We often do see a lot of missing mothers and fathers for our Princesses and Princes, often with no explanation. So what did happen to them?
There's no reason to assume Snow White's backstory was any different from what it was in the original fairy tale: her mother wished for a child with a particular hair, skin, and lip colour after seeing the beautiful combination of colours from an ebony windowframe. (In this case, I'm guessing she saw a single rose popping up from the snow, rather than pricking her finger and dripping blood out the window. You know, I was never really sure how the physics of that would work....) Snow White's mother sadly died in childbirth, but not before seeing that she had given birth to the daughter of her wishes. Perhaps she even told her husband she wanted the daughter to be named either Snow White, Ebony Black, or Rose Red. I have notheory, at the moment, for what happened to Snow White's father. I'm not particularly inclined to blame the Evil Queen because she probably wanted her husband around to keep admiring her and affirming that she was still desirable. Perhaps the Evil Queen's real nastiness even started after she became a widow....
Cinderella's mother probably fell ill – that wasn't so uncommon, as I understand. Maybe tuberculosis or some other common disease of the day. As far as her father goes – is it coincidence he died so very soon after marrying a woman as tricky and evil as Lady Tremaine? I think not. Did she poison him, as a way of securing his estate for herself and her daughters instead of letting it pass to Cinderella? I suspect so.
Prince Charming's dad has such a temper, I have to wonder if he had his wife executed the way Henry VIII did with two of his! I tell you I was genuinely frightened when the King picks up that sword and holds it right by the Grand Duke's neck....
The only missing parent in Sleeping Beauty is Phillip's mother, and I suspect she must be dead, because if she wasn't, what was she doing missing her own son's wedding? Not to mention she's never even mentioned, which we at least can't say for Aurora's underrepresented mother! I think she probably died in childbirth. She's already missing when we meet Phillip as a little boy, but neither Phillip nor Hubert act like they just lost a mother/wife. (Now all that remains is the mystery of Aurora's mother's missing name! “King Stephan and the Queen”, I ask you....)
I know there is a straight-to-DVD prequel in which Ariel's mother was killed by humans, explaining both why she never appears in The Little Mermaid and why King Triton hates humans so much. I'm still trying to decide whether this explanation resonates with me. I really think it's more likely King Triton is just xenophobic – which is perfectly believable without needing some tragic backstory to explain it. The fear of people who are not like you is a very real thing, found all throughout human history, and I think giving King Triton that motivation makes him – well – a more realistic character. Ariel's mother probably is dead, though (unless merpeople just have different customs for producing and raising children than we do – I suppose we are not meant to assume she just laid the eggs and swam away!) And, I just want to say, even if she were alive there's no guarantee she would have supported Ariel in her human interests any more than Triton did; they could very well have presented a united front. One thing I do like to think is that Ariel once had a grandmother, like the one in the original fairy tale, who used to tell her and her sisters stories about the human world which fascinated Ariel long after her sisters had stopped thinking about them. I credit this grandmother for sparking Ariel's interest in humans – which King Triton probably did not appreciate! She reminds me (though I haven't seen that movie yet) of Grandma Tala in Moana.
I'm not sure what happened to Eric's parents – if they were anything like their son, maybe they died on a boat that went down, like the King and Queen of Arendelle in Frozen. But I suspect they are dead. We see no sign of them at the castle, nor do we hear any mention of where else they might be right now, and I get the sense Grimsby has long been Eric's guardian. I do take their absence as proof that Eric was not in line for the throne, though. If his parents were the King and Queen, and Eric had no brothers, there would have been some mention of Eric's being prepared to take the throne after a certain age, if he hadn't already taken it. So probably Eric's parents were a Prince and Princess, and I do not think it likely that Ariel will become a Queen.
I know the most obvious explanation is that Belle's mother is dead. But I like to imagine... okay, if you don't like more “adult” scenarios being imagined into Disney movies, you should probably skip this one. My theory, which comes from old French novels I have read or heard tell of, is that Belle's mother is alive and well in a big city such as Paris, where she lives as a fine lady with her husband – whom she was already married to when she and Maurice conceived Belle. I imagine they had two other daughters like that, since in most versions of the original Beauty and the Beast tale, Belle has two older sisters. (In the very original novella it was five sisters and six brothers, but I doubt Maurice and Belle's maman had time for that many!) Belle's mother pretended the babies belonged to her husband, until the husband noticed how the littlest girl had Maurice's hazel eyes, and Maurice had to flee the city with Belle. They never stayed in any town too long, in case the scandal caught up to them, and that is how Maurice and Belle ended up in that quiet village at the beginning of the movie. (Belle obviously didn't grow up there. She remembers “the morning that we came”, and Gaston, who probably did live in that town his whole life, remembers wanting to marry Belle the moment he first saw her. This also fits in with the original story where Belle's father was a millionaire but then loses his fortune.)
