Okay, let me preface this by stating that my two-year-old daughter has been watching various Disney movies on loop now for the past month or two, so I’ve at this point watched Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, and Sleeping Beauty each at least twenty-five times in the past 8-10 weeks. If this post seems weird, that’s why.

After watching these movies as much as I have, one stops paying attention to the plot or music and you even stop thinking about the disturbing psychological underpinnings of the fairy tales themselves (Sleeping Beauty is about a woman’s maturation and need to accept defined female roles despite the efforts of other women to prevent it; The Little Mermaid is about a single parent alienating their youngest child and driving her into the arms of thugs and murderers; Beauty and the Beast is part Stokholm Syndrome, part abusive relationship, part ‘the nobility are better than the commoners’; and I could go on…). No, after viewing 63 or 64, you start trying to synthesize some kind of unifying timeline between the various films. You start scratching your head and ask yourself ‘exactly when is this supposed to be taking place’ or ‘why are all these princesses good with animals?’ Then, if you’re like me, you come up with a ridiculous theory to connect them all together.

This is that theory.

Basic Presumptions

With some Disney movies/princesses, setting and place are established or, conversely, they are obviously self-contained. For instance, princesses like Mulan or Jasmine are obviously placed in space/time and, therefore, don’t cry out for justification, exactly. Likewise, Simba or Ariel live in their own, fanciful, self-contained settings that don’t seem to overlap with the others. This is not so, however, for four major Disney films in particular–Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast. All four of these movies are central European, usually with distinctive French overtones, in a realm awash in mountains, forests, valleys, and farmland. These four movies will be the focus of the theory, though others can (and probably will) be appended on to it as we go. The central idea here is that all four movies are, essentially, set in the same general area and that many of the characters in the films are related to one another by blood. What we are witnessing in these films is the multi-generational tale of a single royal bloodline and its interactions with the Fairie Kingdoms.

Chronology

The first thing we need to establish is the order in which these movies are set in history. Chronologically in real life, the order was Snow White (1930s), Cinderella (1950s), Sleeping Beauty (1960s), and Beauty and the Beast (1990s). This isn’t the ‘historical’ order, however.

The only film given a precise date during the film is Sleeping Beauty. When speaking to his father, King Hubert, Prince Phillip insists ‘this is the 14th Century, father!’ This, backed up with art direction clearly inspired by the illuminated manuscripts of the high middle ages, places that movie there. Cinderella and Belle, however, live during a later period, as evidenced by the presence of firearms in Beauty and the uniforms and general style of Cinderella. Which comes first really comes down to fashion, in my opinion. The chosen dress of the Beast, once he regains human form, is late 18th/early 19th century, whereas the formal wear of Cinderella’s world is conspicuously more modern, placing them in the middle of the 19th century, possibly later.

With this in mind and, given the general darkness and lack of civilization present in Snow White, leads me to place them thusly: Snow White takes place in central Europe around the 11th century or so, give or take a few hundred years. Then comes Sleeping Beauty in the 14th, followed by Beauty and the Beast in the early 19th and then rapidly by Cinderella in the mid 19th. This gives us a workable framework to build a cohesive narrative from, and so I’m choosing this as my starting point.

Snow White (1149–1209)

 This whole mess starts with a girl named ‘Snow White’. For reasons not explained, she posseses a particular power over animals and an unearthly voice (seriously–listen to her sing. Did a person really make that odd noise?). We can infer that somehow, someway, Snow White has been gifted with certain powers from the fairy world. Perhaps there’s some fey blood in her, or perhaps she’s been blessed at birth (as is a custom, as we will see later). It doesn’t really matter. The point is that she has this power and the Evil Queen wants it.

From this point we should all know the story–the Evil Queen, in her haggard form–is thrown off a cliff by the dwarves (who live in a woodcutters cottage, which is important later). Snow White marries a prince, and they produce children.

The thing is, though, that the Evil Queen doesn’t actually die. She manages to survive somehow, makes pacts with the

Before

dark powers, and the castle she once lives in gradually falls into ruin. She becomes

After

Maleficent, the fey witch and queen of all evil that afflicts Sleeping Beauty.

Take a look at their pictures–tell me you don’t see the resemblance! They’re the same woman, just changed slowly over the ages by hatred, collusion with evil, and very poor skin care.

This brings us to part two: Sleeping Beauty.

Sleeping Beauty (1300-1375)

Inherits her great, great grandmother's gifts

Sleeping Beauty, or Aurora, is born to King Stephen and his unnamed Queen. Stephen, you’ll recall, has the same striking black hair as his ancestor, Snow White. His daughter, however, inherits her mother’s long blonde locks.

More importantly for Aurora, however, is the fact that she also inherits that certain fey gift. She is able to sing like no other, partially due, no doubt, to her being gifted with this power by Fauna, the Green Fairy, upon her birth. Phillip, upon overhearing her in the woods, even compares her voice to that of a ‘wood sprite’ simply because he can’t imagine a mortal with so beautiful a voice.

Furthermore, Aurora is able to speak and commune with animals like few others (except perhaps Phillip, though we can presume his bond with his horse, Samson, is simply one of years of practice. He isn’t performing duets with owls and squirrels or anything).

Aurora’s bloodline and Maleficent’s unending hatred of the same brings into

These three are going to show up again--remember them.

the picture the three good fairies, Flora (red/pink), Fauna (green), and Merryweather (blue).  They pose as the defenders of Aurora, but it’s very possible it’s simply the bloodline they are seeking to defend. Being immortal beings, they could (and possibly do) have long-term goals for this child that we are unaware of.

