his decision.

"I can't keep my word. I let everyone down when I let the children of Maleficent, Cruella De Vil, the Evil Queen, and Jafar into Auradon. Someone could have gotten hurt, or worse, and that would have been on me since they were my responsibility in the first place. I helped them fit in, find peers that shared some of their interests and work through their issues that living on the Isle brought them. And in the meanwhile, I allowed myself to get tricked and could have brought massive danger to national security because I let my guard down. I know I'm young, and I swore on my campaign that I would do my best to lead this country into a brighter future. But my best is not my best if I keep making the mistake of putting myself before my people. I can't and I wrote make my mistake again. So, with a heavy heart," Ben sighed and pronounced, "for the time being, no other children from the Isle of The Lost are allowed to enter Auradon in any means until further notice."