Once Upon a Time (She Was the Fairest of Them All)
Snow White was never the fairest. That was all there was to it. The mirror was wrong, and while that pained Queen Grimhilde, because she had made that thing and it was supposed to be perfect, there was no other explanation. Snow White didn't have her blood, her powers, so how could she be beautiful? The dreadful creature was completely human, on top of everything else. Grimhilde was a succubus, she was power and desire and lust and want, and she brought men to their knees with a glance, but Snow White was more beautiful than her. Snow White, who hadn't spoken to a man until she moved in with seven dwarves, seven half-breeds.
So the mirror was wrong, and Queen Grimhilde would never be swayed from her stance. And the Queen obviously had to right the wrong that was such a prominent issue. Her darling Evie had known how to apply blush before she could talk, how to sew before she could speak, and how to control men before she understood why she needed to.
But it was never enough.
Evie could bake and sing and apply makeup and act and clean and sew and terrorise people, but she would never beat Snow White. She was too fat, too ugly, too false and too innocent. So Queen Grimhilde would lock her in her room for a week until she'd sewn herself a new wardrobe, or made her bake until her fingers bled into the pies and cakes but refused to let her eat because she was too fat, and how did she plan on catching a prince looking like that? And she was far, far too smart. Whenever she should have been perfecting her lipstick, or improving her voice, or playing the piano, she was reading those awful books {arts and science and mechanics and history and astronomy, and her daughter just thought she was so clever, didn't she, the little whore}, thinking that she was so clever, not caring that the Charmings or the Beasts or even the Whites (really, she wasn't picky, it just had to be a prince) would never care for a smart girl. So Queen Grimhilde took the necessary precautions. She made her precious Evie burn Every. Single. One. And for every tear, every scar, every whimper, she added a day to the time she would wait to be fed.
But she was still too innocent. And then, Queen Grimhilde realised it. no matter how perfect she looked, her daughter would never be able to pleasure a man without practice. So she made a deal with Cruella de Vil, and her vile little son would come over, and Evie would lose that blasted innocence {It's not ladylike to curse, darling, shut up}. And her plan worked. Her darling little seductress-in-training could seduce a man with a blink by the time those lessons were over. (There were some things even she wouldn't teach her child hands-on). And Queen Grimhilde knew for a fact that Evie and Jay were having meetings, and she wondered what Maleficent's spawn thought of that.
When her darling finally conquered Auradon, five years after it was due, Queen Grimhilde expected to be let out of her fucking prison with a full pardon, and her kingdom back. She expected the life she'd missed. She expected Snow White's head on a fucking platter. Instead, she was locked in a cell with the same four who had been driving her madder than the Hatter. And informed of her nickname among the goody-two-shoes, the Evil Queen. And told that, as she was only acting as Queen Regent in Snow's place, her title as queen was never legitimate. But her daughter's was.
Because Evie had taken the crown by force, regardless of its brutality. So she was just Grimhilde, and her daughter was Queen Evie the Angelic. And it wasn't fair. Queen Evie had an endless range of courtiers, of rich, handsome men begging for her hand in marriage. But Queen Evie turned them all down. For those ridiculous Isle-raised lovers of hers, freaks one and the same. She fucking deserved them.
When Grimhilde died, it was broadcasted live to the Isle, and the ex-United States of Auradon, and everywhere everyone watched as their Angelic Queen carved out her own mother's heart, and ate it whole. Like her mother had planned to do with Snow White's. And the last thing Grimhilde saw before she died was the daughter she had raised to be second best smirking down at her, an angel of death, blood staining her fingers and mouth like lipstick, and then turning away from the regent she left to die.
In her last moment, the Evil Queen decided that maybe, once upon a time, the mirror had been right. But not anymore.
(Because there was a new fairest, and her name was Queen Evie.)