Ariel always had an obsession with the Human world. She would spend hours observing them from a distance Her father disapproved. Ariels mother had had the same obsession and had never come back from one of her visits. Ariels father was heartbroken and from then on no Merperson was allowed to go to the surface. He had a hard time stopping his determined daughter though. Ariel always found ways to evade her fathers ways of keeping her below the surface.
Then that fateful day it happened. Ariel was watching a ship, and she saw a man. The Prince actually, and it was love at first sight. She began to follow him, where ever his ships went on the water, she went as well. And one terrible night his ship was caught in a storm and went under. Panicstricken Ariel searched for her love and found him, sinking below the wreckage of the ship. She pulled him above water and swan him to the nearest land area. His skin was tinged blue, and Ariel, worried, began to sing a healing song.
After a while he began to stir and she quickly sank beneath the waves again, but kept her head above, hidden behind a rock. He was discovered and he began to ask who had sang to him. Confused his rescuers told him that no one had been singing, but he kept repeating that there had been a girl singing and that she had the most beautiful voice he'd ever heard.
In a happy daze, Ariel moved to reveal herself as the singer, but before she could she was pulled under the water. Her father had found her, and afraid to lose her like he'd lost his wife, he looked her in her room, until she had no more interest in the surface world.
Unable to see her prince, Ariel spiralled downward into depression. She had will left to live and so she stopped eating and moving. Deep down she knew her father was only trying to protect her, but even if she couldn't go up as a mermaid, she knew her aunt had the power to change her into a human. She pleaded with her aunt, but to turn a Merperson into a human was dark magic that her Aunt did not practice.
Ariel grew to hate her father and eventually her aunt(Who she spitefully called the 'Sea Wich). Her best friend Flounder hated to see Ariel in pain, and after some thought, suggested that Ariel turn herself into a human. After all it wasn't that her Aunt was more powerful, she had a spell book.
Strengthened by this hope, Ariel finally had the will to move and after a while broke out on her room. She slipped into her aunt's house and intended to steal the book quietly and leave. However, her Aunt awoke and got in the way. There was a struggle and in her desperation to be with her prince, Ariel killed her Aunt and fled the kingdom.
Ariel was able to work the spell, but dark magic always has a price. As a human she could not speak and every step she took felt like she was walking of knives. She bid Flounder good bye and entered the surface world.
Her beauty soon became well known throughout the kingdom and soon her prince took and interest in her and began to spend time with Ariel. It was two weeks of bliss, for the little mermaid as she fell more and more in love with the prince. All that was about to change however.
The King and Queen of that land wanted their son to wed a princess and so arranged for him to meet with one from a neighboring land. Ariel was jealous and even though she could not speak, the prince understood her feelings. He assured her that he was only meeting the Princess for his parents sake, but that no one could take her place.
When the Prince met the princess however, he fell for her almost at once, for she reminded him both in beauty and in voice, of the lovely maiden that had saved him from drowning. He arranged, to his parents pleasure, to be married in a fortnight.
Ariel was filled with jealousy and bitterness. She had given up her lovely tail, place under the sea, and had killed her own Aunt to be with him and he fell for another. These feelings were soon replaced by hot, furious anger and she sott a way to punish both the prince and his soon to be bride.
She cursed a knife and soon after his marriage she entered the room and spilled the prince's blood with it. It fell onto his bride and disfigured her, destroying her beauty. But dark magic comes with a price and as the Prince's bride became disfigured, so did a horrified Ariel.
She fled that kingdom again, cursing the Prince, his bride. She found Flounder again and the two looked through the book to find a way to claim her lost beauty. There was only one way and that was to steal it from another.
Ariel made up her mind to find the fairest one of all and steal the beauty from that poor soul. Unable to part with Flounder again though, she bound him to a mirror, where he had power. He was able to find the girl with the most beauty and he and Ariel went in search of the child called Snow White...