I don't know exactly what happened to Beast's parents, although since reading the full-length original novella I have come to love the idea of his mother as a badass warrior queen, who reluctantly left her young son for long periods because she was away at war. (In the original she left him in the care of the wicked Enchantress, who then became obsessed with marrying this boy she'd known since he was a child, and then curses Beast because the mother refuses to agree to it! Cool, right?) She was a seriously cool character, although she did object quite strongly to the idea of her son marrying a commoner, and I see no reason why Beast's mother in the Disney universe couldn't be exactly the same. (I picture her with the same red hair and fiery temper as Beast has.) It would make for some great complications when she finds out her son married a village girl... And this would definitely explain why there were no parents around to protect their son or to answer the door for him when the Enchantress came to call!
I've come up with so many theories regarding Aladdin's parents I hate to settle on just one. My first thought was that they simply died, probably of starvation or malnutrition, but that didn't make for a very interesting story and so I experimented with different scenarios in which they abandoned him. (These are usually my favourites; they make for the most compelling, painful sort of story and a nice theme of found family versus blood at the end of it.) I have a scenario where Aladdin's mother gave so much of her own food and energy trying to keep Aladdin alive that she died, at which point his father grew resentful and abandoned him; I have scenarios where his father used to be the one stealing food for the family but got caught and was killed, and Aladdin's mother blamed him for his father being more exposed than usual and abandoned him. I have stories where his parents both decided they couldn't raise a son on their income and that he would never survive anyway, so they packed up in the night and left. Sometimes in these stories they already lived in Agrabah, but sometimes they would leave little Aladdin alone in the middle of the desert, where he just manages to find his way to the nearest city before he would have died from lack of water and shelter. And I often like to incorporate his backstory from the original Arabian Nights tale: Aladdin's father dies because Aladdin refuses to learn to become a tailor, which is the father's trade, and the father thinks this is the only way for Aladdin to ever earn money and support the family on his own. Then his mother blames Aladdin for his father's death, only instead of continuing to raise him like she does in the original, she simply abandons him. Of course, in the Arabian Nights Aladdin was ten when this happened, and in the Disney movie I'm quite sure he was supposed to have lost his parents well before he was ten. It seems extremely silly to be so upset over a little boy not wanting to become a tailor! But ever since reading the original tale, Aladdin's father is always a tailor, and I very often end up imagining his mother as a maker of meatcakes, in honour of a Russian movie adaptation of the tale from the 1960s. And yes, of course I know about the straight-to-DVD sequel in which Aladdin meets his father and he turns out to be the leader of a band of thieves. This idea has captured my imagination, and I now create scenarios in which Aladdin's father used to be a tailor, and then formed his thief band in order to gain a better life for himself and his family. Of course, how scrupulous Aladdin's father turns out to be still varies – because it makes a far more interesting story, and one that fits far better with Aladdin's already tragic past, if Aladdin finally meets his parents only to have to ask himself whether they were ever actually worth knowing.
Hear me out on this one: Jasmine's mother might not actually be dead. But Layla, you say, we don't see any sign of her the whole movie! And the Sultan talks about her in the past tense! Well, yes, but it could be when the Sultan says Jasmine's mother “wasn't nearly so picky”, he just meant back when she agreed to marry him. Okay, you say, then where is she? Why don't we ever see her? Maybe that's because, according to the culture, we weren't supposed to see her. Maybe she's exactly where you'd expect a Sultan's wife to be: in the harem quarters with all his concubines and other wives. Don't look at me like that. It was what rulers did in this place and time. I hardly think a man who insists his daughter follow the exact expected marriage rules would have decided to forego the harem! Now, Jasmine's mother could still be dead, of course (although in the original she wasn't; there's a brief scene with her). But harem women don't normally leave the wing of the palace designated for them, and we never see the harem quarters in the movie, so we can't actually know. Now, one thing I do think about Jasmine's mother is that the one line the Sultan says about her, that she “wasn't nearly so picky” as Jasmine, is very telling. That makes me think her mother was the polar opposite of Jasmine, the most proper, obedient, docile and submissive woman you would ever meet, maybe even to the extent she strongly disapproved of her daughter's strong will and independent spirit. I think it would appeal to the very traditional Sultan, marrying as proper a woman as possible, and it definitely ties in with Jasmine having no friends or confidantes in the harem quarters. It's very telling how Jasmine never wishes her mother was still around to support and advise her. The movie does show us a very compelling relationship between Jasmine and her father, and I always imagine he was the parent she was closest to.
I meant to do more of these, but every other Disney Princess or Princess-type movie I have seen either tells us exactly who both parents were, or doesn't give us enough information to even guess. But Nala's father is definitely Mufasa. Don't look at me that way. They're lions. That's how lion prides work. Best not to think about it from human standards.
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