Also possible is that, over the sixteen years they spend raising her (in the very same woodcutter’s cottage in the same dark forest that the dwarves used with Snow White, mind you), they develop a deep bond with her and, by extention, her progeny. They take on the roles of ‘fairy godmothers’ for the rest of time. In any event, they are instrumental in Maleficent/the Evil Queen’s final destruction at the hands of Phillip (and the enchanted sword they had given him just a few minutes earlier).

In the end, Aurora marries Phillip and, presumably, they produce offspring. Of note here, in the vein of genetics, take a

Some poor bastard's getting this guy's genes.

good look at Phillip’s father, Hubert.

 Note the man’s bell-shaped body, bulbous nose, distinctive facial hair, and the ruddy complexion–that’s going to show up again, just you wait.

Anyway, the destruction of Maleficent keeps the faries’ interests safe for some time after this–about five centuries, anyway. During this time, the bloodline gets diffused and spread across the land (again, somewhere in eastern or south-eastern France, I’m guessing–possibly Switzerland). What the faries do during this period is unclear, but Merryweather apparently takes an interest in animating a puppet named Pinocchio in Italy at some point. This fits with her own apparent magical predilections, as she is seen transmuting flesh to stone and animating brooms and dishes and such during Sleeping Beauty.

Anyway, on to step three: Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast (1777-1835)

Smart, but the fey blood is a bit thin

Belle is the daughter of an inventor; she’s intelligent and dreamy and doesn’t seem to have unusual powers regarding animals, though she does have a pretty solid singing voice. She lives with her father (who bears a striking resemblence to King Hubert) in a small village. This is either the exact same village located outside the gates of King Stephen’s castle in Aurora’s day or, perhaps, it is near either the honeymoon castle built by Hubert for Phillip and Aurora (as referenced during the wine-drinking scene) or near Hubert’s castle itself. In any event, it is probable, if not likely, that Belle’s father is indirectly related to the fey-touched line that the faries are so interested in for some reason.

There is, however, another branch of that line–the direct line, actually, which is in a bit of a pickle. The Beast or, more accurately, the prince that becomes the Beast is the direct heir to Aurora and Phillip’s bloodline. Aware of this, Fauna, the green fairy, pays him a visit to see how he’s doing after the death of his parents (one presumes they died suddenly, given his age at the time of Fauna’s visit; we don’t know for sure). anyway, Fauna visits and, true to form, disguises herself as an elderly mortal woman. She is treated very badly and reacts accordingly (or maybe overreacts). Beastification ensues.

Note the green dress, the magic wand--it's Fauna, folks.

 Further evidence that this ‘beautiful enchantress’ is Fauna is backed up by her name–Fauna, or ‘animals’. Making the prince into a beast that mirrors his beastly temper and ugly personality is fitting with her personal idiom (and she clearly has the ability to change everybody else, too, though that’s less her style. Perhaps the prince caught Fauna on a bad day).

Now, we might think that Fauna just abandons the Prince to his fate, but she has a better idea (and is far too sweet for that, anyway). It is not an accident that Belle’s father gets lost in the woods and finds himself before the castle of the Beast. Indeed, the wolves are her tools in this (note that they only attack when doing so will drive Belle and the Beast closer together and at no other time). Fauna is trying to kill two birds with one stone–teach the prince a valuable lesson and strengthen the bloodline by combining two of Aurora’s descendants together). In the end, her plan works, but things don’t work out as well as she’d hoped. Cue our last installment: Cinderella

Cinderella (1850s)

Very dissapointing.

The faries lay low as the Napoleonic wars rage across Europe. They probably watch carefully and keep tallies of the members of the blood who survive and die. They watch in frustration as Belle and the Prince’s only son seems to have inherited all of the least desirable qualities of the line. He looks like Hubert and Belle’s father, he’s got the Prince’s temperment, and he can’t sing or talk to animals worth a damn.

The one stroke of good news is that the guy’s a pretty solid soldier, and he manages to defend his tiny kingdom in the foothills of the Alps and keeps a degree of independence from both France and Germany and Austria/Hungary. We can see, by looking at his kingdom, that it has been influenced by all of those great nations of 19th century Europe but hasn’t quite been consumed by any of them. This works to the faries’ advantage, as it makes their little breeding experiment somewhat easier to manage.

To their great luck, the genes carrying the gifts granted to Aurora and Snow White before her fall to a young girl born

She don't look like much, but she's got it where it counts.

to a low-ranking noble family. Cinderella is a veritable chosen one–she sings like Aurora did (well, almost as good, anyway), she speaks to the animals better than any of them–she’s exactly the one they need.

Of course, there’s no way a girl of her station gets to marry a prince under normal circumstances. Much meddling has to take place–they need to keep the Prince, Belle’s Grandson, occupied so as not to get him snagged by another girl. They need to aggravate the king with the prince’s behavior so that, finally, they force the King into a desperate course of action.

Then, and most importantly, they need to make sure Cinderella grows up humble. They arrange the marriage between her father and the Wicked Stepmother, then they bump him off. They are pleased how she keeps her sweet disposition (indeed, killing off her father might have been a test of her worth), and they wait for the opportunity to make their move.

It comes when, finally, the ball is held and the wicked stepsisters rip Cinderella’s dress to bits. Enter Flora, pink bow and